Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

by Paul Mason

Overview

Originally published in 2012 to wide acclaim, this updated edition, Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere, includes coverage of the most recent events in the wave of revolt and revolution sweeping the planet—riots in Athens, student occupations in the UK, Quebec and Moscow, the emergence of the Occupy Movement and the tumult of the Arab Spring. Economic crisis, social networking and a new political consciousness have come together to ignite a new generation of radicals.

BBC journalist and author Paul Mason combines the anecdotes gleaned through first-hand reportage with political, economic and historical analysis to tell the story of today’s networked revolution. Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere not only addresses contemporary struggles, it provides insights into the future of global revolt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844670284
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	02/12/2013
Edition description:	Revised and updated
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Paul Mason is the economics editor of the BBC’s flagship current affairs program Newsnight and appears frequently on BBC World News America. He has covered globalization and social justice stories from locations aroundthe world, including Latin America, Africa and China. His book Live Working,Die Fighting was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 'Now There Is Freedom': Why Egypt's Revolution Is Not Over 5

2 Nobody Saw It Coming: How the World's Collective Imagination Failed 25

3 'Trust Is Explosive': Britain's Youth Rebel Against Austerity 41

4 So, Why Did It Kick Off? The Social Roots of the New Unrest 65

5 Greece: The Anomic State? From Austerity to Social Breakdown 87

6 'Error de Sistema': Economic Causes of the Present Unrest 105

7 'I Tweet in My Dreams': The Rise of the Networked Individual 127

8 In the Tracks of Tom Joad: A Journey through Jobless America 153

9 1848 Redux: What We Can Learn from the Last Global Wave 171

10 'We Will Barricade': Slum Dwellers versus the Super-rich 193

11 Spain Redux: Dispatches from Utopia 213

12 Developments in Greece: Love or Nothing 229

13 Russia: 'Putin Got Scared'-From the Football Riots to Pussy Riot 241

14 The Twenty Reasons, Revisited 261

Acknowledgements 297

Notes 299

Index 311

What People are Saying About This

George Eaton

Mason has emerged as possibly the most engaged mainstream journalist of our age.

Ian Birrell

Concise global analysis with sympathetic news from the frontline, revealing angry and scared people staring into a bleak future amid the wreckage of shattered certainties.

Editorial Reviews

A wonderful piece of journalism that tries to draw links between the Arab Spring, the Syriza movement in Greece, the Podemos movement in Spain, Occupy.”
—Paul Greengrass, director of Jason Bourne

“The mix of wide-ranging reportage and historical analysis is lively and insightful.”
—Claire Allfree, Metro

“The writing of this reportage is compact, urgent, present-tense, declarative, and addictive.”
—Andy Beckett, Guardian

“Mason has had a ringside seat to some of the biggest news events of 2011. He has listened to the protestors in Tahrir Square. He followed Greek workers marching through Athens. He has travelled through America, watched first hand the collapse of blue-collar employment and the death of the dream of home ownership.”
—Guardian

“He’s lively, funny and engaging, trading in the energy derived from the thrill and significance of what he’s witnessing.
”—Phil Harrison, Time Out

“A cogent, accessible analysis of the ongoing forces of global upheaval.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This book not only reads as an in-depth consideration of global politics today, but offers a personal memoir from a man who has had a ringside seat. We are blessed that the BBC, for all the criticisms, still employs journalists whose logic and unfailing inquisitiveness brings us such analysis.”
—Dan Carrier, Camden New Journal

“You will learn something new and challenging on every page of this book.”
—Kenny Farquharson, Scotland on Sunday

“Mason has emerged as possibly the most engaged mainstream journalist of our age.”
—George Eaton, New Statesman

“Concise global analysis with sympathetic news from the frontline, revealing angry and scared people staring into a bleak future amid the wreckage of shattered certainties.”
—Ian Birrell, Observer

“Superb overview of the global protest movements of 2011.”
—New Internationalist

“Testament to his instincts as a veteran journalist, Mason managed to be everywhere right as things were kicking off—traversing the globe from the Middle East to Europe to America to Asia. [T]he book combines a feel for the breathlessness of events as they unfold with a historian’s eye for patterns and precedents ... Mason’s prose beautifully captures the almost surreal mood that often accompanies mass shifts in consciousness.”
—Leela Yellesetty, Socialist Worker

“An accessible insight into how the world is swiftly changing and what the implications are for women, politicians and business.”
—Daily Mail

“These reports are good journalism. One feels as if they are present at the rallies, occupations and riots that Mason describes. The anecdotal tales he provides should remind anyone who participated in any kind of popular resistance in the past decades of the energy and hope one finds and feels at such events. These are the stuff that makes one join such movements. Worthwhile and provocative.”
—Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch

“Paul Mason’s enthusiasm and curiosity are infectious. Adapting a rich vein of leftwing revolutionary thought for the wired generation, Mason argues passionately that the old rules have been broken.”
—John Kampfner, The Observer

From the Publisher

The writing of this reportage is compact, urgent, present-tense, declarative, and addictive.

Andy Beckett - Guardian

This book not only reads as an in-depth consideration of global politics today, but offers a personal memoir from a man who has had a ringside seat.

Dan Carrier - Camden New Journal

Mason has had a ringside seat to some of the biggest news events of 2011. He has listened to the protestors in Tahrir Square. He followed Greek workers marching through Athens. He has travelled through America, watched first hand the collapse of blue-collar employment and the death of the dream of home ownership.

Guardian

You will learn something new and challenging on every page of this book.

Kenny Farquharson - Scotland on Sunday

Lively, funny and engaging, trading in the energy derived from the thrill and significance of what he’s witnessing.

Phil Harrison - Time Out

Concise global analysis with sympathetic news from the frontline, revealing angry and scared people staring into a bleak future amid the wreckage of shattered certainties.

Ian Birrell

Mason has emerged as possibly the most engaged mainstream journalist of our age.

George Eaton

This book not only reads as an in-depth consideration of global politics today, but offers a personal memoir from a man who has had a ringside seat.

”— Dan Carrier

Camden New Journal

You will learn something new and challenging on every page of this book.

”— Kenny Farquharson

Scotland on Sunday

Lively, funny and engaging, trading in the energy derived from the thrill and significance of what he’s witnessing.”— Phil Harrison

Time Out

The mix of wide-ranging reportage and historical analysis is lively and insightful.

— Claire Allfree

Metro

The mix of wide-ranging reportage and historical analysis is lively and insightful.

Claire Allfree - Metro

An astute early analysis of the revolutionary events of 2011 by an accomplished British journalist. In Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed (2009), Mason, economics editor of BBC's Newsnight, tracked the ramifications of Lehman Brothers' collapse, spelling the failure of globalization, which in turn prompted worldwide job losses, lowering of wages, elevation of food prices, bursting of the credit bubble and rise of the disgruntled "networked individual." In this lively collection of essays and reportage expanded from his blog, Mason looks at the recent succession of public protests, including the early student outbreaks in Athens, Gaza, Tehran and UC-Santa Cruz, which set the template for last year's Arab Spring, and how they all point toward the end of "capitalist realism." Incredibly, writes the author, the failure by everyone to predict the revolutionary groundswell from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria was the result of a "self-deluding" narrative the West has long entertained about the Arab world and which Mason, with a nod to Edward Said, calls a fatal "disorientation." The complacency bred by the global corporate colossus was shaken in the economic downturn, and young people especially, rendered impotent from unemployment, poverty and disenfranchisement, found a sense of liberation in protests and occupations. Using social media, the protestors discovered a new power in "guerrilla newsgathering." Drawing on observers as diverse as Marx and Glenn Beck, and pertinent historical analogies such as the Revolution of 1848, Mason looks at root economic causes of anomie and class struggle, which are creating "new forms of human behavior." And while previous protest movements often ended in defeat, Mason believes that the combination of today's technology and numbers just might prevail. A cogent, accessible analysis of the ongoing forces of global upheaval.

Kirkus Reviews