The New York Times\u2019 print front page has a photo today of a bunch of scruffy Egyptian youth, sitting around their laptops, that encapsulates for me one puzzle of the Egyptian protests and others like them.\u00a0 These self-consciously hip youngsters, some with Rastafarian-inspired big urban hair, coolly dragging on their cigarettes with a Jimmy-Dean-ian detachment, sporting heavy-rimmed retro black eyeglasses, could easily be planning the next anti-globalization WTO street action if they were in the West.\u00a0 They appear to be the identical demographic that smashes Starbucks stores in Seattle during international trade meetings or that occupies university administration buildings to demand more ethnic studies courses and affirmative action admissions.\u00a0 When such youth voice their overheated moral indignation in the West, my view is: Why should anyone listen to them?\u00a0 They don\u2019t know a thing about the world; they have never had the responsibility of running a business, have only intermittently worked, have no parental duties, and believe themselves to be the first people in the history of the world to feel indignation about poverty or inequality and are all the more proud of themselves for doing so.\u00a0 The Western press loves to glorify such ignorant protesters in the U.S. or Europe, however, because a. it gives them a story, and b. the almost inevitable left-wing slant of youth protests fits nicely with the press\u2019s own pretensions towards \u201cprogressive\u201d enlightenment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So why should we take the youth movement any more seriously when it erupts in repressive or totalitarian regimes?\u00a0 Undoubtedly, youth in Third World or underdeveloped countries are less spoiled than those in the West.\u00a0 They risk more in facing down constitutionally unconstrained authorities\u2014see Tianamen Square.\u00a0 And to their credit, the Egyptian youth do not seem to be advocating violence.\u00a0 I do not know who was behind the looting and destruction of government buildings earlier in the protests.\u00a0 But is the Egyptian youth\u2019s knowledge of injustice any more grounded than the knowledge of the French students protesting an increase in the absurdly low French retirement age?\u00a0 The youth demographic seems right this time, but by coincidence or because of true insight?\u00a0 Obviously, there are other demographics\u2014older adults, professionals\u2014that are out there protesting as well.\u00a0 Without disputing the justice of their cause (though I may add that there may be some slight validity to the idea that the repressiveness of the Egyptian power structure must be balanced against the threat of an Islamic uprising in its stead) we hear little indications every now and then that the silent majority of middle class Egyptians might not be fully on board the protests\u2014but perhaps only because they rightly fear the break-down of law and order.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Was there a youth element to the American revolution?\u00a0 My impression is not.\u00a0 There was, however, to the revolutions of 1848.\u00a0 The Peasant\u2019s Revolt?\u00a0 Anti-slavery protests?\u00a0 Wordsworth loved the French Revolution (rightly?):
\n\u201cBliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
\nBut to be young was very Heaven!”
\nIt would be interesting to classify revolutions and efforts at mass social change by the presence of romantically-inclined youth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because I have become deeply conscious of the fragility of law and order, I am wary of almost all efforts to disrupt it.\u00a0 (Again, I recognize that most of the Egyptian protesters are not calling for the violent overthrow of the regime.)\u00a0 I am frankly no fan of the original Tea Party\u2019s dumping of tea, and find some of the colonists\u2019 rhetoric almost as overblown as that of the current Tea party.\u00a0 But perhaps when the regime that brings you law and order is a corrupt, authoritarian one, there are worse calamities than the breakdown of the rule of law.\u00a0 Perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The New York Times\u2019 print front page has a photo today of a bunch of scruffy Egyptian youth, sitting around their laptops, that encapsulates for me one puzzle of the Egyptian protests and others like them.\u00a0 These self-consciously hip youngsters, … Continue reading