As Arab rebels flooded the streets and occupied public squares, the current common account of their amazingly brave rebellions was ironically dictated and narrated from the prism of a non-Arab and non-revolutionary, if not anti-Arab and anti-revolutionary discourse. The rebels, primarily the oppressed, marginalised and the wretched of the Arab homeland, lacking the necessary tools and structures, but, more important, lacking a well-established native discourse to voice their own narrative and plights, were denied any right to narrate. This intervention promises to only tackle one aspect of the ideology of counter-revolution; hijacking the narrative of the Arab revolution. Against what started as a truly ideal confrontation between Western sponsored tyrannical regimes and justice and equality seeking people, the counter-revolution took the most archetypical modernist approach: rebels were silenced, their real social identity and status were concealed, their narrative was hijacked, and by implication the revolutionary enterprise seems now to be reconstituted and repurposed. The counter-revolution did not come only in the form of a Gramscian “war of manoeuvre”, or frontal attacks (as in Suez in the early days of Egypt's January uprising, or at its most vulgar in Bahrain's Pearl Square). As a matter of fact, it is possible to see the former now as a possible smoke screen for a more serious, again Gramscian, “war of positions”. Thus, deconstructing a few hegemonic representations of the Arab uprisings might reveal part of the story of the counter-revolution, as these representations and the account they signify are really important dimensions of the total war launched on the revolution of the Arab people, let alone the fact that these representations can explain little, if anything, about the revolutionary epic we all witnessed — whether in scope or social energy. The term “Arab Spring” (with over 200 million hits on Google alone) together with a plethora of other similar (mis)-characterisations (Facebook revolutions being the most common) are loaded with ideological dispositions and connotations that must be seen, retroactively, to have been formatively informing the hegemonic representations of these uprisings, and by implication constituting the pillars of the ongoing counter-revolutions. Very early on, if not on day one, Western cultural and political categories, colonial and orientalist lingo, and ideological neo-liberal propaganda informed not only the hitherto popular representations associated with the truly awe-inspiring uprisings of the Arab people, but it also seems to have succeeded in even steering some of them while paralysing the progress of others. Any short survey of the mainstream Western press will conclude that a few (Western-) educated Arab college graduates, armed with laptops, Facebook accounts, and an Arabic copy of Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy, managed to topple the most despotic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (for example, Kirkpatrick and Sanger's piece in the New York Times (NYT) on 13 February 2011). Thomas Friedman's NYT 1 March 2011 piece, “This is Just the Start”, goes even to the extent of claiming that Israel was an inspirational factor to Arab rebels. But no account, I think, can outdo the orientalism of the world renowned Middle East and Islam expert Bernard Lewis, whose “Sexual aspect” responded to a question on the common themes of the uprisings in a Jerusalem Post interview on 25 February 2011. One does not need to know anything about the impressive history of the vibrant Arab civil society and its continuous protests to know that terms like “Arab awakening” are mere orientalist constructs that fail the first test of history (according to Egypt's Land Centre for Human Rights, the number of labour protests rose from 222 in 2006 to 756 in 2007 and exceeded 700 in 2009). One does not even need to know that Egypt reached the brink of popular revolution many times in the last 40 years alone (1972, 1979 and 1986), let alone the 1952, 1919, and 1882 revolutions in the last century, to know that the Arabs have more than enough native inspirations (of course Egypt's history mirrors Tunisia's as well as other Arab countries). One does not need to read Tunisia's General Trade Unions' study of Sidi Bouzeid to know that the Facebook account cannot be assimilated with the reality (the Tunisian governorate, where it all began, had a poverty and unemployment rates three times the national rate, and had the lowest level of Internet access in Tunisia, a country known for its severe Internet censorship). It is enough to read one Arabic poem to realise the deeply-rooted revolutionary potential of Arab culture and its longstanding anti-imperial and anti-oppression ideological disposition (I recommend Amal Donqol and Abdel-Rahman Al-Abnoudi). It is enough to read one chapter of the modern history of any Arab country to realise that these hegemonic accounts are devoid of any history (popular resistance in Iraq began in the second week of the US invasion, the news of Palestinian resistance is a daily affair, and the Bahraini's struggle continues since the 1930s). To some extent, however, hijacking the narrative was partly possible due to the hegemony of a formative imperialist epistemology that continues to inform both writing the history of the Arab region and imagining and reporting its current events. Such an outlook, although declining in significance, allowed, on occasion, for illusions and false promises to unjustifiably replace both the root causes of the revolutionary endeavour and its original goals. The “human rights” discourse, initially a successor to former strategies intended to primarily distinguish and separate non-Western realities from their former colonial metropole began to take hold as a key tool of representing the quest of the Arab people. This seemingly elegant account that's highly praised by the West (and parts of the Arab middle class) played a significant role in marginalising the core socio-economic issues underlying the uprisings. A massive body of well-structured and well-financed NGOs had earlier prepared the grounds for this discourse with a conceptual infrastructure promoting illusions of neo-liberal individualism, empowerment, citizenship, development, etc. Absent was any serious temper of verticality, and the socio-economic root and foundation of any true rights, citizenship and empowerment were lacking. These terms, to which most constitutions already pay the usual lip-service, were reduced to mere legal technicalities and therefore rendered an amazing revolution a mere freak of history. We now know, for sure, these false promises are only possible if history was to stand on its head. Among the fatal illusions that became accepted wisdom of the new-old elite is the false and dangerous separation between the domestic and regional — as in separating the causes of sufferings of the Arab people and the question of Palestine. To be sure, while it is true to say that every domestic event is, now, by implication a regional event and vice versa, this is not, and cannot be a mere conceptual miscarriage. It is rather a dangerous political error, to say the least. The Arab uprisings have the potential to reshape the geopolitics of North Africa and the Middle East and shift the balance of power, thus, “leaving Israel as an obsolete outpost of the Cold War”, as Mike Davis wrote in the New Left Review. The Arab uprisings have been regional in scope from day one, promising a new and alternative regional order to the existing and fading neo-liberal order. But highlighting domestic priorities only seems excessively myopic since all domestic and regional concerns are now deeply entwined. But hijacking the narrative, and by implication the revolution itself by way of re-defining its ultimate goals in social justice and equality, was not primarily and solely an external affair — the imperial domination and domestic despotism have always been entwined. To the contrary, many contender segments among the ruling Arab economic and political elite have found their unique chance to settle intra-elite scores (is it not ironic that some new regimes embrace even more daring IMF and World Bank packages despite accusing former despots with blasphemy for even considering more conservative ones). The attitude of the middle class towards the marginalised and the poor, the real stuff of the revolution, was not helpful either, to say the least, and they uncritically and with the least scepticism continued on many occasions to narrate and perceive the world from an imperialist bunker (the Facebook account seems like their real voice). The poor, oppressed and marginalised remained alone. (Was Mohamed Bouazizi really dreaming of liberal democracy and market economy when he set himself on fire? Did he have any early revelations of “Revolution 2.0”?) But, it might still be “too soon to tell” as the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was once quoted commenting on the significance of the 1789 French Revolution to the US president Richard Nixon in 1972. The chaos that continues to dominate the region is good news in some way, despite its off-putting short term outcomes. It signifies a decline in the hegemony of the international system's core hegemonic power, and signifies not only a region, but a world in transition. The writer is associate professor of sociology and international studies, University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
