On the difference between the Middle Eastern and European mobilizations
Some stimulating thoughts from David Graeber:
“Military regimes like Egypt live on fear. Their leadership assume that most of the populace despise them, but people are aware that any attempt at mass opposition will be met instantly by torture and death. For most of those who live under these regimes, “political life” is a matter of continual, barely suppressed rage. The real question is whether people detect an opportunity, a crack in the façade. That is why when soldiers refused to fire on protesters in Tunisia, uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya followed almost instantly. In modern democracies like the UK, in contrast, political life is organized more around cynicism and despair. You not only have to reveal the system as vulnerable – which the students began to do – you not only have to overcome the endless divisions politicians and media have created between students, trade unionists, immigrants and the unemployed – but you also have to convince people that a social order based on human solidarity and mutual aid would even be possible.
There is only one known way to do that, and that is for people to experience it. This is why, emboldened by the students, grassroots organizations across the UK are planning to respond to the attacks by a wave of occupations, turning every shut-down youth center, hospital or library into an experiment in real democratic self-management. Will it work? Will the bulk of the British working class, battered by 30 years of defeat, finally rally to take back what is theirs? No one knows. But everywhere there are signs, some angry, some whimsical, most small, that this time something really might be different.
Just a month ago I was sitting on the stoop helping guard a student-occupied university building at the School of Oriental and African Studies when a bus driver stopped his vehicle in front of us. Noting the banners, he winked at us and said, only half jokingly, “Say, I was wondering … could you fellows please occupy my bus?”
