How Real Change Happens

Yesterday, in the course of demonstrations in protest of the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, at least 4 people were killed and many more injured.  Today, despite the use of live ammunition and stern warnings against any further demonstrations, there are clashes with police all over the country.

Earlier this month, in Tunisia, a half-dozen people were killed almost every day for more than a week.  Now despite predictions from the experts that Tunisia would not serve as a domino for other repressive regimes to fall in the area, I will predict regime change in Egypt.  In an example of a significant development not being given a great deal of publicity, Mubarak's son reportedly fled the country.

Of course, I could be wrong.  Predicting the future is risky.  Suppose, however, that what I predict does happen. Can we learn anything from these revolutionary outbreaks?  What lesson can we draw?

What the continuing "regime change" events in the Soviet Union (1989), Romania (1990), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and now Tunisia and Egypt have to tell us is that massive popular resistance can change even a repressive government, and quickly.  Could it happen here?

That is, could there be a revolutionary change in the U.S., put in place by riots in the streets.  I think the U.S. would have a military dictatorship before that: that is the direction in which our politics have been moving for some decades.  Even if we are marginal players in the present political arena, progressives should not throw away the advantages we now enjoy, for a much more repressive and dangerous political environment.  

Those massive demonstrations in pre-revolutionary situations are pretty clear -- certainly, they are clear now in Egypt; they were clear in Tunisia -- about what they want; that's never been true in the U.S.  While the Green Party has been quite specific and articulate about its demands, the message falls on a population that is quite unclear about the change that it wants, in large measure due to many decades of Establishment-supporting propaganda from conservative, if not reactionary, news media.

Every regime has its propagandists.  They always do the best they can to sell the populace on the virtues of the established powers.  The conditions for those who fight for progressive change include well-funded opponents; but that has not stopped many other democratic movements from winning widespread support, and it need not stop us.

Let us keep our eyes on the goal.  We cannot win by asking the already-sold-out Democratic Party to do our work for us; we cannot gain widespread support by talking only to one another.  The events of this month, including the likely end of the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, show us that the way forward is through continued clear, understandable, honest agitation for real democratic change.