by JULIAN SAMBOMA
Despite the Western mainstream media presenting the 2011 uprisings in Africa’s North as “protests against autocratic regimes”, the author argues that those streets demonstrations were anti-imperialist in nature and were a continuation of similar protests that have been occurring since the late 1960s.
“Economists explain how production takes place in the … relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement that gave them birth.” Marx: The Poverty of Philosophy
The Tunisian Revolt
The “Arab Spring” is a term coined by Western media to refer to the wave of mass protests and uprisings, which rocked several nations in the Middle East and North Africa from late 2010. Others have referred to them as the “Arab Revolutions”.
Tunisia was the first to erupt, on 18 December 2010, followed by Egypt, on 25 January 2011. [[i], [ii]] The governments of both countries, which incidentally flank Libya on the north-west and the east respectively, were toppled within a month of the commencement of the uprisings.
Generally considered to have taken hold in six countries – Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen – the so-called Arab Spring is alleged by sundry academics, commentators and reporters to have been a series of spontaneous, grassroots “revolutions” against authoritarian governments in the region. [[iii]]
Given that the street protests in Libya followed immediately upon the heels of the revolts that toppled the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, these learned people jumped on a bandwagon emblazoned with the legend: “Libya – an outgrowth of Tunisia and Egypt”.
In a perfect example of this, one writer, states: “The 2011 Arab Spring seems to offer new evidence of a domino theory – one event spurring another event. Libyan youth, inspired by the toppling of two long-time dictators in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt in January and February, started peaceful protests to pressure Muammar Gaddafi to leave”. [[iv]]
Not surprisingly, we find the old canard about “peaceful protests” here again. However, what preoccupies us now is this forging (fudging?) of a link between the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, on the one hand, and the Libya protests, on the other. Were the latter actually manifestations of this Arab Spring. In fact, what exactly was this phenomenon called the Arab Spring?
To answer this question we need to conduct a dialectical examination of the Arab Spring and see what conclusions spring up (pun intended!). It follows that the Arab Spring represents Marx’s “chaotic whole”, “the real-concrete” in this investigation into the Arab Spring. We will abstract for the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt; we will call them, respectively, the Tunisian Revolt and the Egyptian Revolt.
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