Originally posted by no1marauder
The Western elite spin that this was some kind of Nerd/Geek Rebellion that overthrew a dictatorship is a laugh. The working class were sick of high unemployment, rising food prices and corruption and took to the streets. They managed to do this in 1792 too even without Social Networking.
No doubt the role of social media is exaggerated, although one story goes that a Wikileaks cable detailing said corruption helped stoke the fires. That story rapidly did the rounds via the electronic media (which includes mobile phones. "Looters sick of the family's nepotism filmed themselves on mobile phones destroying the family's expensive cars at one of their villas and riding motorbikes across the manicured laws." [Love that Daily Mail typo]."
As to who took part, the man who set fire to himself was an unemployed student; days after that attempt, "students, teachers, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists, trade unionists, and opposition politicians took to the streets in several cities, including Tunis, to condemn the government's economic policies, its repression of all critics, and a mafia-style corruption that enriches members of the president's family." http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/02/tunisia_s_protest_wave_where_it_comes_from_and_what_it_means_for_ben_ali
That article goes into the economic background in some depth; this bit about the role of trade unions (rwingett, are you there) is worth quoting at length:
The trade unions' role is one of the most striking aspects of the December protests. The government worked very hard, and with great success, to domesticate the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), Tunisia's sole trade union confederation, in the 1990s. More recently, however, activists in some unions have succeeded in taking a more independent and confrontational stance. In 2008 and again in early 2010, union activists organized prolonged protests in the southern Gafsa mining basin. The players and the grievances in those cases resemble what we saw in late December. Education unions, some of the most independent and aggressive within the UGTT, played a critical role in organizing unemployed workers, many with university degrees, who protested the government's failure to provide jobs, its corruption, and its refusal to engage in meaningful dialogue. Human rights organizations, journalists, lawyers, and opposition parties then joined in to criticize the government's restrictions on media coverage of the protests and the arrests and torture of demonstrators. In this way, a broad coalition of civil society organizations has connected bread-and-butter employment grievances with fundamental human rights and rule-of-law concerns. They also pull together constituencies that transcend class and regional distinctions -- unemployed young people in Sidi Bouzid, Menzel Bouzaiene, and Regueb, and lawyers and journalists in Monastir, Sfax, and Tunis.
26 Jan '11 23:15
YouTube
North Africa
Back to Top