Hat tip to modernandmaterialthings for passing this one along — it’s an interesting interrogation of the recent spate of democratic uprisings, which in its examination of resistance against autocracy is highly relevant to my previous post. My only quibble is that the author states that in the coming days, we “might” see what happens when a fully mobilized military brings the hammer down on protestors; the truth is that we have already seen exactly that, in Iran (are our memories really so short?). And the result is that, if enough people die or are tossed in jail, dissent can still be repressed, no matter how highly educated or interconnected the dissenters may be. Amidst the euphoria over successful protests for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt — largely peaceful, helpfully mediated by some new technologies — it’s worth recalling that authoritarianism still knows how to have its day.
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