Horizontally Weak

Uprisings, especially in the shape of mass protests, become bandwagons that the media and amoral political forces jump on. While on it, they exhibit unabashed excitability and roll out finger-wagging lectures packed with moral and alarmist platitudes against the 'powers that be.' It is only after the uprisings fail (and most do) that political scientists and commentators begin to produce more realistic studies of the protests.

In October 2023, a book If We Burn, by the American journalist Vincent Bevins began to gather a lot of traction among political/social activists. The thesis of Bevins' book is shaped by his first-hand experiences as a foreign correspondent for various American and British newspapers. In the 2010s, he covered multiple uprisings — especially in the Middle East, Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Tunisia, South Korea and Turkey. A majority of these uprisings were being navigated by leftist and liberal groups.

Bevins confessed that the media did not fully understand the volatile nature of the uprisings. It was only later that Bevins understood the uprisings were bound to fail because most of them repeated the mistakes of some past (failed) uprisings. The biggest mistake, in Bevins' view, was the postmodern nature of the protests. They were largely moulded on 'horizontal' lines or in which there are no decision-making hierarchies, and everyone involved is 'equal.' Many political scientists, too, have claimed the same. But perhaps Bevins' most startling conclusion is that horizontal uprisings end up triggering the opposite of what they actually set out to achieve.

Except the uprisings in South Korea and in Tunisia in the 2010s, which somewhat managed to trigger more fruitful outcomes, the other uprisings that Bevins covered crashed and burned. According to Bevins, the structural holes that these mass protests managed to create were quickly filled by the more vertically organised (right-wing) forces, and by the state itself.

For example, in 2011, mass protests in Egypt succeeded in greatly upsetting the status quo. The uprising forced a dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to resign. But there was no organised party or coalition among the protesters capable of filling the vacuum created by the dictator's departure. Elections were held after his fall. These were won by perhaps the country's most organised party, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). An established Islamist outfit, MB had entered the protests at a much later stage. The protests were mostly propelled by leftist, liberal and 'moderate' groups and individuals. MB was a late entrant.

Uprisings organised along horizontal lines have their roots in the 1960s' student uprisings in the US and Europe

The demands of the protesters included police reforms, an end to the dictatorship, and the introduction of 'actual democracy.' Yet, when democracy was introduced in the vacuum that was created by the protests, the horizontal nature of the protesting groups meant that no single group or even a coalition of groups, was able to come together and fill it. Only MB had the kind of vertical structure needed to organise a focused election campaign and have a cohesive message. The leftist and liberal vote, and most of the moderate votes, were scattered among multiple other parties. This scattering handed the MB a decisive victory.

Yet, MB struggled to fill the vacuum. The party's opponents saw it as an opportunistic outfit that had come to power by 'exploiting' the 'struggle' of groups who had been the most prominent players in the protests. What's more, many such groups had gone out of their way to insist that the protests were about establishing democracy and not an Islamist alternative. But didn't MB come to power through a democratic process? The problem was that, unlike the decaying dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, whose growing unpopularity had united diverse groups of people during the protests, MB was a polarising force due to its overt Islamist programme and history.

In 2013, the MB regime, too, began to face protests, just a year after being elected. It was accused by its opponents of authoring a constitution that gave President Mohammad Morsi' dictatorial powers.' Ironically, the anti-Morsi protests included many groups who were part of the anti-Mubarak protests as well. When the protests turned violent, the country's powerful military establishment toppled the MB regime and declared martial law. In another irony, many........

© The Friday Times