Si ardemos. La década de las protestas masivas y la revolución que no fue

by Vincent Bevins, Daniela Martín Hidalgo (Translator)

Una investigación meticulosa sobre los recientes levantamientos que pretendían reestructurar las sociedades en todo el mundo, pero que con demasiada frecuencia fracasaron. Entre 2010 y 2020 muchas más personas participaron en diversas protestas que en cualquier otro momento desde los sesenta. Pero no vivimos en un mundo que, como resultado de ello, sea más justo y democrático. Vincent Bevins se propone responder una pregunta ¿cómo es posible que tantas protestas masivas condujeran a lo contrario de lo que pedían? Desde la llamada Primavera Árabe hasta las protestas del Parque Gezi en Turquía, la erupción de la «V de Vinagre» en Brasil, el levantamiento Euromaidán en Ucrania y los movimientos estudiantiles en Chile y Hong Kong, Bevins ofrece un análisis de estos movimientos y sus consecuencias, revelando cómo la sabiduría convencional sobre el cambio revolucionario en 2010 estaba equivocada. A través de más de doscientas entrevistas en doce países, realizadas a lo largo de cuatro años, reconstruye cuidadosamente las protestas masivas que definieron una década, para comprender por qué estas poderosas explosiones y apasionadas llamadas al cambio no han producido la revolución que soñaban.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Social Justice, Activism, Journalism, Sociology

458 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist. He reported for the Financial Times in London, then served as the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, before covering Southeast Asia for the Washington Post.

Reviews

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Left-coms and anarchists suck, tankies vindicated

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about how those who do not represent themselves (as in people/movements who do not pick a representative/leader) will be represented whether they want to be or not and it uses the mass protest movements of the last decade as examples to make its point.

It doesn't really go too deep into why so many of the movements of the past decade have been rather leaderless (aside from the usual "leftist" tendency toward the inability to wield charisma) but I guess that's really a different question altogether.

As has been pointed out by other reviewers there's a fair amount of focus on Bevins' own experience and the places where he was when things happened, personally I rather enjoyed that. Overall it was a pleasant read if a rather discouraging one for me.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great walkthrough of the decade of contention that was the 2010s, with insights so clear they read almost as aphorisms.

[Kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

the storytelling and survey of 2010s global protest is really compelling--Bevins is just such an awesome writer that you can (and very likely will) finish the book in like three or four sittings. this book is certainly worth reading and engaging with, as it is asking the right questions not only about 'what happened?' but also 'what did and does it mean?' its best answer hits on the degree to which both social media and traditional media are at complete odds with aspirationally left movements. that said, i ultimately found the book to be hamstrung by the rest of its political theory, which i'd characterize as something like "social democratic leninism." basically, he argues that movements ought to have been militantly organized in a "classically leninist" fashion AND also that they should have been more willing to negotiate and compromise towards reform--sometimes with regressive political administrations. the book makes this argument in part because it accepts that revolutionary situations in the global south are frequently subject to more powerful neighbors, and thus should consolidate their wins earlier in their process.

ultimately i felt like the book's political history sometimes draws a too-clear line between the 2010s and 1968 - somewhat Adam Curtis-esque in this regard. in my mind, the form and concepts behind social theorization have changed quite a bit since then--including by taking on board the critiques of the 'tyranny of structurelessness' and what not. this is not to deny the graebers or holloways of the world (who i hate hate hate), but rather to suggest that parts of the global 2010s lefts were a reaction against them. i also wonder what (if any) left traditions in these countries had fallen by the wayside, and why? why is it that these places seemed to sometimes exhibit an affinity for global north anarchist theory rather than endemic traditions? were there not local horizontalist theories as well? one thinks of Argentina thought in particular. I wonder this just because tracking what happened to global south rejections of past local revolutionary theories might not just be due to imperialist repression, but also because of the choices these local leftist organizations made were not always the best ones. and it's not just that they made bad leninist or USSR decisions, but rather that they sometimes drifted instead towards neo/liberal decisions. Brazil itself seems like a particularly compelling place to ask these questions of, as for all Lula's popularity and success, his first admin was not exactly socialist or something (and PT's organizational strategy and model doesn't strike me as successful as PSOL) ...so i dunno, the argument just didn't entirely hit with my experience, or my sense of where we are headed next, though it does end with some gestures towards Rodrigo Nunes' work which I do think offers the precision I desire. i'm open to this opinion changing or being challenged by events, and like i said, the book is well worth reading and engaging for these reasons.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vincent Bevins is a great journalist. He does an excellent job interviewing the various subjects he talks to, and paints a vibrant picture of the places he recounts.

But 290 pages is still a lot of hemming and hawing to get around to finally admitting Lenin was right. Could've just started with that.

[Nathan Fisher]

I can't settle on a star rating here, and in my wizened years I don't like to give the punitive 'two stars' to books that aren't really objectionable. The main problem here is that this is way, way too breezy (with the exception of the sections on Brazil, for obvious reasons) — and not only as an inevitable result of casting such a panoramic net. Its fault is that it draws only entirely obvious and received wisdom conclusions — thus of virtually no political relevance — from what is clearly a lot of accumulated experience and thinking through.

Is the 2010's fetish for horizontalism still in evidence in Bevins' political circles? You can't write a 300-page book, reveal the conclusions you've gleaned on page 283, and have it be the likes of 'Organizations are effective.' (Not a paraphrase, a direct quote). The book suffers from a lack of concretion, despite its superfluity of anecdotes. I don't know for certain that we've exhausted the potentials of Leninism, but I feel confident we've exhausted the potentials of Pop Leninism. Bevins at one point concedes that all of his remarks are 'easier said than done,' which is always the case, but here they are very, very easily said. Decent overview and history, but this is not what they call an 'intervention.' He's capable of better.

[OJH · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2018, during the heady days of the Gilets Jaunes, I read Paul Mason's book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere. Mason's book on the protest wave of the decade, written as it was happening, was breathless and boosterish, seeing revolution around every corner. At the time Mason's book felt useful to me. France was in a political situation that seemed without recent precedent. Of course 1968 failed, but people were invoking the memory of 68 in a way that didn't seem disingenuous. This was serious contestation, and although Emmanuel Macron remained in power and was subsequently re-elected, the Gilets Jaunes shook the frame in which French politics is contained, and energised other actors, like the trade unions, that took up the historical task of confronting Macron.

If one were to, as I did, find themselves ensconced in a moment of historical struggle, I would advise that they put down Mason's book which frankly, like the man himself, at this point feels utterly redundant. I would instead encourage them to pick up If We Burn by Vincent Bevins.

Bevins' book is reminiscent of the Bungacast book The End of The End of History in its panoramic scope, shifting between scenes of a street riot, to the national parliament of a country, to analysis of great power competition, to the global nature of financialised capitalism. Like the Bunga book it also tries to dig at the underlying dynamics, both material and ideological, of the protest decade. And it does an excellent job.

Bevins often seems interested in narrative connection, so as well as performing the valuable service of focussing on the decade from the perspective of the global south, he also offers up under reported elements of the various eruptions he documents. This means short chapters explaining the situation in Bahrain and Yemen, the inclusion of the Chilean Mapuche people in his narrative, an acknowledgement of the role of the far-right in the EuroMaidan, the democratic issues surrounding the western liberal NGO-industrial-complex and various other pieces of narrative correction that a less diligent journalist would have ignored.

As well as a breathtaking account of the global protest decade, Bevins provides a history of political contention, drawing on sociology, social movement theory and political economy to draw a throughline from the sixties to the present in a way that feels utterly compelling.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the book is the ability it provides to compare these revolutionary situations, and the treatment given to the day after the explosion. Bevins digs deep into why these movements were often transformed and traduced, with their energies used against the very people who unleashed them. He provides a series of patterns that are often reproduced and offers, without any moralism or patronising, advice for anyone looking to spark political change and those looking to cover moments of mass protest in the media.

The revolution remains missing. But I think his suggestion toward the end that the 2020s may surpass the 2010s as the decade with the most protests in human history seems plausible. In such a context, If We Burn is a vital recent history of the present that anyone seeking to interpret the world, or even change it (!) should read.

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5- I was massively anticipating this book. I’ve followed Bevins work for a while now and have always been really impressed. I even went to his book tour in Philadelphia for this book! So my level of hype for this book reflects my harsher rating.

Let’s start with the pros. The scope of this book is insanely impressive. Covering a decade and trying to give an account of mass protests in over 10 countries was massively informative (Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Turkey, Brasil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Chile). He also gives some small space for the United States, Spain, Greece, Libya, and Syria. I learned more about these countries, their political histories, and their movements of contention is the 2010s from Bevins than from anything else I’ve ever read. Bevins also convincingly and powerfully counters teleological readings of history, both (neo)liberal and Marxist, and shows that these protests are open to indeterminate multiplicities and outcomes (7 of the 10 mass protests not only failed to accomplish their goals but often found their country in a worse place than before the protest). Bevins also does a masterful job of showing the role that traditional and new social medias played in this decade and their protest movements, often showing the many ways new social medias have not lived up to their initial utopian promise.

So why 3.5? There are a couple things about this book I really didn’t personally enjoy. First, while the book is insanely expansive it’s deeply shaped by Bevins own experience as a journalist in Brazil and it feels like close to 50% of the book is an in-depth discussion of Brazil’s decade and the other sites receive much shorter attention by comparison. While it’s interesting, it simply isn’t what I was hoping for in a book that seemed to have a more global scope and Brazil seems to color the lens of every other account. It’s also deeply personal and almost memoir like in its accounting of his time in Brazil. Again, not something I really enjoyed. Second, the book is a massive critique of the “horizontalism” of these mass protests and their anarchist influences in favor of a more vertical and Leninist account of organization. While im certainly open to that sort of critique I just found the theoretical discussion within the chapters themselves significantly lacking and mired in stale binaries (horizontal vs vertical, spontaneous vs organized, representatives vs consensus, etc.).

Would I recommend this book? Unquestionably so- if I didn’t come into it with such high expectations it would easily be a 4/4.5 star book. I think there are some flaws for sure but they don’t ultimately get in the way of the brilliant moments in the book or the lessons that need to be taken from it for the future.

[lindsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was really hard for me to get through for maybe the strangest reason I’ve encountered while reading — it was *too good.*

I’m half-joking, but my more serious take is that it didn’t always grab me because it was like just having all my existing opinions stated back to me. Everything vindicated what I already thought, and while this can be nourishing and reaffirming, it also meant I wasn’t intellectually challenged or forced to think about new and unfamiliar concepts.

I still appreciated the read though because it gave me more precise and analytical language to communicate things I already knew but haven’t always been able to articulate well. And I will 100% recommend this to any radlib who’s stuck in the “support the Current Thing” rabbit hole or anarchists who reflexively dismiss any kind of hierarchy and insist that leaderless, horizontal movements will metaphysically lead to desirable outcomes.

[juch · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading the first half of this book I had a dream that Vincent bevins was a wasian teenager, which means I loved this book. Literally everyone should read it!!!

I found the stories gripping and also made sense of so clearly. There’s no such thing as a power vacuum… if the left is unorganized to take over, the right (Ukraine) and/or esp in third world countries, a foreign power will fill (the line about how the Arab spring was relatively successful in Tunisia bc it’s “too small for geopolitics” was rly haunting. Wow i also learned so much about US intervention in Libya, how that taught dictators to NOT let go of their nuclear weapons)

On the ground, the questions of what demands are actually concessions? What is the diff bet negotiation and cooptation? Are hard but I think the point is that you need ppl to be organized to struggle over these together, or at the very least putting forth demands/negotiating should be an option that is available, not unavailable bc there’s no way of minimally cohering or making meaning of the protest on your own terms

Was inspired to read this after his TTSG podcast ep about campus protests, in response to how his book was being used in bad faith to finger wag at students (who are in fact quite organized). I am wary of becoming too much of a Leninist lol but i actually think this book is so open and not at all righteously condescending, in its simple language that leaves room for contention by not hiding behind abstract language like “prefiguring” or whatever (but I am curious to read more of rodrigo nunes’ more academic stuff on networks, neither vertical nor horizontal). Also the profiles of ppl like Mayara are so intimate and the sense of magic - at the peak of the protest - and depression - once the power vacuum has been filled - are so palpable

I feel like there’s so much more to chew on but maybe this will happen in practice :) there were some bits on punk music and social media that make me wanna ask what a post 2010s political art practice can look like… it feels to me like art is fundamentally anarchist and that’s what’s cool about it, and some but not all of that should carry over into politics

There’s an amazing moment in the acknowledgements where he’s like, “shoutout to the undercover intelligence agents following me around” LOL

[Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

TLDR: Ultimately, despite struggling early on with the amount of jumping between different people and locations, by the end of this book I understood this wide scope as deeply necessary for Bevins to encapsulate the final chapters of this book with an intensely compelling argument about what did and didn't work in the mass protest decade. In short: if you blow open a hole, you need to be prepared to fill it, and leaderless horizontal protest movements are rarely prepared for that next step. This feels like a diagnosis that comes from a place of understanding and not judgment. In many ways, I think this is a hopeful book. In providing understanding, it helps to better imagine what could be possible in the future and I consider it a must-read for anyone who wants to affect change in their lifetime.
-----
If We Burn is a book written for activists, and provokes reflection about why mass protest movements have not only failed to achieve their goals but caused regression as well. Bevins talks readers through 10 movements in the global south, and i appreciate his decision limit his focus onto protests that have preceded institutional change (of any kind successful or no). America and the west obviously play an outsized role in global politics and Bevins does not ignore this fact while still keeping focus on a much broader range of political protests. I also appreciate that this book is not limited to any ideological cause, and looks at left wing, anarchist, and right-wing protests across Hong Kong, Ukraine, Tunisia, Egypt, Brazil and more.

It is clear Bevins' ultimate expertise is in Brazillian politics, and I occassionaly wished he would limit his focus rather than jump around to so many places. But by the end of the book, the purpose of incorporating so many disparate movements becomes clear.

Bevins condenses all of his examples into a stunningly simple and convincing thesis in the final chapters. Horizontal and leaderless movements cannot effect change without giving way to organised strategic leadership. They are occasionally capable of creating ruptures in established systems, but ill-equiped to fill in the gaps they create. This is said without scorn for the anarchist tradition, but the understanding that movements who cannot represent themselves will be spoken for, and very rarely in good faith.

This is not written to diminish or critique anarchists or organisers from these kinds of protests, of which he interviews several, but instead is written in an attempt to understand what went wrong, what could have gone differently and what needs to come next.

As we see the rise of protests this year as well in support of palestine, and watching this movement struggle to achieve its outcomes, I feel this book to be as relevant now as it ever could have been, despite not being specifically about palestine (although it is amazing how much palestine pops up in this book just by virtue of talking about collective struggle in the modern era).

I left this book thoroughly convinced, and feeling much more lucid about what to expect and look for in protest movements. At one point in If We Burn, Bevins describes demonstrations/protests as a declaration to say "I don't like this, someone else fix it". And that a key failing of these leaderless unaligned protests is that without representation, anyone can decide to take whatever message they want. Bevins advocates for the return of more representation and leadership in protest movements. I found his considerations about the causes for why leaderless movements to be quite interesting, however that was more of an idea he brushed against, as oppose to a focus of the text. He suggests it may be a function of the intense rise of individualism, coupled with the Left's fear of more Leninist structured movements following the failures of the Bolshevik party in the early 20th century. It was an interesting diagnosis that I would have liked to hear more analysis on.

The start of If We Burn also dedicated a lot of time emphasising where demonstrations as a political tool emerged from. It is fascinating to hear this history, as it can be hard to believe that, what has become an archetypal tool for any movement, is so young. Prior to the invention of photography, and more importantly video, demonstrations simply did not exist as we know them, and so we have less than a hundred years of precedence for what this style of protest can or should do, and in turn many other tools have been forgotten along the way. This couples nicely with another point Bevins makes later in the book, that many movements often gauge success based on the visibility of the protest, and it is commonplace for movements to attempt to copy historical movements without taking into account whether the historical movements being replicated were successful in the first place.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the mass protest decade, street explosions created revolutionary situations, often on accident. But a protest is very poorly equipped to take advantage of a revolutionary situation, and that particular kind of protest is especially bad at it. If you believe that you can forge a better society, if you are willing to run the risk of trying, then you should enter the vacuum yourself. But a diffuse group of individuals who come out to the streets for very different reasons cannot simply take power themselves, at least not as an entire diffuse group of individuals. When someone goes in there and takes power in the name of the masses, you are talking about a type of vanguard, a particular ideological project, and a minority of people who dare to try to represent the rest of the population. In some of the more utopian strains of anti authoritarian thought, the riot is supposed to become the new society. But this has not worked out so far. Perhaps it might someday. But it would probably not work very well in the actually existing global South. Which is surrounded by so many foreign actors that might be sucked very quickly into an apparent power vacuum by the possibility of easy profit and plunder."

Vincent Bevins

[Pilar · Rating 3 out of 5]

El joven periodista estadounidense Vicent Bevins examina con atención diez explosiones de protestas masivas en la segunda década del siglo XXI: en Túnez, Egipto, Baréin, Yemen, Turquía, Brasil, Ucrania, Hong Kong, Corea del Sur y Chile. Curiosamente se deja a España y Grecia fuera porque entiende que estas dos protestas no sacudieron lo suficiente los cimientos de las estructuras políticas de sus países ni generaron ruptura institucional.

En cada país profundiza en su contexto histórico hasta dar con las claves futuras, entrevista a los inductores, a los sociólogos, a gente de la calle, con un ritmo trepidante, propio de película blockbuster. Muy entretenido. A cada tramo una se pregunta, ¿pero para qué? ¿Por qué? ¿Qué falló? Hay que esperar al último capítulo del libro para descubrirlo.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Semi-scathing review incoming.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s crazy that the title of this book is inspired by the hunger games lmao

I love the personal anecdotes in this book about people involved in mass protests, they’re really inspiring. My favourites are about Hossam:

‘Hossam marched toward the center of town because today, he was on the front line. He had no sense of how many people were behind him, and so, when they approached a pedestrian bridge looming above, he ran ahead and scurried up, so he could look back. He immediately burst into tears. It was a sea of people, and he couldn't even see where it began. He began to exclaim to himself, "It is happening, it is happening. It is happening!"… People had called him a clown for believing in revolution, and yet, they were there with him.’

It’s a pretty good analysis of the failures of horizontalism and pre figurative politics. Bevins doesn’t go into much theoretical detail but you learn from reading the history. All the horizontal groups that participate in the mass movements can not cope with any change in circumstance- increase in participation or decrease in participation. They can not make any decisions, they’re not actually democratic. Pre-figuration just flat out never works, it doesn’t have a strategy to overthrow the existing structures in society, and it peters out as people need to go back to work or the movement is crushed by the state.

The lack of organisation ahead of time meant that whatever forces were better organised became the voice of the movements or co-opted them. Sometimes they were far-right, always they were pro-capitalist.

The thing that’s annoying about this book is that Bevins isn’t a revolutionary and he won’t say what his analysis is obviously leading to. The protests were responses to neoliberalism but they lacked the leadership of the organised working class because unions were destroyed uniformly around the world as a part of neoliberalism. The politics of the movements were diffuse and people came to protests as individuals. They weren’t necessarily united by common interests and the only power they held was in mass participation that quickly waned. It’s not just about being organised in the right way, it’s about looking to the force in society that has the power and interest to win a new, better society- the working class.

[Rênas · Rating 3 out of 5]

light read, fast schon wie ein roman. die schlüsse aus den fehlgeschlagenen (massen)protestbewegungen der 2010er jahre sind zwar richtig (horizontalismus als politische form des individualismus des kleinbürgertums & middle class u. nachhaltige politische veränderung braucht organisierung), aber doch dünn & kommen zu kurz

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Freaking love this guy will read any book he writes!!!!

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb achievement. Bevins sets out to document the (disastrous) failure of a decade of mass protest movements. He achieves this with real skill, allowing protagonists to speak for themselves, to formulate their own criticisms drawing from their own experiences.

Bevins is didactic, but instead of moral-ideological preaching, he uses his authorial voice to explain terminology and demystify ideas and events. For the best part of the text, Bevins allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the contrasting theory and practical results of the anarchistic ideas that underpinned these movements.

Then, in the final chapters, he makes his move and articulates the central claim of the book. He pivots from a journalistic to a theoretical mode. After exhaustively documenting the events and consequences of protest movements in over 10 countries, using first hand testimony from activists, organisers, and officials, he offers a theory on what actually happened.

Although delivered with compassion, his conclusions are damning. The youth and student movements of the 2010s were high on their own supply of the anti-hierarchical, horizontalist ideas adopted in response to the collapse of states and parties based on traditional Leninist or Social Democratic forms of organisation. Their utopianism and lack of strategic or programmatic clarity led millions of people into failure; many into prison, torture, exile, and death; opened the path for the far right; and in some cases pushed entire states into complete collapse.

The fetishism of means over the ends created moments of carnivalesque euphoria in the short term, gaping political vacuums in the medium term, and a string of catastrophes in the aftermaths.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx leverages his considerable talents as a journalist and a historian to tell the story of the capture and strangulation of the democratic Second French Republic, and the erection of autocracy in the Second Empire. In telling this story, Marx wrote a kind of instruction manual in political theory - explaining concretely how classes, institutions, events, and individuals interact - for the benefit those who would come after and remake things for the better.

This is the approach Bevin takes here and in his previous book The Jakarta Method. Bevins doesn't tell, he shows. And in the showing, his completely sensible ideas are rendered incontestable.

And what are Bevins' ideas?

- The US is the greatest power on Earth, and it will act secretly and violently to preserve and advance its interests. Events in all other countries are conditioned by this fact.

- Revolutionary situations are created in a crisis, but ultimately carried through by whoever is ready on the ground with the most robust organisation.

- In almost every case, the existing elites (political, economic, military) are better resourced than their opponents, clearer and more unscrupulous in their aims, and in many cases enjoy tacit or explicit foreign backing from the USA.

- Those same elites can and will adopt the language and aesthetics of protest when it suits them, usually long enough to completely confuse and disrupt youthful, idealistic activists for whom symbolic demonstration is at least as important as effecting policy reform or regime change.

- Mass political participation is open to constant interpretation, reinterpretation, and redirection, and outside of a core group of activists (and sometimes within it), participants in mass movements will have contradictory ideas and demands.

- Protest at least partially legitimises existing power by making demands on it.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Organization works...Yes, we have to confront that they have the potential for misuse. But if you refuse to use the tools that work, you are not really building; you are refusing to take responsibility, and you are ceding your power to other people.

Bevins takes us on a global journey, from Tunisia, to Ukraine, to Brazil and beyond, speaking with activists who were on the ground for mass protests and direct action through the 2010s.

I appreciate Bevins's directness and honesty in saying from the start, "I am not a historian." So, while Cold War history inevitably comes up, forays into it are rather brief. (For more on that, his other book The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World is essential reading).

The overall tone and lessons to be drawn from this book are clearly reminiscent of Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn---Bevins sketches the continuities in ideological trajectory between the 60s "New Left" and the post-Cold War disillusionment and grasping for direction, in which a more "horizontalist" approach seemed to garner spurts of enthusiasm.

In short, in perhaps Machiavellian terms: Taking down oppressive structures creates a 'vacuum', but who will fill that vacuum is generally determined by who is most prepared (who has been most effectively organized, or disciplined). A priori reluctance to "seize the day" will backfire.

In Hong Kong:

Only a small minority of Hong Kongers supported independence from the PRC—a much larger number wanted more democracy within China—and only a tiny minority of protesters did things like wave American flags or hold up pictures of the President of the United States.

Tiny minority perhaps, yet

Indeed, there was an actual overlap between the most xenophobic people (racism certainly did exist) and those who pushed for ‘no stage’ the loudest.

In other words, those poised to fill a power vacuum are better served by contenders on the left disavowing such structural aspirations. If you don't 'control the narrative', and you're being encouraged not to, you'll soon see that control in other hands and that much harder to wrestle free.

Philosophically, both Bevins and Losurdo take a position of skepticism towards the (mechanistic) "teleological" thinking that we need to just go with the flow of radical movements---without a plan for after the initial goals are met (beyond letting the dust settle and finding consensus about what's next).

Some poignant words to sum it all up:

One Egyptian revolutionary put it to me this way: ‘In New York or Paris, if you do a horizontal leaderless, and post-ideological uprising, and it doesn’t work out, you just get a media or academic career afterward. Out here in the real world, if a revolution fails, all your friends go to jail or end up dead.

Losurdo would be nodding along, no doubt.

[⭕ slt · Rating 5 out of 5]

تجربه خیزش‌های مردمی در دهه ۲۰۱۰ نشان داد که «پایان جهان» چه دروغ مضحکی بود. در حالی که مردم در صدها شهر در اعتراض به سیاست‌های نئولیبرال و نتایجش در کاهش سطح زندگی و گسترش فقر و اختلاف طبقاتی و ستم جنسی و جنسیتی و نژادی و تعمیق بحران اقلیمی به خیابان آمدند و اما تقریبا در هیچ‌یک نه تنها موفق به ایجاد تغییرات معنی‌دار و مترقی در سازوکار اجتماعی سرزمین‌هایشان نشدند.
بونیس که در کتاب اول خود روایتی هولناک از قتل‌عام کمونیست‌ها و چپ‌گرایان به دست نیروهای راست وابسته به غرب و در همکاری با ایالات متحده ارائه می‌ده در کتاب دومش با همون لحن روزنامه‌نگارانه شخصیت‌هایی رو در درون موج‌های خیزش‌های اعتراضی دهه ۲۰۱۰دنبال می‌کنه تا روایتی دست‌اول از این خیزش‌ها ارائه بده و در نهایت به درکی بهتر برای پاسخ به این سوال برسه که چه شد که هیچ‌کدام از اونها (به جز شیلی تا حدی) موفق نشدند و برعکس راه رو برای به قدرت رسیدن نیروهایی متضاد خود (راست‌گرا و واسبته به غرب یا گروه دیگه‌ای از الیت حاکم) هموار کردند.
در نهایت کتاب که بسیار خوش‌خوان و جذاب نوشته شده، از زبان راویانش (از برزیل تا مصر و هنگ‌کنگ و اکراین و تونس) به یک نتیجه همگرا میشه و اون لزوم داشتن سازمان سیاسی و نظم و تعلق به یک سازمانه. ساختاری لنینیستی برای مبارزه که با سقوط قدرت‌های حاکم امکان تصاحب قدرت رو داشته باشه. مکرر این چیزیه که در جاهای مختلف جهان دیده میشه. جایی که خلا قدرت شکل می‌گیره، اون نیروهایی که ساختار و سازمان سیاسی مشخص دارن، از فرصت برای کسب قدرت استفاده می‌کنن و دل بستن به جنبش‌های افقی و اینترنتی و آنارشیستی که می‌خواهند جهانی باشند که خلق می‌کنند، محکوم به شکسته.

کتاب بسیار خوندنیه با روایت‌هایی تاثیرگذار و آشنا.

[Laika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bevins The Jakarta Method is one of the most influential pieces of history I’ve ever read, imperfect though it is. So I have been excited to get my hands on If We Burn ever since I saw a few quotes from it floating around online. The book is, on the whole, interesting, well-written and worth-reading – but it is no Jakarta Method, and my expectations going into it were elevated (and honestly, unrealistic) enough that I found much of the read an annoying disappointment. Which is a shame because, even with my issues with the thesis and arguments, the book’s subject is one of absolutely immense interest.

The 2010s saw, by all accounts, more mass protests demonstrations and occupations than any previous decade in history, with the spread of the internet, smartphones and (especially) social media allowing massive and near-spontaneous explosions of popular unrest to upend politics around the globe. And yet, with a modicum of distance, we can look back at those upheavals and see how few of them actually accomplished what they ostensibly set out to – how many, in fact, seem to have only made things worse. Bevins was working as a journalist in Brazil during that country’s own part of the global turmoil, and spent years hunting down and interviewing people involved in the other great hotspots, both to construct something like a coherent narrative and to ask why things turned out as they did – and what lessons the next generation of activists and revolutionaries should take from the decade’s failures.

Bevins’ thesis is, to stop beating around the bush, that it is a problem of organization. That social media allowed for the spread of massive, nation-shaking protest movements that far outstripped the capacity of the activists organizing them to direct and focus – and more than that, that the ‘horizontalist’ ideology that emerged out of the American New Left and dominated the internet and activism downstream of its culture made effectively organizing and directing mass movements impossible. And so the decade is the story of missed opportunities, of real groundswells of popular unrest that might have achieved genuine (even revolutionary) change instead fading to nothing, being brutally repressed or having a meaning imposed on them from above, or seeing the meaning usurped by what organized, disciplined and focused political forces with an appetite for change there were waiting to take advantage of a power vacuum.

I will never begrudge an author their petty vendettas, but Bevins is not a subtle author – the framing and narrative made it very clear in each of the 7 (really 3-4 given any actual detail or analysis) case studies the book dwells on how much he sympathized with the movement (and who within it he sympathized with). Also – and on the merits here I do actually pretty much agree with him! - all the polemics against ‘horizontalism’ got so repetitive that I started wanting to argue back out of sheer contrarianism. It’s not as if there aren’t compelling arguments and historical examples for what an excess of discipline and structure does to a movement, but Bevins barely even gestured at them. For a book that talks so much about Leninism in the tactical sense and clearly sympathizes deeply with the ‘old left’ you’d thing at least one tangent about the pathologies of your average modern Trostkytie party could be justified somewhere.

It’s wrong to say that the book does not ground itself historically – it spends a decent amount of time explaining theoretical concepts like ‘repertoires of contention’ and showing how they apply. Which did make the lack of wider perspective increasingly irksome as the book went on.

Which is to say – for a book with all about the radical changes and discontents of revolution in the social media age, the book spends barely time at all on exactly how things worked before it and what exactly changed. This is most annoying when Bevins talks about how horozontalism and social media led to mass protests outpacing any sense of what actually motivated the movement, allowing for meaning to be imposed from beyond and above. As if this wasn’t just how the overwhelming major of mass unrest has ever occurred! As if there was ever a time where revolutionary upheaval occurred on one organization or movement’s timetable and with their voice, where the public really came into things organized around a disciplined corps. For all the talk of Leninism, you would think he would spare a moment for how much of 1917 was precisely different organized political minorities competing to provide the definitive meaning and aspirations to mass unrest that was at base far more about the food supply and the war than any particular constitutional arrangement. Also, the factoid about the 2010s seeing more mass protest than any other decade in history becomes much less impressive when you realize it’s in no way controlled for global population growth.

All of which is really a symptom of this being more a work of journalism than history (I mean this mostly as an insult). Thus, the cases of Brazil, Hong Kong and Ukraine (and to a lesser extent Egypt and Chile) were given extensive and in depth narratives covering each beat of how they unfolded, the major social fissures involves and (as of 2020) how they resolved – whereas Tunisia, Bahrain, Indonesia, Greece, Spain and the USA were treating fairly perfunctorily, if not just as anecdotes for color. This mostly annoys me in the case of Tunisia, which the narrative leaves behind after using it as a spark for the whole decade and keeps hinting darkly about how it turned out without ever actually going back and explaining it.

(The book also really lacks the basic sense that the overwhelmingly majority of revolutions fail, and that one being brutally repressed and leaving things worse off than before is if anything significantly more common that one straightforwardly improving everything. Which – along with the sense that it’s the one that do acomplish anything that require much more explanation – if kind of core to my perspective on these things).

Now, all that complaining done – this isn’t a bad book, it really truly isn’t. The broad narrative of the decade’s upheavals and the interconnections between – along with exactly how they slipped out of the original organizers control, and the sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic role played by mass media – is all really interesting and thought provoking. And the case studies where the book does go into proper detail lay out the chronology of events and who was involved with admirable clarity, and left me far-better informed about the details and eventual results of all of them. This is a frustrating book, but still – I think – one that’s worth reading.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

History is much easier to write decades after the fact. The legacy of Indonesia, and of American meddling in the Third World in the 60s, is all but settled. Which makes Bevins work here, to try to figure out the legacy of protest movements of the 2010s in roughly real time, all the more challenging and all the more impressive that he manages to pull it off.

Protest is the language of the 2010s (the subtitle calls it the “protest decade”), and much of the discussion here. Bevins covers a wide swath of countries (Egypt, Bahrain, Ukraine, Turkey, Brazil, Tunisia, South Korea, Chile Hong Kong, amongst others- the US is briefly touched on but not a primary focus), all united in form of protest, all united in galvanizing the masses far beyond the typical protests, all for the most part united in unsatisfying outcomes. Some were able to overthrow the existing state, only to find opposing forces fill the power vacuum; others were co-opted to empower right wing organizations, or had their message go so broad so as to become meaningless/diluted.

Common to all these is the tool they use (mass protest) and the distrust of hierarchy or organization. Bevins spends a short time tracing this back, to the New Left and to anti-Soviet sentiments discrediting traditional forms of hierarchy, as well as to Dave Graeber and prefigurative living- the only way to build a world that has no hierarchies is to not have any for your social justice organizing. It is a compelling argument in theory, but in practice it led to disaster- organizations striving to reach consensus voting spending hours on minutia, the media’s search for a voice for the protest (which Bevins describes accurately as a media action first and foremost) being left to the non-ideological crowd rather than the organizations responsible for starting the movement in the first place.

A lot of time is spent on the influence of social media, how it influenced the movement and how it was covered. The movements listed all took tactics, imagery, ideas from each other, for better or worse, referencing each other directly, partially for media coverage, partially in inspiration, and partially in a very real display of international solidarity. The influence is not all positive, even if the media’s view of it was unquestioning worship, that technology would spread democracy (where have I heard that before?) and justice to the world- it frequently contributed to the diffuse nature of these events, led to their underlying ideologies being undermined and hijacked, led to the participants being trackable and findable in the immediate aftermath. The inspiration can be good- but also, as he points out, what works in the first world for drawing attention can get you killed in Bahrain or Egypt. These movements should be inspired by each other in ways, but each context demands its own set of tactics and approaches, and the flattening power of social media does not reveal that, leading to very real consequences for those users.

Bevins spends his last chapter reflecting on protest with his interviewees- at one point, he asks one of the Brazilian protestors if they could’ve accomplished their goal through backroom politicking rather than mass action, would they have taken it and the protestor tellingly, despite the aftermath in part leading to Bolsonaro, says no. At the very least, he seeks to define the use of a protest as a tool in the toolkit, as a media action, as a way of grabbing attention, rather than as the main and only recourse and method of enacting change. The book seems to be far more focused on ends based politics, noting the Chilean protestors taking up positions in government (despite being called sellouts or traitors) as a success story of enacting positive change from events such as these. He closes on a haunting question- is it possible that these actions, these moments when the masses of humanity take to the street and rise up, where the participants feel they are making history, connected despite their alienation, as one society fighting for justice- could those moments be just those feelings, dangerous privileged adventurism, a drug as harmful as any other- “If you want the feeling of mass ecstasy, you should go to a music festival instead of encouraging vulnerable young people to go out and get killed,” as he puts it up. Or are they reflective of something real, of something to come, of a world where citizens cocreate their own reality rather than living alienated, distanced, injust lives? Bevins and his interviewees are split- he gives no answer, and that answer is likely for the decades to come to decide.

[Priya Prabhakar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this book after The Jakarta Method - and it didn't disappoint! Bevins is a fantastic storyteller, drawing from his years as a journalist across the world. I found at times that the book was too drawn out in parts and there was disproportionate focus on Brazil, with the ending analysis not long enough for my liking. But, I loved the way he weaved this book through the experiences of many organizers and activists he met along the way in Brazil, Ukraine, Libya, Egypt, Hong Kong, etc. He did a good job at balancing his description of historical conditions with personal memoir, with a good dose of self-awareness as a white, male, American journalist.

I was forced to confront my own Western biases with the deep-dive into mass protest in each of these contexts, for example: understanding the forces that Nazi-fied Ukraine and the contradictions of Western involvement in the Hong Kong protests. I liked that the book was couched with critiques of both historical teleology and horizontalist movements - a good balance that didn't feel condescending or preach-y, especially when talking about the possibility of strategic 'ecologies' in our various tendencies on the left. Even though the conclusions of this book re-affirmed my Leninist tendencies, I still felt challenged and learned a whole lot, it feels shameful to say I didn't know the sheer size/magnitude of so many of these contentions over the past decade!

The last chapter made me deeply emotional: contending with the fact that even though the lack of organization, strategy, and a vanguard might have rendered our current conditions, there is something pre-verbal and embodied about what every person interviewed in this book felt being out in the streets: "It is the most real thing that one can ever feel. It is not an illusion at all; it is a stunning momentary glimpse of the way that life is really supposed to be. It is how we can feel every single day in a world when the artificial distinctions and narrowly self-interested activities melt away. When our society truly is participatory, when we are truly forging history in every moment and acting in love and harmony with fellow human beings, we will be able to feel this way all the time."

[Rhi Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

If We Burn is a fantastic history of the mass protests of the 2010's with a great deal of context and detail given. I really enjoyed the characters he follows through each of the events, giving the reader something narrative to grab on to. His conclusions about the ineffectiveness and self-defeating nature of horizontalist organization are backed up heavily by his analysis, his interviews of those involved, and his own experience as a journalist covering these events. The book gives structure to something I think a lot of us have experienced going out to protest and seeing nothing change much for the better. I absolutely recommend for anyone looking for a better way to affect change in the world.

[Christan Reksa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important journalistic work to learn on why protests and so-called "revolutions" failed to achieve their objectives (or even made the geopolitical situations worse for the society) and why some protests work in the long term through representation and well-planned organizing.

[Halina]

I loved this book. I also got to attend a talk by the author in Islington Mill - the man knows his shit! (predictably).

One of the more interesting bits to me were the ultras and hooligans. Growing up in the UK I knew about hooligans but really didn't appreciate how well organised and political they were - the Turkish ultras were particularly interesting!

In addition to the topic, the prose itself was also very engaging. I didn't suffer reading it (which I usually do with non-fiction).

Highly, highly recommend.

[Milanimal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of international uprisings I'd only overheard at the start of the 2010s and some I hadn't. Fun observations about how different subcultures inform the atmosphere of a protest (are your protestors lawyers, students, punks, football fans, etc). The tone is accessible, even conversational. Editing should have cleaned up word repetition (hammering, repertoire, Lucas "Vegetable" Monteiro). Organization is loosely chronological, drifting between settings and observations as the decade progresses.

By the time the thesis rolls around there's little to say. Media will frame your protest for you, horizontalism is weak at negotiating, the Old Left was actually right, social media isn't freedom, progress isn't inevitable.

Although the casual tone likely condenses a ton of research, Bevins is both overly reluctant to make judgements about his subjects and overly judgemental in his choice of subject. Most of his interviewees are on the left, primarily anarchist, and politically active. Despite the plurality of participants that attended these protests we are confined to the perspective of the vanguard, which I suppose means he's writing for the organizers of the next protest generation.

Bevins comes in and out of the story, mostly where Brazil is concerned. His humility ("I'm just a journalist") seem odd considering he spends a chunk of time talking about himself but not his perspective. I would have been happy to see him take a stronger stance, but with respect to his subjects he felt reluctant to do so.

[Sneaky Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vince really assigned himself a monumental task trying to distill and collate all these events into a unified theory. And I got a bit lost in the sauce when he would get real nitty gritty with the characters of the protests. But he is honest about the difficulty and the noise and how there is no unified theory. This is all thankfully tied up neatly as possible in the end.

I think there’s no good time to write this as we keep accelerating collapse - apparent in the new wars and protests that have started since he wrote this. I think the decade of study here showed that no level of organization or strategy was able to bring anything but sorrow. With the current protests I can see that clear as day - but the answer should always be “so fuckin what let’s keep hittin em.”

Jakarta Method still one of my fav reads of all time that I must say was much more effective than this. It changed me whereas this just sorta entertained me.

Of course I’ll keep buying his books tho.

[Nadav David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this book but struggled with the flow and structure. Bivens dives into 10 examples from the 2010’s of mass uprisings across the world (intentionally shifting focus away from the US and towards the Global South), introducing specific activists/organizers from each place and play-by-play storytelling about each situation. The last two chapters of the book summarize his insights and reflections which I found to be the most meaningful part of the book, and I wish he had been more forthcoming about these takeaways to frame the important stories he was telling. Overall, I think this is an important read for people committed to strengthening our left/radical/progressive social movements both because there’s so much to learn from the inspiring examples and from the questions that he leaves us with about the impacts and shortcomings of horizontal, non hierarchy, digitally organized uprisings of our time.

[Jessica Jin · Rating 4 out of 5]

expanded my references on mass protests, and was grateful to learn more about brazil especially. i like to tell myself that hearing about the consistent messiness of movements everywhere doesn't dispel hope -- it just makes me a more equanimous activist.
story jumped around so much i nearly forgot the core thesis a handful of times and occasionally caught myself thinking "this is a giant pile of anecdotes but what's the point again?" ultimately i do buy the argument that i need to grapple with my instinct towards horizontalism because if we can't be disciplined enough to figure out what our goals are and put forward leaders who are able to hold that message down, we will cede power to opps who will decide what we mean for us.
was tickled at how much american pop culture and the hunger games specifically made it out onto the streets.