is the title of a piece about the Middle East in today's Boston Globe by historian Richard Norton Smith and former ranking CIA analyst for the region Emile Nakhleh. It is subtitled "Sustained demonstrations cripple government, compel change" and is well worth reading. Here's the link
There are 4 key points in the piece, which I will quote, but which I then wish to explore as they might or might not be applicable to our own society.
Popular demonstrations provide American policy makers with several lessons and challenges. First, the generation calling for change is generally youthful, inclusive, tolerant, and not beholden to the regime. Nor are they controlled or directed by Islamist radicals. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain, Islamist movements had to play catch-up with the revolt. Second, Islamist leaders quickly realized that they are only one of many voices in the movement and that they must collaborate with emerging centers of power to help chart their country’s future.
Third, imperiled Arab autocracies are now in a rush to clean up their act. Whether the sitting governments survive or not, western governments that for so long were willing to avert their eyes from human rights offenses and brutality will now find it more embarrassing to do so, and much more difficult to defend if they do.
Fourth, the Obama administration may continue to throw up its hands in exasperation at the obduracy of Israeli and Palestinian belligerents, and cast vetoes that shield Israel from the opprobrium that it has earned through some of its occupation practices, but the double-standards game will be tougher to play. Those millions of protesters see right through the hypocrisies, thanks to the same new media that facilitated their organization of protests.
A generation that is youthful, tolerant and not beholden to the regime - I look at my students, younger than the demonstrators, and think of past students who are about the age of many of the demonstrators. They are tolerant on things like gay marriage and gays openly serving in the military. They are far more tolerant on things like immigration than many of the punditocracy and of one political party, in large part because so many of them are immigrants or the children of immigrant. I often will go through three questions
1. stand up and stay standing if you were born in another country
2. stand up and join them if at least one parent was born in another country
3. stand up and join them if at least one grandparent was born in another country.
I join them on the 3rd question - 2 grandparents were born in Europe. In most classes by this point, I have at least half my students standing, and in some classes more the 3/4.
As for not being beholden, we may not have a regime that has held power by force and intimidation for decades, but we have had a system of politics and governance that they find alien. Sometimes it is simple things - we do not allow them in our school to use their electronics during the day, which a large number simply ignore, because it is basic to how they live. Once you begin to flout authority on something like that, you are far more likely to challenge it in other ways, including in how it is organized.
only one of many voices - we do not have Islamists attempting to dominate our society. We do have those who wish to impose a religious perspective. In some parts of the nation their influence on young people is strong, but it can only be maintained by suppression of contrary ideas. Too many young people are too connected for that to be easily accomplished. No matter what any group adults may tell them, they are not necessarily limited to that as authoritative sources of information. Increasingly they communicate just as much by networking, by the viral spread of information, as we have seen oversees. I might complain that they are not necessarily critical enough of the sources of information upon which they rely, but I also have to recognize how many have multiple sources in a way not readily available when I was their age in the late 50s and early 60s - then we had three main networks and some dominant newspapers in most communities. It was harder to have access to alternative points of view.
imperiled Arab autocracies are now in a rush to clean up their act - here I do not necessarily see a clear parallel. In fact, I see exactly the opposite in deed even as I might see some parallel in word. That is, I see powerful interests concerned enough about wider reaction to try to control the messaging. Thus yesterday I noted the High Fructose Corn Syrup industry is now aggressively advertising on how corn sugar is still sugar, and of its supposed benefits, this at the same time as they want to change labelling requirements to drop the words "high fructose." I see oil companies trying to claim that they are in favor of alternative forms of energy which is why they need their to me obscene profits. Elites if anything are acting more like the Mubaraks and Qhaddais and doubling down, using their minions like Scott Walker and Doug Christie to try to smash their opposition. As we saw during the uprising that became the Tea Party movement back in 2009, coverage by major media tended to give more attention to one side of arguments in a way it never did to the far more massive opposition to the buildup to Iraq in 2002. Here it is not yet clear how this will play out. But we do know this - newspapers as a primary means of information are dying - their circulation has dropped precipitously, and as a result so has their revenue. Here in the National Capital area the Washington Post Company has stayed afloat not so much through its various media outlets but rather by the revenue from one of the larger - and more abusive - for-profit educational institutions, Kaplan.
There is no direct parallel to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact across the Muslim world. Yes, how our national administrations react is in part a result of successful demonization of Palestinians as Muslims terrorists, even though historically some of the most violent Palestinian factions were Christian, led by the likes of George Habash. Certainly the influence of Jewish groups in this country, which are wealthy and influential politically beyond their numbers, also plays a role. We have for around two decades had a minyan or better in the US Senate - 10 or more Jewish Senators - even as the Jewish population is 2% or less. Some might even point at the Supreme Court, which is now 1/3 Jewish. Of course, it is also 2/3 Catholic. I am not embarking on an I-P fracas, and will remind people that my last name is Bernstein.
Where there is some possible connection is that how American administrations have reacted towards all of the issue in the Middle East has been a product of a certain kind of thinking that might now be considered as obsolete for the lives of younger Americans as it should be economically, if only we would recognize what we are doing to ourselves and our world by our continued dependence upon petroleum from that region. And here the plural expression - our - includes those in Western Europe and Japan.
For the first Netroots Nation, the third annual gathering, held in Austin, I organized a panel of young people very active in politics. I suggested that if we wanted to get young people more involved in politics perhaps we should listen to those who already were active. I had an 18 year old who had just graduated, a diplomatic kid who was vice president of Teens for Clinton. I had a 17 year old who at 16 was secretary of a democratic organization in Fairfax County VA covering a population of more than 125,000. The youngest, who is now a freshman at Princeton, at age 15 was co-chair of the Maryland Youth Commission and had founded the national Teens for Clinton organization. Those who attended heard that young people (a) were quite capable of thinking independently; (b) often had perceptions and understandings that adults missed; (c) were not interested in being treated just as supernumeraries in our political endeavors. They had ideas they wanted to pursue, their hierarchy of values was very different, and they were already learning how they could organize without that much adult direction.
I grant that our society is very different than those in the Middle East now undergoing fairly rapid change. But I remember times when young people in this nation pushed this nation forward. The sit-in in Greensboro in 1961 was by young college students. the Freedom Summer in '64 in Mississippi which included the three young martyrs buried in a dam was by college students. There was the courage in '57 of the Little Rock 9. The opposition to Vietnam was organized by young people, both those in colleges and some returning from being in country. It was young people that got our Constitution amended so that 18 year olds not only could be drafted to fight, kill, and die, but could vote for those making the decisions that placed them in such situations.
I listen to my students, and how fascinated they are with what is happening in Egypt, and Tunisia, and Bahrein, and Libya. I do not doubt it is having an impact.
Yes, many are more focused on the matters of more personal interest - with whom they will go out this weekend, what summer job, where to go to college, grades on the next test. Some, just like some adults overseas, are not interested in involvement for political or social change. That was true even during the period of activism in the 1960s. But more than some adults realize are at least paying attention, and if they think real change is possible, who knows how quickly the number of those active could swell.
if we doubt it, look at how many got involved in 2008 and the difference it made politically in this nation. Also look what happened when they were disappointed in much of what then occurred in DC - they sat out in 2009 in Virginia and New Jersey and in 2010 nationally.
Perhaps now it is not only events overseas, but events in this country that are beginning to get them at least paying attention.
I have no idea how it will play out.
I merely note that as I read the piece in today's Globe I saw some parallels worth sharing. Thus this posting.
Do with it what you will.
Peace.