Zhou
Enlai (1898-1976), the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, on the success of the 1789 French Revolution:
"It's
too early to tell."
The Economist, Special Holiday Double Issue, December 17 2011:
"Modern society tends to
regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and technological advance
reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches us that there is
nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University,
who has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary France,
argues that “the marvels of communication technology in the present have
produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication
has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of
television and the internet.” Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they
are the continuation of a long tradition. Modern digital networks may be able
to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the sharing of media could play a
supporting role in precipitating a revolution. Today’s social-media systems do
not just connect us to each other: they also link us to the past."
Nicholas Taleb:
"....journalism may be the
greatest plague we face today- as the world becomes more and more
complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification...
...To be competent, a journalist
should view matters like a historian, and play down the value of information he
is providing…Not only is it difficult for the journalist to think more like a
historian, but it is, alas, the historian who is becoming more like the
journalist.”
Francis Fukuyama, WSJ, June 28 2013:
"The new middle class is not just a challenge for authoritarian regimes or
new democracies. No established democracy should believe it can rest on its
laurels, simply because it holds elections and has leaders who do well in
opinion polls. The technologically empowered middle class will be highly
demanding of their politicians across the board"
This refers to the leader in
Marathi daily
Loksatta (लोकसत्ता) on July 4 2013. If you read Marathi, read it
here.
I read it twice to make some sense out of it. I could not.
My confusion first started with the word used in the title: 'रिअॅक्शनरावांचा राडा' (Mess of
Messrs Reactions)
I did not know there was a word like 'रिअॅक्शनराव' (Reaction-rao) in English/ Marathi. Was it 'रिअॅक्शनीराव' (Reactionary-rao)? When I saw the
web address, it reads "mess of reactionaries". So it indeed was 'रिअॅक्शनरीरावांचा राडा'!.
I feel there is a lot of difference between 'रिअॅक्शनराव' (
Messrs Reactions) and 'रिअॅक्शनरीराव' (
Messrs Reactionaries). The former would refer to the people who react and the latter to the people who are reactionary.
( Btw- I also wonder why Marathi word for reactionary-
प्रतिगामी- not used. If it were, it would read
'प्रतिगामीरावांचा राडा')
Let me now turn to the contents of the piece. It confused me more even after replacing 'reactions' with 'reactionaries'.
The leader starts with :
"राजकीय व्यवस्थेत सामील न होता तिच्याविषयी
घृणा बाळगत ट्विटर, फेसबुक आदी माध्यमांव्दारे बदलाची अपेक्षा ठेवणारा वर्ग
ठोस पर्यायही देत नाही हे धोकादायक आहे. व्यवस्थेचा फायदा घेत ती
झीडकारण्याची भाषा करणाऱ्या रिअॅक्शनरावांना कोणतेही राजकीय अधिष्ठान नाही
हेच जगभरातील अलीकडच्या उठावांचे समान सूत्र आहे."
(It's dangerous that a class, without offering a solid alternative, expects a change in the political system it hates without participating in it, using media such as Twitter and Facebook. The recent uprisings across the world have the same thread: 'Messrs Reactionaries' who while exploiting the system use the language of discarding it have no political base.)
Is it an attack on the mostly middle-class people who think they can
usher in a revolution or an alternative system using tools like Twitter
and Facebook? Is it also an attack on recent uprisings and such movements? Does the newspaper imply that 'reactionaries' use social media to instigate not-fully-thought-through uprisings against the establishment?
Reactionary is by a
definition 'an extreme conservative; an opponent of progress or
liberalism'.
Therefore, you can call these people- who either take part in such uprisings or accompanying social media movements- anything but reactionaries!
On the contrary, these people are progressivists (those who favor progress toward better conditions in
government and society)! Some of them may be extremely naive even arrogant but they aren't reactionaries and some may just be responding to their wife's- I assume- nagging- "Why don't you start something?"- as in the picture below.
Artist:
Robert J Day, The New Yorker, July 16 1932
As The Economist quote at the top says, there is nothing new about
social media. We always had social media and also the smart people to
leverage it to precipitate a revolution. Therefore, why blame 'new' social media?
In any case, as
Chris Lehmann explains below, they only played a marginal role in
Egypt in 2011?
"Social networking mattered in Egypt, but the
root causes of the uprising were scarcity, official corruption and social
conflict, none of which fit the cyber-utopian narrative or flatter America’s
technological vanity. The original scheduled protests of January 25 arose out
of a past effort to organize an anti-Mubarak general strike, and it was the
spread of the protests to the less wired workers in Egypt’s long-pinched labor
economy that helped furnish the telling last blows to the Mubarak order.
According to many reports from Cairo, the protests continued to gain momentum
not from tweets or Facebook posts but instead from the direct spectacle of the
populace congregating, We the People style, in Tahrir Square. Most Egyptians
were following events on state television, which was parroting the official
propaganda approved by the Mubarak regime, holding that the protests were the
handiwork of foreign agitators. Not being regular blog readers, ordinary
Egyptians went into the streets and saw that the state media were lying, that
the protesters were their neighbors, their family members, their co-workers.
The effort to coax a new political order into being grew from the power of
popular witness, filtered through the evidence of citizens’ own eyes and ears."
(Note- TV did not help the change-seekers!)
Even then there were many skeptical about happenings there.
Toby Wilkinson wrote in WSJ in February 2011:
"But there is a final lesson from ancient Egyptian
history that those urging regime change should heed. Today, tanks stand guard
beside the Pyramids of Giza, the grandest symbols of authoritarian rule ever
built. The pyramids sum up the unbridled confidence of ancient Egypt at the
height of its power. The pyramid-builders must have assumed that the glories of
pharaonic civilization would last forever. What brought the Age of the Pyramid
to an end in 2175 B.C. was not war, invasion, or pestilence, but a political
vacuum following the demise of a long-lived ruler. Factionalism and paralysis
beset the Egyptian government, the economy collapsed and the country was
plunged into a protracted civil war.
Egyptian history has a depressing habit of repeating
itself. Let us all hope that, in this last respect, it does not."
If you accused Mr. Wilkinson of being a reactionary in 2011, you may now laud him as a visionary!
Does Loksatta expect people who start or instigate uprisings to fully think through their consequences and only after suggesting a solid alternative to the existing order? Has recorded history worked like that?
The late Jacques Barzun wrote in "From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present- 500 Years of Western Cultural Life", 2000:
"How
a revolution erupts from a commonplace event—tidal wave from a
ripple—is cause for endless astonishment. Neither Luther in 1517 nor the
men who gathered at Versailles in 1789 intended at first what they
produced at last. Even less did the Russian Liberals who made the
revolution of 1917 foresee what followed. All were as ignorant as
everybody else of how much was about to be destroyed. Nor could they
guess what feverish feelings, what strange behavior ensue when revolution, great or short-lived, is in the air...
...A
curious leveling takes place: the common people learn words and ideas
hitherto not familiar and not interesting and discuss them like
intellectuals, while others neglect their usual concerns—art,
philosophy, scholarship—because there is only one compelling topic, the
revolutionary Idea. The welltodo and the "right-thinking," full of fear,
come together to defend their possessions and habits. But counsels are
divided and many see their young "taking the wrong side." The powers
that be wonder and keep watch, with fleeting thoughts of advantage to be
had from the confusion. Leaders of opinion try to put together some of
the ideas
afloat into a position which they mean to fight for. They
will reassure others, or preach boldness, and anyhow head the movement.
Voices grow shrill, parties form and adopt names or are tagged with them
in derision and contempt. Again and again comes the shock of broken
friendships, broken families. As time goes on, "betraying the cause" is
an incessant charge, and there are indeed turncoats. Authorities are
bewildered,
heads of institutions try threats and concessions by
turns, hoping the surge of subversion will collapse like previous ones.
But none of this holds back that transfer of power and property which is
the mark of revolution and which in the end establishes the Idea."
courtesy: Wikipedia
