What, Exactly, Is Kicking Off Everywhere, Whether in Venezuela, the Ukraine, or Thailand?

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Kicking Off Everywhere is drawn from an interesting book by Paul Mason, Why Its Still Kicking Off Everywhere. He summarizes his thesis here (2013; reinforced here):

What is underpinning the unrest that has swept the globe? In reality its reducible to three factors. Firstly, the neoliberal economic model has collapsed, and this has then been compounded by persistent attempts to go on making neoliberalism work: to ram the square peg into the round hole, thereby turning a slump into what looks like being a ten year global depression. Secondly there has been a revolution in technology that has made horizontal networks the default mode of activism and protest; this has destroyed the traditional means of disseminating ideology that persisted through two hundred years of industrial capitalism, and has made social media the irreversible norm. Thirdly, there has been a change in human consciousness: the emergence of what Manuel Castells calls the networked individual an expansion of the space and power of individual human beings and a change in the way they think; a change in the rate of change of ideas; an expansion of available knowledge; and a massive, almost unrecordable, revolution in culture.

What we are seeing is not the Arab Spring, the Russian Spring, the Maple Spring [Quebec's Printemps rable], Occupy, the indignados. Were seeing the Human Spring.

Perhaps. Although we might consider firstly that the the 0.01% is doing quite well under a collapsing neo-liberalism, thank you very much; secondly that social media can be used by bad guys as well as good; and thirdly that a change in the way they think is just that: Change, much as speed is only speed, and not velocity. We might remember, also, that oligarchs and heads of state are Human, all too human; as are fascists.

So, in this post, I want to gently interrogate Masons theses, by using the following Real News Network interview as a forcing device; Im going to take the entire transcript and interweave other examples of unrest with it, along with commentary. The RNN interview also has the advantage of covering Venezuela in some detail, which our famously free press is not doing, and so is useful for that purpose alone, besides being an armature for discussion. And, readers, I hope youll chime in with additions, corrections, and refinements; Ive blogged a lot on unrest, ever since the Tahrir Square, but that, and an appropriate level of cynicism realism, are my only qualifications!

Paul Jay of the Real News Network interviews Miguel Tinker-Salas, professor of History and Latin American studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and Alexander Main of CEPR:

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. Im Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.

Both pro- and anti-government forces are rallying in Venezuela today ahead of a peace conference called for by Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro.

Now joining us to discuss this are two guests.

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What, Exactly, Is Kicking Off Everywhere, Whether in Venezuela, the Ukraine, or Thailand?