Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Lessons from the struggles in Sudan, Syria, and Palestine

Let’s not forget that state and social movements relation are governed by the political economy of a given period and how confident – and far – could the state go in repression and beyond the daily oppression. We should also differentiate between security states where regimes use all necessary means to survive and the advanced capitalist states where maintaining the status quo means rotation of governments, which have significant resources at their disposal, powerful media and interest groups that marginalise and vilify dissent. That also apply globally where international capital, international institutions and organisations and states work together to support or divert and co-opt this or that social movement when it suits their interests.  ‘ How elites are crushing dissent ’ in Britain or France should be read differently from how regimes in Egypt, Iran or Russia exercise repression. After all, the title of the article does not apply to Britain, Germany, or even to France, where ther

Webinar – The “Arab Spring” Lives On: Uprisings in times of a pandemic Friday 12 June 2020 at 4pm  (CES T, Amsterdam time) . Register here:  https://bit.ly/3h7zrWk Ten years ago, the Arab uprisings were celebrated as world changing events. The emancipatory experience was so contagious that people were inspired all over the world. Occupiers from London to Wall Street and the Indignados were proud to “Walk like an Egyptian”. The revolutionary process that has swept North Africa and West Asia, driven by demands for bread, freedom, dignity and social justice, has seen ups and downs, gains and setbacks, which materialized in a liberal democratic transition in Tunisia and bloody counter-revolutions and imperialist interventions in other countries. This led some pundits to pronounce a death sentence on the so-called “Arab Spring”. A decade on, this protracted revolutionary process is well into the second wave of revolt, triggered by the same features of governance and political e

A good summary "Arab Workers and the Struggle for Democracy" Related The article above lacks a radical appraisal

Can the Arab uprisings move towards a successful revolution?

Return to Revolution

"The border in this sense is a very recent, twentieth century form of racial sovereignty. It is no more inevitable or natural than the existence of concentration camps. The fact, however, that it feels natural, that it has achieved the appearance of 'the way things are', that it seems inevitable, is an indication of how powerful the ideology is." The border as political fantasy

"In almost every national situation where counterrevolution has triumphed, it has been allowed to do so without any hindrance by the democratic West – in fact, in many cases it’s with direct or indirect support from it. One came to realise that it didn’t matter how many times the dynamic proved itself to be, no matter the various contradictions, one of democracy versus tyranny. There was never any true support for democracy from those who pretended to be its bastions and patrons, all while powerful foreign anti-democratic forces, such as Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, mobilised viciously on the side of counterrevolution to crush nascent democracy. In the shadow of the Iraq war,  anti-humanitarian  intervention has come to define the modern era." "The Arab Spring is still alive"

Revolution and Arab Existentialism in the Era of Decolonization

“This is the supposed ‘natural condition’ of mankind, in which everyone is at war with everyone else, much as Thomas Hobbes described in his ‘Leviathan’, during the middle of the seventeenth century. But the state of nature is not in fact a ‘natural’ condition; it is a historical conjuncture”  Notes on Syria and the Coming Global Thanatocracy

"We live in an age that has simultaneously witnessed the breaking up of national and state order, and what appears to be the bolstering of such order. Beyond the domestic confines of revolution and counter-revolution, such as we've witnessed in Egypt, Syria and Bahrain to name but a few, the dynamic of popular revolt against centralised authority and the often-brutal reaction to such challenges is by no means confined to these localities. The Spanish state, an alleged liberal democracy, has reacted to the vote with  vicious violence , including allegations of torture and sexual assault against protesters." Similarity and seperation: Kurdistan to Catalonia

A good analysis, but with a disappointment. Bellamy speaks of the "periphery" and "weak link", but has not touched at all on a major series of recent uprisings which have taken place in "the periphery". The US, Britain, Russia, France with their allies like the Saudi monarchy and the UAE have played a major role in the counter-revolution of aborting or diverting the uprisings (or "revolution") in the Arab countries. The only mention of counterrevolution was half a sentence about the "Islamic State" as a product of geopolitics. Revolution and counterevolution - 1917-2017

"[T]he current blockade is a play by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to fully assert their hegemony over the region and to put Qatar back in its place. But this is not just about Saudi Arabia and the UAE; it fundamentally expresses a general counterrevolutionary process that has been present since the beginning of the uprisings — restoring the status quo of authoritarian neoliberal states that has served the interests of the GCC as a whole (including Qatar) for several decades. All of this must also be seen through the lens of the Gulf’s continued and ever-strengthening alliance with the US and other Western powers." The Qatar crisis

"IS might find itself being pushed back militarily, but its logics are not only still firmly intact, they are being bolstered by the very forces that allegedly seek to destroy them. And it's the logics, beyond videos on internet sites or radical preachers, that are visible for almost everyone in the world to see - to Muslims, they are even more striking. IS is a product of counter-revolution - an active symptom of savage destruction of hope. If the Arab revolutions represented progressive antagonism towards a regional order determined by the brutal denial of basic liberties, IS are fed by the brutal backlash against this." Inetresting to read, but the healine is not

Tunisia "Protests in  Kasserine  last year and in  Kef and Tataouine  last month — driven by socioeconomic marginalization in Tunisia’s long-suffering interior — underscore that no post-revolutionary government has substantially mitigated grievances that provoked Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. Upcoming local elections will gauge the cost of Ennahda’s strategy. The stakes are high, and socioeconomic conditions worsening. The Tunisian government’s ability to deliver on revolutionary promises nationally and locally carries with it the fate of the Arab world’s best democratic experiment." Why do Tunisia's Islamists support an unpopular law

Blood and treasure: Egypt's army See also  what Trump said when he met Al-Sisi

"Disaster Islamism"