Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Arab Nationalist Reawakening in Egypt and Beyond

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Arab Nationalist Reawakening in Egypt and Beyond

by Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report.

Americans have for so long pretended that Arab nationalism is dead, their corporate media fail to recognize an Arab nationalist rebellion when it breaks out in front of their noses. Arab nationalism is more dangerous than Islamist politics to U.S. imperial hegemony, because “the path to mass mobilization can be direct and democratic, as evidenced by the spread of the Pan-Arab conflagration from the spark in Tunisia only weeks ago.”