Protest, what is it good for?

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 581 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

From the Egyptian Revolution to Extinction Rebellion, the 2010s were marked by a global wave of spontaneous and largely structureless mass protests. Despite overwhelming numbers and popular support, most of these movements failed to achieve their aims, and in many cases led to worse conditions. James Butler joins Tom to make sense of the ‘mass protest decade’, sharing historical examples, theoretical approaches and first-hand experiences that help explain the defeats of the 2010s. Find further reading and listen ad free on the episode page: lrb.me/protestdecade Find the Close Readings podcast in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or just search 'Close Readings'. Sign up to the Close Readings subscription to listen to all our series in full: Directly in Apple Podcasts In other podcast apps Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. Today I'm talking to James Butler, one of the founders of Navarra Media,
0:21.6	and now a contributing editor at the LRB. He has a piece in the latest issue of the paper on
0:26.1	protest and populism. It's a review of two books, If We Burn, the Mass Protest Decade and the Missing
0:32.1	Revolution by Vincent Bevin's, and The Populist Moment, the Left after the Great Recession by Anton Yeager and Arthur
0:39.4	Borrello. Hello, James, and thank you very much for talking to me today. It's always a pleasure.
0:44.6	So the cover of this issue of the LRB characterises your piece as protest, what is it good for?
0:51.2	The answer you give to that question isn't absolutely nothing, though one of your
0:54.8	responses does come close to ain't nothing but a heartbreaker. Any sense of a global wave of change,
1:01.2	you write, rising from the crisis of 2008, cresting in the squares of international capitals,
1:06.4	has long since ebbed away. But maybe to begin, you could go back to the more optimistic beginning
1:11.7	of that time and talk us through the when, the where and the why of the period that Vincent
1:17.3	Bevin characterises as the mass protest decade. Yes, it was very striking for me writing this
1:23.3	piece because it meant going back to that feeling that characterised those of us who were politicised
1:28.3	in late 2010, early 2011, when it really did look like there was something finally arising from
1:34.4	the 2008 financial crisis, which had a global dimension, which was going to bring some sort of
1:40.9	change. It was kind of related maybe to new technology. It was also related to
1:46.1	this kind of widespread sense that both political and financial common sense and the elites who
1:53.1	propagated it were, had lost all credibility. To be concrete about that, however, is I think
1:59.4	important. So in the Bevan's book, he reads the
2:03.6	wave of change, or, you know, particularly he starts with the immolation, self-immolation of
2:10.2	Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which is really the kind of starting pistol for the so-called
2:15.8	Arab Spring. And this, you know, eventually gives rise to the departure of starting pistol for the so-called Arab Spring.
	...

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