Are any of these protests socialist at all?

[RadioRaheem84]

I have not kept up with the news since the fall of Mubarak but I've heard things here and there about Libya, Bahrain, Morocco and Yemen.

But lately I've felt that a lot of these revolutions are really "Color" revolutions that the US is fully endorsing and in a more cynical pov also probably helping instigate further.

I am not a fan of Gaddafi but I never thought of him as being a Mubarak or Saddam Hussein.

Are any of these revolutions the least bit socialist or have a significant socialist opposition? All I am seeing is that these revolutions are liberal in nature and scope and very pro-US.

The media is dubbing them the "Facebook" revolutions and patting themselves of the back, taking credit for the hard work of workers taking on the dictators.

[Nolan]

They're not pro-US. Only anti-x personality.

[Os Cangaceiros]

god I really fucking hate leftist bullshit like "oh, the US is going to try and use this to their advantage". Well no shit sherlock, the United States and the CIA try to use everything to their advantage, especially events which are destablizing to their friends and enemies. The fatalism of saying, "Oh, such-and-such rotten scumbag who (in the case of Qaddafi) hanged dissident students in city squares was bad and all, but the iPod and Big Mac-loving people of whereverstan don't know what's good for them, and will probably become wholly owned subsidaries of corporations before it's all over!" is just so counter-productive and stupid.


I am not a fan of Gaddafi but I never thought of him as being a Mubarak or Saddam Hussein.

Really? Did Mubarak open fire on the protestors in Tahrir Square with anti-aircraft guns? Did he hire mercenaries that have opened fire on ambulances that have tried to aid wounded civilians?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

They are not explicitly socialist, but they are all supported by local socialist parties as a part of a broader coalition.

Also, whatever his revolutionary pretenses were 40 years ago, Gaddhafi has shown himself to be an evil, odious douchebag, and he needs to quit now before he takes any more lives with him. What kind of sociopath orders fighters to bomb his people or for his supporters to go to the "Dens" of opposition protesters to attack them?

[Jimmie Higgins]

No, these are not socialist. But at this point, frankly who cares... it has put revolution back on the table in a serious way which will allow us to actually win people to revolutionary socialism and radical ideas... and may actually lead to independent working class movements in places like Egypt that could then lead to an actual working-class revolution. Mourning the fact that it isn't a proletarian revolution at this point is like being bummed that your spaceship broke out of the atmosphere for the first time, but didn't travel to the moon!

As for being pro-US... I think that's mostly the US press saying that. There are pro-Wisconsin signs in Egypt and pro-Egypt signs in Wisconsin, but among actual people there isn't any calls for supporting the US government. In fact, people in places like Egypt and Lybia (despite US demonization of that country prior to 9/11) know that the US government is the supplier of the weapons being used against them and that the dictators are getting rich off of deals with Europe and the US.

On top of all this are the wars, US support of Israel, US support of the dictators, and that US embassy vehicles ran over protesters and so on. Now, in Pakistan a CIA agent has been arrested for killing 2 people!

The US will try and co-opt and make the best of this situation, but they are privately going crazy because they can not control the situation and their imperial house of cards is being shaken.

Domestically it shows the lie of the contemporary wars too and I think we will see a new anti-war movement emerge that is more based on solidarity with people in the middle east and a recognition of war being both against the middle east as well as being a "war at home". Because the focal point of the world imperialist order is being shaken just as imperialist rivalries are heating up means that the US will not easily give up and will necessarily need to support more dictators and puppets and more US military involvement in the region... such a course will also cause explosions at home because people will not understand why the US is spending MORE money on war at a time when it's complaining of being broke and trying to cut services and living standards for the working class.

This is a different world comrades, born out of the economic crisis, there's no going back.

[Mather]

But lately I've felt that a lot of these revolutions are really "Color" revolutions that the US is fully endorsing and in a more cynical pov also probably helping instigate further.

Nonsense. What reason would the US have in supporting the overthrow of regimes that it supports and that serve it's interests?

In order to secure the energy reserves of the Middle East for it's own market, the US has always valued "stability" (a word used by all post-WW2 US governments) over any form of democratisation or any level of participation by the people in the political process of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The US just recently (October 2010) agreed to a huge arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth $60 billion, it funds the Egyptian military with $1.5 billion worth of 'aid' every year (second only to Israel) and three years ago agreed to a $2.5 billion arms deal with Morocco, selling 24 F-16 fighter jets. Having dictators and kings in place is not only good for the US in terms of "stability", it is good for US arms exports, which provide vital (especially in a recession) profits for US capitalism. If the Arab people have a greater say in their own affairs, I highly doubt that they will be content with their governments going on massive spending sprees for US weapons. The wave of popular uprisings is changing the political dynamics of the Middle East and North Africa and for the US it is now less certain that they can control events in a way that suits their own interests. It is well known that the US has it's eyes on Iran, the US Fith Fleet, which would be central to any future US attack on Iran, is based in Bahrain. Bahrain is currently a US ally ruled by Sunni monarchy, despite having a majority Shia population. Do you really think the US is going to risk changing the regime in Bahrain and have the possibility of a Shia led government that may not take kindly to any US attack Iran? If anything the US government has shown itself to be completely impotent and is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the events in the Middle East and North Africa, the speeches made by Hillary Clinton and other US government spokespeople seem to show that the US government has no idea on how to deal with this in a coherent manner and there seems to be a complete lack of policy on this issue.

This is completlely the opposite as to how the US dealt with the so called 'colour revolutions' that occured in Eastern Europe and the former USSR in the last decade. Add to that, the 'colour revolutions' of the last decade were directed at Russia, as their aim was to get pro-US regimes in place in order to encircle Russia in order to assure US domination around Russia and to keep Russia "in check". Unlike the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the 'colour revolutions' were staged by political formations that were not really indigenous to their own countries but were set up by outside agencies specifically in order to carry out these 'colour revolutions'. This is not the case in the Midle East and North Africa, where the political formations supporting these protests and popular uprisings are indigenous, some of them decades old, some of them communist/socialist, some of them Islamist, some of them pro-democratic.


I am not a fan of Gaddafi but I never thought of him as being a Mubarak or Saddam Hussein.

Have you been asleep these last few years?

Gaddafi has opened Libya up to every big Western energy corporation that wishes to plunder Libya's oil wealth and has pocketed the money for himself, his parasitic sons and his cronies. Libya has seen a drop in living standards recently and social services, everything from healthcare to social services are being cut back or privatised, despite the massive increase in government revenue from the 'boom' of selling Libya's oil to the West after sanctions were lifted and Libya realinging itself with the West. On TV there have been interviews with executives and spokespeople from the energy corporations and they were the only ones who were still calling on the Libyan people to have "faith" in Gaddafi's regime and to "trust" his regime in trying to bring in "reforms". This speaks for itself and over any faux 'anti-imperialist' waffle that comes out of Gaddafi's mouth.

Since the popular uprising started in Libya, Gaddafi has killed hundreds, in excess of 600 people. This is more than either the death toll in Tunisia or Egypt, despite Libya having a population of only 6 million people and compared to the respective populations of Tunisia (11 million) or Egypt (80 million). Unlike Tunisia or Egypt, Gaddafi used the military from day one of these protests, having soldiers and mercenaries from Africa mowing down people with machine gunfire and using attack helicopters and jet fighters to bomb people out on the streets from the air.

This makes Gaddafi more like Saddam than Mubarak to be frank.

Hopefully though Gaddafi and his bastard sons will end up like Mussolini, strung up and dead.


Are any of these revolutions the least bit socialist or have a significant socialist opposition?

Well by your own admission you have not "kept up with the news since the fall of Mubarak", but yes if you read the many threads you will see that there are many socialist organisations that are participating in these protests, not to mention trade unions and striking workers.

On the wider issue of the compostition of these popular uprisings, it is many different segments and classes that are participants. All having a shared desire to remove corrupt, dictatorial kleptocracies that have kept everyone but their own narrow circle of cronies out of the economic and political order of their own countries.


All I am seeing is that these revolutions are liberal in nature

There are liberal elements in these popular uprisings, but they are neither the sole element nor necessary the largest or most significant.

In Tunisia, the majority of people were normal working class people with no prior political allegiances who had simply had enough of the massive levels of unemployment (most North African countries have unemployment in excess of 20-30%), grinding poverty and inflation. It was the sudden spike in food and fuel prices in Algeria and Tunisia that started all of this last December. The initial causes were economic and the initial protesters were unemployed or poor working class, so this fantasy of it all being soley a middle class liberal phenomenon, is just that, a fantasy. The same applies to Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and Bahrain.


and very pro-US

And this is based on what, exactly?


The media is dubbing them the "Facebook" revolutions and patting themselves of the back, taking credit for the hard work of workers taking on the dictators.

I have written about this very thing on this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/egyptian-father-names-t150440/index.html

My posts deal with this whole 'new media/facebook' line that the bourgeois media in the West have been pushing.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well that was the kind of response I preferred to being so uninformed instead of Explosive Situation's "you're so stupid" post.

[RadioRaheem84]

god I really fucking hate leftist bullshit like "oh, the US is going to try and use this to their advantage". Well no shit sherlock, the United States and the CIA try to use everything to their advantage, especially events which are destablizing to their friends and enemies. The fatalism of saying, "Oh, such-and-such rotten scumbag who (in the case of Qaddafi) hanged dissident students in city squares was bad and all, but the iPod and Big Mac-loving people of whereverstan don't know what's good for them, and will probably become wholly owned subsidaries of corporations before it's all over!" is just so counter-productive and stupid.



Really? Did Mubarak open fire on the protestors in Tahrir Square with anti-aircraft guns? Did he hire mercenaries that have opened fire on ambulances that have tried to aid wounded civilians?

Ok WTF was this post? Saying I never thought him as a Mubarak means I don't know much about Gaddafi to thought of him as such. It didn't mean the bile you just posted about excusing civilian deaths.

Also the concern is that the liberal elements in these revolutions will try to hijack it along with US help. Considering the significant support the media is giving the liberal elements of these movements, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to make the leftist elements look bad and succeed in defaming them. The question was about just how strong the socialist opposition is.

Why are these protests such a touchy issue lately? I am a bit fatalist myself about some of them but that doesn't mean I give up on the workers.

I wish some of you would've been this supportive of the Bolivarian Revolutions but apparently they were not "socialist" enough.

[dernier combat]

None of these protests were organised by socialists. However, the riots and demonstrations obviously focus on class issues. The only thing that I'm wary of at this moment is the nationalistic (and in the case of Libya, monarchistic) symbolism being employed by the protesters.

[punisa]

No, these are not socialist. But at this point, frankly who cares...

We should care.
A non-socialist revolution is far more likely to be hijacked - that's why.

[punisa]

Nonsense. What reason would the US have in supporting the overthrow of regimes that it supports and that serve it's interests?

Didn't you figure out capitalism yet? The point is to always have more and keep at it.
Tito's Yugoslavia was an ally of the US, US companies were in and it was great business.
So why did the Reagan administration secretly plotted to break Yugoslavia apart in whatever way possible?
Because now, once the regime was gone, corporate interests flourished 10 time more then before.

It worries me how many of you quickly became ultra euphoric over this, why not calmly observe the situation from every angle?
I'm not saying that US created these uprisings, but I sure can see very well the model they will enforce which will benefit them tremendously.

Western style parliamentary democracy is much more suited to the west then these autocratic regimes are.
Sure, they backed them up till now. Hell, they even created many of them !
But they have expired and are no longer needed.
It will be much easier to do business once they are gone.

I salute the people willing to change their future for the better, but I doubt they know where they are heading.
Final result? The global revolution is still years, maybe decades away.
What we are seeing now is a process of "leveling" the world so the whole planet ticks as one big clock.

For us, socialists, this is a positive step nevertheless. The same kind of exploitation and frustration will one day be equal in Germany, Libya, US and Argentina.
That will be the time for the final push.

[Jimmie Higgins]

No, these are not socialist. But at this point, frankly who cares... We should care.
A non-socialist revolution is far more likely to be hijacked - that's why.:rolleyes: Not my point. If this were 1918, Egypt (as it is now, just starting to develop independent trade unions etc, low socialist consciousness) would be much less significant. But in present circumstances, this is a watershed with major ramifications for our movements.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

We should care.
A non-socialist revolution is far more likely to be hijacked - that's why.

Of course, many non-socialist revolutions became (were hijacked by?) socialists. And since this is a non-socialist government, there's no harm in it having a non-socialist revolution ... it's not like there's anything to lose. Socialists have more to gain by opposing Gaddhafi than opposing the revolution (not to mention, opposing a revolution after a government has slaughtered perhaps more than 1,000 people now is an inhumane viewpoint)

[Dimmu]

None of these protests were organised by socialists. However, the riots and demonstrations obviously focus on class issues. The only thing that I'm wary of at this moment is the nationalistic (and in the case of Libya, monarchistic) symbolism being employed by the protesters.

I agree. It has all to do with inequality that is plaguing the arab countries.

[The Red Next Door]

The concern by radio is reasonable, but we should wait and see. What will happen. Hopefully, they will turn to marxism.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well made point by Punsia and something that I was trying to get at:

The US administrations dislike autocratic regimes regardless of their methods of beating back radical or reactionary forces that would harm US corporate or political interests. They will back anything that is not religous nationalism or left wing radical mainly out of tactics.

But for the most part what the US and the West love most is surface level republics with some degree of freedom ala Poland or Chile. They consider those nations to be the pinacle of good business trade partners.

The US would toss any dictator over the bridge to bring that type of government into place and they did it in Iraq to boot. They even supported it in Venzuela despite the undemocratic nature of the ousters.

Reports are already coming in that the shadow of Mubarak still lingers with the new power in Egypt. The new power is still conservative with no real representation of women or Coptic Christians or workers. Yet, the US is still cheering this on as if the war is already over and Facebook is to thank.

It seems like the bourgoise in Egypt doesn't seem to mind as much about the new power considering that they're also applauding themselves in the effort to remove Mubarak and claim that it's all over. All this, while workers are still clashing with the new power in the streets.

I am really the most hopeful for Yemen.

[The Hong Se Sun]

I think even nationalism (in the real sense of the word not the hijacked meaning) in Egypt would be progressive as opposed to US puppet-ism

[ZeroNowhere]

I don't think that it matters at all whether a movement is socialist. What is important is whether it may lead to the political power of the proletariat. Revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily.

[punisa]

I think even nationalism (in the real sense of the word not the hijacked meaning) in Egypt would be progressive as opposed to US puppet-ism

What is nationalism in the real sense of the word?
So if following that logic, we should support Gaddafi? Him obviously being very anti-US kinda guy.

I get what you're saying, we are all fed up with the status quo and will embrace any further developments.
But we should start discussing the lack of socialist ideas that constitute these revolutions.

[Dimmu]

What is nationalism in the real sense of the word?
So if following that logic, we should support Gaddafi? Him obviously being very anti-US kinda guy.


I dont get it too.. I personally think about the people of the country and how the poor will make a living, not about how the new leadership will vote in the UN..

[Palestine]

None of these protests were organised by socialists. However, the riots and demonstrations obviously focus on class issues. The only thing that I'm wary of at this moment is the nationalistic (and in the case of Libya, monarchistic) symbolism being employed by the protesters.

The use of the monarchistic flag was for one reason, to tell Gaddafi that 42 years ago even when things were so shitty they were better than your days. They also wanted to get rid of anything that relates to Gaddafi (the current green flag), in addition the flag they wave is the independence flag.

Back to the main subject of this post, these protests, and revolutions are against the political oppression the Arab world has been living in the past century, the regimes being nothing but puppets for the west, the wealth stashing leaders, the missing freedom, to be able to express your opinion freely without having to disappear minutes later as if you never existed. The political agenda that many regimes followed was starve your people, they won't complain against your policies, starving people will not give a damn about politics and will only pursue their food for the day. The people were humiliated by the state security systems, they were attacked, arrested, and even framed for crimes they never did.

These regimes were able to create an opposition free states. In Libya there are no parties and no state bodies and organizations, there's nothing. Many Libyans have no idea about how their non-system works. Nations said the Arabs are dead and won't move against anything, but no it shows us that human nature confirms that humans will revolt, it's just a matter of when. The minute the wall of fear is torn down, the revolution is for the win.

[The Hong Se Sun]

What is nationalism in the real sense of the word?
So if following that logic, we should support Gaddafi? Him obviously being very anti-US kinda guy.

I get what you're saying, we are all fed up with the status quo and will embrace any further developments.
But we should start discussing the lack of socialist ideas that constitute these revolutions.

Sorry to come back to this so late. My point was that in an imperialist dominated nation a left wing (self-determination) nationalism would be progressive at this point.

I think it would be more progressive for Egypt to be a socialist revolution but that is up to the Egyptian people to decide.

And to me nationalism doesn't equal anti-US I don't think Qaddafi gives two shits about his people any more