It is naive to assume that the Arab people in face of setbacks have retreated from their democratic aspirations.
By Seif Dana
Al-Jazeera - 13 Jan 2014
Words
“are witnesses which often speak louder than documents”, wrote Eric
Hobsbawm in "The Age of Revolution 1789-1848". And in an age of Arab
revolutions (2010- ), words have become effective lethal weapons of
counter-revolutions. No such common word may capture this wisdom of the
brilliant historian these days than the Western category of liberal
democracy preached by neoliberal Arab intellectuals as their people
struggle for uprooting the neo-colonial system of oppression and
the alliance between global capital and Arab economic elite.
The
democracy concept illuminates not only the dynamics of the on-going
social and historical confrontations in the Arab homeland, but also
highlights the failure of this concept, in the non-Western world, to
address either the socio-economic root-causes of the Arab uprisings or
address the critical question of democratising (or transforming the
structure of) the Arab state, and not simply "peacefully" organise the
intra-elite transfer of power.
Read more....
No comments:
Post a Comment