By Andrea Hajek, November 26th, 2012 
On 17 September 2012, Occupy Wall Street celebrated its first anniversary. In spite of the usual problems facing bottom-up political activism in the long term, on which Pamela Brown reported a few months ago, OWS is still alive and kicking. Protest is clearly ‘in’, as the global protests on 14 November 2012 also demonstrated. But social movements and political protest have also made it to the screen, as memories of protest and rebellion reverberated both at the 69th Venice Film Festival and at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, with Olivier Assayas’ movie about the French 1968 protests (Après mai), Robert Redford’s interpretation of a former Weather Underground member in The company you keep, and Shola Lynch’s documentary about the black civil rights activist Angela Davis, Free Angela & All Political Prisoners.
Characteristic of OWS as well as other recent protests across the world, notably the Arab Spring, is the role of social media and the subsequent global reach of the protests. In Why it’s Kicking off Everywhere. The New Global Revolutions (Verso, 2012), BBC Newsnight economics editor and journalist Paul Mason narrates the course of events in both the Arab world and in a number of European countries since the start of the financial crisis, and analyzes the role and impact of social media in these protests. Starting with the Tahrir Square uprisings, “a revolution planned on Facebook, organized on Twitter and broadcast to the world via YouTube,” Mason takes us back to the 2008 clashes in Greece and Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution’ in 2009, when the images of a dying Neda Agha-Soltan – discussed recently on this blog by Lisa Lipscomb – made it across the globe in a matter of minutes. Through citizen journalism, Neda became a “global icon” and a martyr, provoking a “thread of solidarity and collective mourning” both online and in the streets (see also Aleida and Corinna Assmann’s chapter in Memory in a Global Age).
In . . .
Read more: Social Media and Protest in the Age of Globalization
By Andrew Arato, March 7th, 2011 
Andrew Arato offers in this post and the next his critical insights into the events in North Africa and the Middle East. He starts with reflections on the theoretical discussions on and historical experiences of revolutions applied to the situation in Egypt He concludes with a close analysis of the factors inhibiting revolutionary changes and the possibility of overcoming these in Egypt. The posts draw on his distinguished career studying the history of social and political thought, legal and constitutional theory, the historical problems of revolutions and radical transformations. – Jeff
We certainly said good-bye to revolutions too soon, between 1989 and 1995. Yes, we were right Romania was the exception, and the series of changes of regime certainly did not represent revolutions. Yet the fact that the latter were represented finally and definitively by the journalistic cliche as the “Revolutions of 1989” demonstrates the tremendous power of the topos. Central European ideologists of the radical right could still rely on it in the canard of the betrayed revolution, and the demand of a new revolution reversing the agreements of 1989-1990. It is indisputably true that both the revolutionary imaginary, and the empirical possibility of revolutions belong to the concept of modernity. This does not mean, however, that the critique of revolutions we inherit from Burke, Hegel, most brilliantly Tocqueville, and, despite all her sympathy, Hannah Arendt has lost their meaning and importance.
In the following analysis of the “revolutions” of 2011 I use the term revolution, from the legal point of view, as a type of internal change that transforms a system according to rules or practices other than those of the systems. This was Hans Kelsen’s definition, who could not however distinguish coups and revolutions as a result. Thus, I add that successful revolutions, unlike coups, change a system’s organizational core or its principle of organization. Better still, following Janos Kis, we should introduce a new principle of legitimacy. Either way, an illegal act of changing rules is necessary if not sufficient for a . . .
Read more: The Return of Revolutions
By Benoit Challand, March 3rd, 2011 
The great changes in the Middle East didn’t come from the usual sources. Religion was not nearly as important as many expected. Class was far from the center of the action, as youth stole the show. And internationally backed civil society was not nearly as important as Western donors would hope. In fact, Western aid may have been more of the problem than the solution.
Religion
The Islamic movement, in particular in Egypt, is in a state of relative weakness, very much connected to economic change. When Egypt embarked on structural adjustment programs and started privatizing its state-owned enterprises in the late 1970s, the economic reform was a façade, masking the enrichment of a handful of high-ranking officials who were the only ones who could do business. In the process, state and welfare services were dismantled, and the regime encouraged non-governmental charities. In this context, the Ikhwan (the Arabic name for Muslim Brotherhood) was able to build many private mosques and new charitable organizations, leading to significant social support. Yet, in the 1990s, when the Ikhwan started running for elections (culminating with the 20% of the seats in 2005), it paid the price of this political engagement by having no choice but to let people close to the government gradually take control over their charities. The movement became complexly connected to the regime and began to lose its credibility, increasingly so when it refused to boycott the 2005 elections and, more recently, because it took on positions that were viewed negatively by the viewpoints of the lower classes. One example is the Ikhwan’s condemnation of the strikes of Muhalla al-Kubra in the textile sector in 6 April 2008. Similar anti-union positions from Islamists are documented in Gaza and Yemen, creating a rift between the working class and the Islamists. Interestingly, in his 2005 book the sociologist Patrick Haenni, calls this new strand of Muslim businessmen ‘the promoters of Islam of the Market.’
As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood has become both politically and socially a much more fragile actor than it was in the past. Only the lack of alternative opposition and . . .
Read more: 2011: Youth, not Religion / Spontaneity, not Aid
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 9th, 2011
How does the head of state of the oldest of modern democracies, born of a revolution, approach the uncertainties of this revolutionary moment? Many are quick with criticism of, but also with appreciation for, President Obama’s apparent conservative realism.
Ross Douthat wrote in Monday’s Times: “Obama might have done more to champion human rights and democracy in Egypt before the current crisis broke out, by leavening his Kissinger impression with a touch of Reaganite idealism. But there isn’t much more the administration can do now, because there isn’t any evidence that the Egyptian protesters are ready to actually take power.”
On my side of the political tracks, opinion is different. My friend and colleague, Elzbieta Matynia, posted on her Facebook wall an open letter: “Dear Barack, Dear Mr. President, Why are we still hesitant to join the Egyptians’ cry for their rights and dignity? The longer we wait, the more doubt there is around the world in the sincerity of our commitment to democracy. Why are we failing to appreciate that these determined people are trying hard not to resort to violence? Too often, geopolitics has smothered the hopes of an entire people!”
A more extended application of these questions was developed in a piece by Asli Bali and Aziz Rana, “Supporting democracy in the Middle East requires abandoning a vision of Pax – Americana.” But I wonder about such judgments of the President and the Western leaders. Are these judgments responses to actual policy, or are they responses to the politics of gestures as examined by Daniel Dayan in his post last week?
Gestures that are thought to reveal what is going on in closed negotiations between the authorities and some oppositional figures, but may not actually be representative, may be more significant as expressions in and of themselves, as Dayan suggests. Their appearance is significant. They have a power, while they may not be telling an underlying story.
As President Obama seems to gesture toward human rights, democracy advocates in Egypt and abroad are heartened, while America’s traditional allies in the region . . .
Read more: Obama and Egypt
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