The New York Times today describes a global uprising:
In Chile, the spark was an increase in subway fares. In Lebanon, it was a tax on WhatsApp calls. The government of Saudi Arabia moved against hookah pipes. In India, it was about onions.
Small pocketbook items became the focus of popular fury across the globe in recent weeks, as frustrated citizens filled the streets for unexpected protests that tapped into a wellspring of bubbling frustration at a class of political elites seen as irredeemably corrupt or hopelessly unjust or both. They followed mass demonstrations in Bolivia, Spain, Iraq and Russia and before that the Czech Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Kazakhstan in what has been a steady drumbeat of unrest over the past few months.
At first glance, many of the demonstrations were linked by little more than tactics. Weeks of unremitting civil disobedience in Hong Kong set the template for a confrontational approach driven by vastly different economic or political demands.
Yet in many of the restive countries, experts discern a pattern: a louder-than-usual howl against elites in countries where democracy is a source of disappointment, corruption is seen as brazen, and a tiny political class lives large while the younger generation struggles to get by.
“It’s young people who have had enough,” said Ali H. Soufan, chief executive of The Soufan Group, a security intelligence consultancy. “This new generation are not buying into what they see as the corrupt order of the political and economic elite in their own countries. They want a change.”
…Although the recent scattering of mass protests appears dramatic, scholars say it is a continuation of a rising trend. For decades, societies across the world have become far likelier to pursue sweeping political change by taking to the streets.
The rate of protest has accelerated sharply of late, as various factors have converged: a slowing global economy, dizzying gaps between rich and poor and a youth bulge that in many countries has produced a restive new generation fizzing with frustrated ambition. In addition, the expansion of democracy has stalled globally, leaving citizens with unresponsive governments frustrated and activists sure that street action is the only way to force change.
But as protest movements grow, their success rates are plunging. Only 20 years ago, 70 percent of protests demanding systemic political change achieved it — a figure that had been growing steadily since the 1950s, according to a study by Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard University political scientist.
These two trends are closely linked. As protests become more frequent but likelier to flounder, they stretch on and on, becoming more contentious, more visible — and more apt to return to the streets when their demands go unmet. The result may be a world where popular uprisings lose their prominence, becoming simply part of the landscape.
“Something has really shifted,” Professor Chenoweth said in an interview.
“You could say these protests mirror what’s going on in the United States,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar who recently stepped down as dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. In countries where elections are decisive, like the United States and Britain, skepticism about the old political order has produced populist, nationalist and anti-immigrant results at the polls.
“In other countries, where people don’t have a voice, you have massive protests erupting,” he said.
Except in Australia where these trends are exactly the same if not worse than many other countries. We have:
- a youth disgustingly marginalised from basics such as home ownership and unemployment benefits;
- a grotesquely corrupt elite that bounces between selling our sovereignty to the CCP and local corporations;
- one of the worst energy cartels in the world ripping off literally everyone;
- a mass immigration program designed to gut worker pays and standards that a big majority rejects,
- a Budget process so corrupted by inter-generational warfare and politics it has become invisible as the norm.
All of this adds up to plunging living standards for youth, historical jeopardy for our freedoms and ruinous prospects for our climate.
It could hardly be more threatening to our children’s future.
Yet it barely raises a peep in terms of political protest: a bit of extinction rebellion scum, the odd sit-in by hirsute vegans, all of which is instantly and scathingly dismissed by one of the most monopolised medias on earth.
There does not appear to be a spark in Australia because there is no fuel to burn. We are a wet and fearful people with no heart, no fight and, increasingly, no recognisable future.
