What Happened to the Global Uprisings of a Decade Ago?
December 22, 2020
Ten years have slipped by since a man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on
fire in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, begins Vijay Prashad.
French protest in support of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Hero of Tunisia, Jan.
15, 2011. (Antoine Walter, CC BY-SA 2.0, Flickr & Wikimedia Commons)
By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
A decade has now slipped by since a man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself
on fire in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid on Dec. 17, 2010.
Bouazizi, a street vendor, took this extreme step after policemen harassed
him for trying to survive. Not long after, thousands of people in this small
Tunisian town gathered in the street to express their anger. Their outburst
spread to the capital city, Tunis, where trade unions, social organizations,
political parties and civic groups marched into the avenues to overthrow the
government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Demonstrations in Tunisia inspired similar outbreaks around the
Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Spain, the chant of Cairos Tahrir Square
ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam (the people want to overthrow the regime)
redolent with the emotion of hundreds of millions.
People poured into the streets, their sentiment captured by the Spanish term
indignados: indignant, or outraged. They came to say that their hopes were
being crushed by forces both visible and invisible. The billionaires of
their own societies and their cozy relationship with the state despite the
global downturn spurred by the credit crisis of 2007-08 were easy to see.
Meanwhile, the forces of finance capital that had eroded the capacity of
their governments (if they were favorable to the people) to provide humane
policies were much harder to see, but no less devastating in their
consequences.
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The sentiment that fueled the slogan overthrow the regime was shared widely
by large majorities of people who had become dulled by the futility of
voting for evils and lesser evils; these people were now seeking something
beyond the horizon of the election games which seemed to bring so little
change. Politicians ran for elections saying one thing, and then did the
exact opposite when they took charge.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, the student protests that broke out in
November-December 2010 were against the betrayal by the Liberal Democrats of
their pledge not to raise fees; regardless of who they voted for, the
outcome was that the people suffered.
Greece, France: now here too!, chanted the students in the U.K. They could
have added Chile, where the students (known as los pingüinos, or the
penguins) took to the streets against the education cuts; their protests
would pick up again in May 2011 and last almost two years in el invierno
estudiantil chileno, the Chilean Student Winter.
U.K. student protesters mount traffic lights in central London, Dec. 9,
2010. (bobaliciouslondon, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In September 2011, the Occupy Movement in the United States would join this
wave of global outrage, emerging out of the gross failure of the U.S.
government to address mass evictions spurred by the mortgage calamity that
morphed into the credit crisis of 2007-08. The only way to experience the
American Dream, someone wrote on the walls of Wall Street, is while
sleeping.
Overthrow the regime was the slogan because faith in the establishment had
weakened; more was demanded of life than what was on offer from the
neoliberal governments and the central bankers. But the point of the
protests was not simply to overthrow the government alone, since there was
widespread recognition that this was not a problem of the governments: it
was a deeper problem about the kind of political possibilities that remained
open to human society.
A generation or more had experienced austerity cuts by governments of
different kinds, even social democratic governments that were told that the
rights of the wealthy bondholders for instance were far more important
than the rights of the totality of the citizens. It was bewilderment at the
failure of what appeared to be progressive governments, such as the Syriza
coalition in Greece later in 2015, to deliver on their basic promise of no
more austerity that spurred this kind of attitude.
Global Scope
This area of downtown Bangkok was occupied by Red Shirt protesters between
April 3, 2010, and May 19, 2010, when the Thai military violently ended it.
(Takeaway, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The uprising had a truly global character. A million people in Red Shirts in
Bangkok on March 14, 2010, took to the streets against a state of the
military, the monarchy and the monied sections; in Spain, half a million
indignados marched in the streets of Madrid on October 15, 2011.
The Financial Times ran an influential article calling it the year of
global indignation, with one of its leading commentators writing that the
revolt pitted an internationally-connected elite against ordinary citizens
who feel excluded from the benefits of economic growth, and angered by
corruption.
The only way to experience the American Dream, someone wrote on the walls
of Wall Street, is while sleeping.'
A report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
from October 2008 showed that between the 1980s and the 2000s, inequality
rose in each of the 20 richest countries in the world who are members of the
OECD. The situation in the developing world was catastrophic; a report by
the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 2008 showed that
the share of national consumption by the poorest fifth of the population in
developing regions had declined to 3.9 percent from 4.6 percent between 1990
and 2004.
This was gravest in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa,
where the poorest fifth accounted for merely 3 percent of national
consumption or income.
Whatever funds had been gathered to help the banks stave off a serious
crisis in 2008 did not translate into any income redistribution for the
billions of people who saw their lives become increasingly precarious. This
was the major spur for the uprisings of that period.
A Sign of Hope
Brazils Dilma Rousseff receiving presidential sash from Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva, Jan. 1, 2011. (Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom, Agência Brasil, CC BY 3.0
br, Wikimedia Commons)
It is important to point out that in all these statistics there was a
hopeful sign. In March 2011, Alicia Bárcena, the head of the UN Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), wrote that despite
the high levels of income inequality, poverty rates in the region had
dropped due to the social policies of some of the governments in the region.
Bárcena had in mind the social democratic governments such as in Brazil
under President Lula da Silva, with schemes such as the Bolsa Familia, and
left governments such as in Bolivia under President Evo Morales and
Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez. The indignant in these parts of the
world had entered government and were driving a different agenda for
themselves.
How swiftly the wealthy turned from the language of democracy promotion to
the language of law and order, sending in the police and the F-16s to clear
out public plazas and to threaten countries with bombardment and with coup
détats.
The Arab Spring, which drew its name from the 1848 revolts across Europe,
quickly turned cold as the West encouraged a hot war between regional powers
(Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey) with the epicentres in Libya and Syria. The
destruction of the Libyan state by the 2011 NATO attack sidelined the
African Union, suspended all talk of the Afrique as a currency to substitute
for the French Franc and the U.S. dollar, and drew in a massive French and
U.S. military intervention along the Sahel region from Mali to Niger.
Berliners waving revolutionary flags in March 1848, painter not identified.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Immense pressure to overthrow the government in Syria began in 2011 and
deepened in 2012. This fragmented Arab unity, which had been growing after
the illegal U.S. war on Iraq in 2003; made Syria the frontline of a regional
war between Iran and its adversaries (Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United
Arab Emirates); and diminished the centrality of the cause of the
Palestinians.
In Egypt, General Mohamed Ibrahim, the interior minister in a new government
of generals, said coldly, We are living a golden age of unity between the
judges, the police, and the army. The North Atlantic liberals rushed behind
the generals; in December 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron honored
Egypts president a former general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with the Légion
dhonneur, Frances highest award.
In Latin America, meanwhile, Washington instigated a series of shenanigans
to overthrow what was known as the Pink Tide. This ranged from the attempted
coup against the Venezuelan government in 2002 to the 2009 coup in Honduras
and the hybrid war prosecuted against every progressive government in the
American hemisphere from Haiti down to Argentina.
A decline in commodity prices especially oil prices spluttered economic
activity in the hemisphere. Washington used this opportunity to exert
information, financial, diplomatic and military pressure on the left
governments, many of which could not withstand the pressure. The coup
against the government of Fernando Lugo of Paraguay in 2012 was a harbinger
for what was to come against President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil in 2016.
Front right: Grave in Tunisia of Mohamed Bouazizi, hailed by Arab
commentators as one of the heroic martyrs of a new Middle Eastern
revolution. (Thijs Roes, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Every inch of hope to change the economic and political system was driven
underfoot by war and coups and by immense pressure from organizations such
as the IMF. Older language of tax and subsidy reform and labor market
reform re-emerged to suffocate attempts by states to provide relief to the
unemployed and the hungry.
Long before the coronavirus, hope had become calcified and rottenness had
become normal as migrants drowned in seas and sat in concentration camps
while dead money slipped across borders to tax havens (offshore financial
centers hold upwards of $36 trillion, an astronomical amount).
A glance backward to the uprisings of a decade ago requires that we pause at
the door of the prisons in Egypt, where some of the young people who had
been arrested for their hopefulness remain incarcerated. Two political
prisoners, Alaa Abdel El-Fattah and Ahmed Douma shouted to each other
between their cells, a conversation which was published as Graffiti for Two.
What did they fight for?
We fought for a day, one day that would end without the suffocating
certainty that tomorrow would replicate it as all days had been replicated
before. They sought an exit from the present; they sought a future.
Revolutionaries, when they rise, Alaa and Ahmed wrote, care for nothing but
love.
In their prison cells in Cairo, they hear stories of the Indian farmers,
whose struggles have inspired a nation; they hear of the striking nurses
from as far afield as Papua New Guinea and the United States; they hear of
striking factory workers in Indonesia and South Korea; they hear that the
betrayal of the Palestinians and the Saharawi people provoked street actions
around the world.
For a few months in 2010-2011, the suffocating certainty that there is no
future was set aside; a decade later, the people on the streets seek a
future that is a break from the insufferable present.
Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, journalist and commentator, is the
executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the
chief editor of Left Word Books.
This article is from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not
reflect those of Consortium News.
