Dissent — Peer-to-peer democracy

Resilient autocrats, networked movements and the digital beachheads of enduring activism

In previous blog posts I argued that both the recent global outbreaks of mass dissent as well as the historical universalism of the triggers of such movements (the “why”) warrant more attention of the technological catalysts (the “how”) of an increasingly accelerating pace of global social and political change. That is, the reasons why people protest, organize and rally to challenge authoritarianism, oppression and injustice have undergone much less change compared to the ways by which they go about staging such acts of rebellion. Considering how the technologies in question can be used for both well-intentioned and nefarious ends – by both individuals or governments – an important question to pose becomes: How effective is the use of networked technologies for challenging oppression in contexts where authoritarianism is deeply rooted and state violence is continuously deployed to silence dissent? In other words, can technologically-savvy social movements play the ‘long game’ against established structures of control and hierarchies of power?

Looking at the Egyptian political arena can yield some insights, but it is too early to be certain of anything seeing how the scene in post-Mubarak Egypt has been one of chaotic and often violent contention since January 2011. The somberness of the national mood is matched by a strong sense of pessimism in academic predictions about the sociopolitical trajectories the country is taking. All indicators seem to evince is that the popular drive for a genuine democratic transformation in Egypt has returned to square one: a reproduction of the authoritarian structures of the past several decades. I argue that this view, while accurate when only considering readily observable givens, is based on notions of contentious politics that are undergoing immense and rapid changes.

Online organizing and citizen innovations

Most of the dismal analyses on Egypt is based on ‘classical’ understandings of power and politics, and as such often seem to miss several subtleties that reveal how resistance to cyclical authoritarianism still thrives in the country, even in the wake of a rapid succession of disappointments. The revolutionary struggle in Egypt is far from dormant. With unrelenting commitment to dispelling the notion of false options Egyptians have been presented with for many decades, networked movements continue to find innovative ways to negotiate and contest power in battlegrounds of political, gender and social rights. Campaigns and groups likeMosireen, HarassMap and Masmou3, among others, mesh online tools with offline organizing to create new breeds of enduring activism, pump new life into the collective drive for change, and create digital ‘beachheads’ of sure-footed resistance against injustice.

Beyond Egypt, many (if not most) of the episodes of large-scale collective action around the world in the past three years demonstrated that it is not beyond reason to say that these ripples of technologically-accelerated change will not only affect how citizens everywhere go about claiming their rights and engaging their governments, but – from a long-term perspective and by consequence – it will also shift how structures of governance, authority and participation are constructed.

A dream hijacked? Persistent authoritarianism vs. an idealistic drive for change.

More than two years after the waves of mass uprisings in the Arab world, and the term ‘Arab Spring’ has lost its glamour in the media. Current social and political indicators in the countries that witnessed the protests are not conducive to optimism, with the common theme being a persistence of authoritarianism, and the post citizen uprisings political arenas largely dominated by new hegemons who appear to be disinterested in push an agenda of genuine, progressive democratic reforms. In Egypt, Islamists who have managed to capture both a parliamentary majority as well as the presidency refuse to acknowledge ideological and social diversities, and continue to dismiss any input from other political entities and voices in the civil society calling for an open, inclusive dialogue on what is essentially a transition period that is shaping the post-Mubarak sociopolitical public sphere in terms of rights, political participation, governance and accountability. © istockphoto Joel Carillet

Can a collective memory of resistance be sustained?

It could be argued that the ideological homogeneity that characterizes a collective resistance during a popular uprising has distinct temporal and physical boundaries. Beyond milestones that define the relative success of confrontational mass dissent (e.g. a dictator being ousted), many divisive factors will naturally force their way to the forefront of the sociopolitical arena. Faced with a common, much more able foe as the strongly entrenched regime, social identities coalesce and ideological divides are diminished temporarily during an act of popular uprising. Following a short-lived revolutionary euphoria, a society in which open political participation and self-expression was heavily stifled for several decades suddenly gains a level of freedom that in turn invokes a sort of collective hyper-awareness of perceived self-identities. Consequently, ideological affiliations became much more pronounced, and binary identification with certain political ideologies or factions became a way for most people to find and assert these identities.

Technology, popular dissent and the ‘new’ public sphere

Attempting to understand the prospects for genuine, desirable democratic transformation in Egypt after the 2011 revolution (as well in other recently manifested contexts of popular dissidence) necessitates an analysis that is not confined to the conventional frameworks of institutional politics and citizen-state relationships. Far-sighted analyses that aim to assess the extent to which grassroots drives for change can endure against continued oppression must have, at their core, a thorough consideration of how societies are making use of the networked world to bring voices previously stifled or unheard to the foreground of traditional politics. Sociopolitical change is a historical inevitability, and the reasons behind why people protest and revolt are globally and historically universal. Nonetheless, the modalities and processes of how such change takes place are undergoing profound changes, largely due to the exponentially advancing technologies shaping how people communicate, share information and create knowledge requisite to bring about the transformations they collectively seek.

Peer-to-peer democracy

Reflections at the intersection of technology, politics and social change

Posts Tagged ‘Dissent’