Status Updates From A Década da Revolução Perdi...

-Arab Spring
-when gov’t shut down telecommunications, protesters in Cairo were still able to spread info bc of dense population and tightly knit communities
-the complexity of protest participation motivations, although the result is the same
-US backed brutal crackdown of leftist uprising in Bahrain, in partnership w/ Saudi Arabia

•Egypt earned huge debt relief in exchange for supporting Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Neoliberal reforms did not magically deliver democratization.
•Neoliberalism & communism—authoritarianism in different flavors
•Egypt protests over the murder of Khalid Said

•when a movement insists no leaders, de facto leaders appear anyway except no fair selection/removal mechanism. Having leaders is crucial to successful revolutions.
•creating social democracy ends in one of two ways: explicit socialism or it’d fall into neoliberalism
•view on progress as means to an end (historical teleology, roots in Christianity) is dangerous—progress needs continuous maintenance

•Old Left—didn’t exist in US by mid century, New Left—ideological, “prefigurative politics”, television influences and not reaction against existing traditions
•星星之火，可以燎原。News spread to another country often inspires local resistance, and revolts happen in response to major int’l events
•”revolutionary opportunities often arise when there are divisions in the ruling class”