❊ Are The London Riots Comparable to The Arab Spring ?

Many people over at Twitter and the blogosphere are comparing the London riots to the Arab spring. Naturally, that insulted many online denizens. One person tweets:

the Arab Spring is not senseless violence and stupidity. The London Riots are.

Arabs in particular, who understand the legitimacy of the Arab Spring’s aspirations, found the comparison very off-putting: Here’s a sample tweet:

I dont agree to compare the London riots to the Arab spring, our revolutions didnt include looting of homes, ATMs, shops, etc.

Perhaps, but I’m pretty sure you can find many Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan and Yemeni shopkeepers and home-owners who will disagree. Egypt’s most prestigious museum was looted senselessly during the demonstrations in Cairo. Many accused the Egyptian regime of perpetrating the looting, but I’m pretty sure equally conspiratorial Londoners can claim that the police were the ones setting fires to cars and buildings..

Revolutions are messy things. Only story tellers and historians make them glorious and irreproachable.

The truth is, one can’t deny some of the similarities between the protests in London and the Arab spring. Here’s GigaOm:

there are also some interesting similarities between the riots in London this weekend and the uprisings in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. Both were triggered by the death of a man whom some believed was unfairly targeted by the authorities. In Britain, it was Mark Duggan — a 29-year-old father of four shot dead after being stopped by the police — and in Egypt, it was Khaled Said, a 28-year-old businessman who was pulled from an Idknternet cafe and beaten to death by security forces. Both deaths also led to the creation of Facebook pages that became the focus of a social-media effort that ultimately fueled the protests.

To some people, both the London riots and the Arab spring are manifestations of class struggle:

think London riots are different from the Arab Spring?widening disparity between the rich & the poor will cause all kinds of mayhem.

Maybe, but all the protest events of 2011 (to which we can add Spain’s “Indignados” movement and Israel’s class protests) share a common, central, idea that was brought about by the Arab spring: If enough people are sufficiently enraged, they can make significant change using collective, organized action. The change sought can be good or bad, the methods can be civil (spain) or savage (London) but the fury at a perceived injustice is the same and the tools of communications are the same.

2011 could well turn out to be the new 1968.