❊ Will #OccupyWallStreet Succeed? A Lebanese Experience Offers a Cautionary Tale.

A lot of people have been comparing Occupy Wall Street (OWS) to the Arab Spring. On Sunday, Nicholas Kristof wrote:

IT’S fascinating that many Americans intuitively understood the outrage and frustration that drove Egyptians to protest at Tahrir Square, but don’t comprehend similar resentments that drive disgruntled fellow citizens to “occupy Wall Street.”

The idea is that, like in Tunisia and Egypt, activists will organize themselves online through social media and then gather in the real world where they will drive change through a “revolution”. But there’s a better example of an Arab revolution that we can compare to OWS: The Lebanese revolution against sectarianism.

Inspired by the events of Tunisia and Egypt, young Lebanese men and women gathered weekly in increasingly large numbers to demand the “fall of the sectarian regime” in Lebanon. Their demands were fair, I argued back then, but I predicted the movement will lose steam because:

we live in a political system that is more or less representative of the people’s demands. If the people really wanted secularism that much, there will be enough of us to vote in secular representatives into parliament.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, the movement fizzled.

Calling a movement — any movement — a “failure” is wrong. Occupy Wall Street, like the Lebanese revolution against sectarianism, is likely to eventually fizzle out as a street movement. But, like the Lebanese movement, it will affect the public debate, increase awareness of an issue and eventually drive politicians into action (fingers crossed).

The losers will be the misguided souls who are demonstrating for a “revolution” that will transform a stable democracy into whatever utopia they are dreaming of. Those are bound to be disappointed, as in America, like in Lebanon, there is no Ben Ali or Mubarak that the majority of the people are united against.