In Israel, for over three weeks, there have been demonstrations initiated by young people. They were first directed against the high cost of living, but they seem to be developing into something much larger, a movement for a systematic social change, addressing  the growing disparities between rich and poor and the difficulty of living well, concerned about issues of social security and the deterioration in the provision of education and health care. What had begun with a consumer uprising against the high prices of cottage cheese over a month ago, leading to a boycott on dairy products (since in Israel they operate as a cartel, not open for competition), appears to be  the beginning of what Rosa Luxemburg describes as ”an exercise in democratic action.” I observe the exercise as an Israeli living in Berlin, basing my commentary on newspapers, blog posts and conversations with friends at home.

The “cottage cheese revolt” is no trivial or accidental thing. Israeli dinner tables usually contain this staple, together with a salad. The most popular cottage cheese, Tnuva, has an illustrated home on its package and a well known advertising trope: “the cheese with the home.” Fighting for home is not only for affordable housing or the cost of living. The protesters also talk about the quick decline in the freedom of speech and of the Israeli democratic system under the current government.  However, the demonstrators delay, for the time being, what they see as “political demands” for possible negotiation with the government.  They fear this would compromise the call for “social justice,” and more immediately, could scare off some of the right-of-center demonstrators. According to Ha’Aretz today (August 2), “a document setting out the demands of the tent protesters in the areas of housing, welfare, education, health and economic policy is being drawn up by the movement’s leaders.”

The tent city in Tel Aviv was started by a twenty five year old, Daphne Leef,  who demonstrated against the cost of housing and living on Rothschild Boulevard, calling on her Facebook friends to join her. These demonstrations spread and have been non-violent (she compared them to Woodstock), the first massively successful demonstrations in Israel not connected to the military, wars or specific laws. I would be happy to hear more connections made between the decline in democracy and respect for human needs and the occupation, but that, apparently and unfortunately, cannot be addressed now by a generation that must declare itself “not political” in order to be listened to. Yet, ironically, the demonstrations are of profound political import.

A few of the commentators pointed to the fact that the young leading this uprising is nihilist and self-centered. For example, Eva Illouz in Ha’Aretz sees calls for social change to improve their own hedonistic consumer power, and not in solidarity with the weak and silenced groups, certainly not comparable to the social commitment seen in historical revolts in the fifties and sixties. That might have been true of the first round of the cottage cheese revolt, but it’s no longer the case. The periphery and the poor parts of Tel Aviv are as central and strong to the movement as the wealthy Tel Aviv quarter. The major labor unions, the municipal employees’ union, and the student union have all joined in the protests. The difference between the first protests,predominantly transpiring on Facebook and “at home,” in the form of an economic boycott by private individuals of a mass produced consumer good,and the later actions, in which hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets, remaining for hours of the day and night, in some cases sleeping in spaces coded as “public,” is precisely the one that Arendt illuminated in The Human Condition. In her terms ,the movement has turned from the social to the political, from concerns over “political economy” to a movement of the spontaneous action of human beings in their plurality addressing issues of common concern, Israelis not as settlers or pioneers but as citizens of a state with problems. As David Grossman said in the demonstration on Saturday, the chief problem is: “people are loyal to the state but the state is not loyal to them”. Daphne Leef stated that it is not the government but the “rules of the game” that they wish to change.

In looking at the “tent cities” protest as it has developed, one certainly does not just see the Ashkenazi leftist elite living in Tel Aviv, bragging about how expensive it is to sustain the good life they got used to. Not that that should be so damning a critique: why not live well, consume culture and have individual opportunities for growth?  Avigdor Lieberman and other conservatives called the protesters “spoiled,” perhaps meaning that it is better to not live well, that one should fight for the basics, as the settler  do in the territories, or the way that their predecessors did as young people realizing the Zionist dream.

The Zionist dream was questioned long ago first by intellectuals and minorities, including Palestinians. Now fundamental questions are being raised by a majority that needs to carry the burden for groups (the ultra orthodox) that do not work or serve in the military, in a concentrated market economy that is stable due to high taxes on the hard-working middle class, who feel crunched by the privatization of public services in the past twenty years. This “consumerist occupation” of the public space, in cities large and small all across Israel, calls all that into question in a manner that already appears irreversible.

I am quite ambivalent about the Tea Party.  While I am appalled by some of the slogans and signs that have appeared in Tea Party rallies, I am convinced that this is a genuine social movement, a politically significant instance of the politics of small things, a political movement concerned with fundamental principles, engaged in a great debate about both the pressing issues of the day and the enduring problems of American political life.  As a registered Democrat and as a strong supporter of President Obama and his program, I am pleased that the actions of the movement may have made the Republican landslide in the upcoming elections less momentous, as the talking heads are now speculating, although I am still concerned that the movement may have given wind to the rightward shift of public opinion.  The emotional, irrational and often purposely ignorant political expression in Tea Party demonstrations is of deep concern, but I think the strong expression of fundamental political principles can and should be seriously considered and confronted.  I am unsure about what the Tea Party Movement’s impact on American public life in the very near term, i.e. the midterm elections, and in the long term, i.e. in the reinvention of American political culture will be.  As I have been trying to sort this all out, I am reminded of the insights of an old friend, Alberto Melucci, an Italian sociologist who presciently understood the meaning of social movements in the age of internet and mobile communications, before these new media were common.

The Theoretical Perspective of a Friend

Alberto Melucci

In series of important books, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, and Playing the Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Alberto explored what it means to become involved in a social movement in our times.  He understood that the means of social movements may be even more important than their ends, and that they make possible a new sense of self and self purpose for their participants to emerge.  Further and most significant politically, they can change the basic social codes.  Alberto was mostly thinking about progressive new social movements, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights and the like.  But I think his approach illuminates the new conservatism of the Tea Party quite well.  He died prematurely on September 12, 2001, not observing the strange turn in global politics since that very day.  But he would have understood the Tea Party, as a social movement concerned with primary values, unconcerned with electoral priorities, forging new, in this case, reactionary, identities and values, a movement that is very much a product and a challenge of our times.

Challenging Codes

The Tea Party Movement makes its participants feel good about themselves and gives them a sense of purpose, as the participants frequently report on movement blogs and to reporters.  The Movement seeks to “take our country back,” supporting and attacking politicians of both parties.  They have specific ends against bail outs and the government handouts to the undeserving, from the poor to the mighty banks and corporations of Wall Street and Detroit.  They are for limited government and the constitution, as they understand it.  They imagine together a new future based on an idealized past and in their movement they enact their future.

The movement activists and candidates sometime seem to hurt Republicans more than Democrats, an outcome that seems to be irrational given their own voting records, but this is not as significant to them as one would expect.  They are concerned about a vision of America between its past and its future and their place in this America, and worry that this vision to which they are deeply committed is being lost, taken away politically by politicians they revile, and overlooked by too many of their fellow citizens.  When the fundamental concern with the American code is kept in mind, the Tea Party Activists are not as irrational as most outside commentators, of the left and the right, think.

September versus November

Karl Rove got caught up in this Primary Night last Tuesday.   In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, they agreed on fundamental conservative issues.  Nothing in their discussion suggested a questioning of the principles and practices of the Tea Party.  But Rove dared to frankly criticize the candidate who won her primary in Delaware due to Tea Party activism and support, Christine O’Donnell.  She was the candidate of true conviction against a moderate, but her odd behavior despite her stated purity would lead to electoral defeat.  “It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not [evince] the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.”  Rove maintained, frankly concluding that “This is not a race we’re going to be able to win.” (link)   For this assessment he was severely attacked by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the full staff of Fox News, forcing him to retreat from his initial assessment. (link)

Rove was caught between the calculation of a political analyst and of a political partisan.  Since he cares most about the politics of the day, he could not be content with pronounced conservative purity.   He, on the right, along with most objective and Democratic partisan observers, noted that the Tea Party victory in the Delaware primary greatly increased the Democrats chances of maintaining their Senate majority.

But those who seek to take their country back, those more interested in the long march of changing the political culture, changing the code of politics as Alberto Melucci would put it, would prefer resolute cultural battle (most prominently Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, link).    Their movement is their message. For them the victory in September is more important than the increased chances of a defeat in November.