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An Occupy
Wall Street protester shouts slogans as he demonstrates
in New York City,
October 5, 2011. (Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar)
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(Reuters) -
After the "Arab Spring" and unrest in Europe, New York's "Occupy
Wall Street" movement may be the latest sign of a global, popular backlash
against elites with increasingly shared rhetoric and tactics.
On almost
every continent, 2011 has seen an almost unprecedented rise in both peaceful
and sometimes violent unrest and dissent. Protesters in a lengthening list of
countries including Israel, India, Chile, China, Britain, Spain and now the
United States all increasingly link their actions explicitly to the popular
revolutions that have shaken up the Middle East.
The slogans
on the streets of Manhattan and other U.S. cities also show a host of other
intermingling influences, from the British student protests last year to the
"indignados" (indignant) anti-austerity demonstrations in Greece and
Spain.
What they
all share in common is a feeling that the youth and middle class are paying a
high price for mismanagement and malfeasance by an out-of-touch corporate,
financial and political elite.
When hundreds
of protesters blocked London's Westminster Bridge on Sunday in anger at
upcoming changes to Britain's National Health Service, they took on slogans
from U.S. protesters who describe themselves as the "99 percent"
paying the price for mistakes by a tiny minority.
With the
economic outlook darkening just as the growth of social media helps disparate
groups around the world knit together a global narrative of anger, there may be
more to come.
"This
is most definitely going to be a multi-year trend, perhaps even a decade,"
says Tina Fordham, chief political analyst for U.S. bank Citi. "What's
interesting is the way you're increasingly seeing these ... strands come
together. So far the policy impact has been minimal, but that could change. An
extended period of low or no (economic) growth could galvanize these emerging
movements into political forces."
While those
largely leaderless groups taking to the streets might be getting better at
articulating what they are against, they still struggle to define what they
actually want. But they are still gaining traction.
Already,
the tactic of occupying a location -- be it a park, the central square in an
Arab city or a university common room -- appears to be becoming commonplace,
allowing debate and providing a focal point from which to engage the media and
authority. So too are "days of rage," a term first used during the
Middle East risings, not to mention the use of social media and messaging
systems to stay one step ahead of authorities.
"SOMETHING
IN THE AIR?"
When
English student and occasional fashion blogger Jessica Riches, then 21, began
posting twitter updates from a student sit-in at University College London late
last year, her postings
and online
interactions inspired like-minded students elsewhere. That led to a string of
other "occupations" across Britain and fueled further protests
against planned tuition fee rises.
This didn't
stop the coalition government pushing through the reforms -- part of a wider
debt-reduction strategy -- but now Riches feels she is seeing the beginnings of
something more.
"There's
definitely something in the air," she says, now avidly following events in
New York online and encouraging activists in the United States to "occupy
everything."
"In
many ways, they remind me of us last year."
What the
Internet revolution is doing, some experts suggest, is leading to perhaps a new
internationalization of political discourse. If nothing else, different protest
trends around the world -- many motivated at least in part by perceived
economic grievance -- may be producing a common narrative.
Clay
Shirky, a professor at New York University and author of a 2008 book entitled
"Here Comes Everybody" on the social change wrought by the Internet,
thinks something deep may be happening to the social psychology of a
generation.
"If
you look at what's happened everywhere, there is some kind of psychological
synchronization," he told a meeting in Washington last month at the United
States Institute for Peace. "There is a sense among young people that
their generation is different. If enough of them behave like that... you might
be seeing some kind of generational shift as happened in 1967."
With
hindsight, many of the baby boomers who protested in the West and Communist
blocs in 1967-68 did not prove notably radical in the rest of their lives. Most
settled into mainstream jobs, raised families and moved in a more conservative
direction. But many wonder what might happen if the current economic downturn
proves more profound and longer lasting.
Today's
protesters in the developed world tend to lack the ideological conviction of
many of their predecessors. While they might declare themselves frustrated with
mainstream politics, globalization and financial markets, there is little of
the hankering of yesteryear for alternate ideologies.
MARXIST
ANALYSIS IN, SOLUTIONS OUT
"There's
enthusiasm for Marxist theory as a tool for analysis," says Tim Hardy,
author of UK-based blog "Beyond Clicktivism. "But I haven't seen many
calls for Marxist-style statist solutions. There is some interest in anarchist
models, perhaps because they're the only thing that hasn't been tried and
failed. But there's also just a lot of confusion."
If
anything, many of the new generation of protesters could be described more as
"militant Keynesians" than anything else: favoring state stimulus,
public works and controls to stem the unfettered movement of capital. More
often, they appear to be coalescing around individual issues or demands.
UKuncut,
for example, an officially leaderless group of which Hardy describes himself as
a leading cheerleader and which has formed a U.S. offshoot, organizes flash
mobs at businesses they accuse of avoiding tax through offshore dodges.
In
contrast, rioters who ran amok through British cities for several days in
August, largely a poorer, tougher, more inner-city group than the earlier
student protesters, seemingly lacked purpose beyond a desire to flout authority
and loot goods.
The Wall
Street protesters, early indicators suggest, may come together around calls for
financial regulation and tax reforms to redress a widening wealth gap. In doing
so, they may end up accelerating trends already visible.
Last month,
U.S. President Barack Obama echoed billionaire Warren Buffett in calling for
America's richest to pay more tax. Even before the protests, Goldman Sachs had
lost around a quarter of its value in the stock market largely because of fears
it might face a regulatory backlash.
But at the
same time, the financial crisis and its aftermath has also helped fuel the rise
in the United States of the right wing Tea Party with almost exactly the
opposite demands -- slashing back state intervention in the economy and
society.
In the euro
zone, a left-wing response against austerity in troubled borrowers in the
Mediterranean south -- such as Greece -- is counterbalanced by the rise of
Eurosceptics and right-wing parties in the fiscally more frugal north --
Germany, Finland and other core EU states opposed to ongoing bailouts.
"What
you're seeing is a loss of confidence in institutions and their legitimacy
because they are not seen as delivering," said Jonathan Wood, global
issues analyst at Control Risks.
"It's
hardly a surprise that it's producing a degree of paralysis. Politics becomes
very reactive and it's hard to deal with the bigger issues."
For the
protesters of the Middle East dealing with the aftermath of revolutions or
facing a sometimes bloody backlash from autocratic elites clinging to power,
events in the developed world are all very interesting.
But for
many, there are more pressing concerns than how they might fit into a wider
global generational zeitgeist. "I think the bankers in the region are
worried," United Arab Emirates-based blogger Sultan Al Qassemi told
Reuters via twitter. "But not the Yemeni and Syrian street, if you know
what I mean."
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| Other protests have been held in Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago |
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