Lizzi’s Reviews > If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution > Status Update

•popularization of social media is shaped by neo-liberalism/libertarian ideals, as well as a new-age individualist Utopianism and the New left.
•social media companies utilize this reputation to profit by showing “anti-systemic, vaguely countercultural quests to save the world”.

•the “Tahrir model” inspired protests in Spain and Greece but ultimately did not lead to collapse of the government, because their institutions were stable enough and life was easy enough, compared to the global south where more livelihoods are on the line.
•”Unless society actually ground to a halt, and the reproduction of the economic system became impossible, the institutions could survive”

-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

•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”