Madrid.–
Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a
hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its
history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares
across their countries.
Their
complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and
joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the
heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share
something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and
the democratic political process they preside over.
They
are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the
ballot box.
“Our
parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27,
referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship.
“We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”
Economics
have been one driving force, with growing income inequality, high unemployment
and recession–driven cuts in social spending breeding widespread malaise.
Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with boycotts and strikes that, in
London and Athens, erupted into violence.
But
even in India and Israel, where growth remains robust, protesters say they so
distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established
interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring
about real change.
Young
Israeli organizers repeatedly turned out gigantic crowds insisting that their
political leaders, regardless of party, had been so thoroughly captured by
security concerns, ultra–Orthodox groups and other special interests that
they could no longer respond to the country’s middle class.
In the
world’s largest democracy, Anna Hazare, an activist, starved himself
publicly for 12 days until the Indian Parliament capitulated to some of his
central demands on a proposed anticorruption measure to hold public officials
accountable. “We elect the people’s representatives so they can solve our
problems,” said Sarita Singh, 25, among the thousands who gathered each day
at Ramlila Maidan, where monsoon rains turned the grounds to mud but
protesters waved Indian flags and sang patriotic songs.
“But
that is not actually happening. Corruption is ruling our country.”
Increasingly,
citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional
structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more
participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.
In
that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike
those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime
leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own
political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward
traditional institutions of the elite.
The
critical mass of wiki and mapping tools, video and social networking sites,
the communal news wire of Twitter and the ease of donations afforded by sites
like PayPal makes coalitions of like–minded individuals instantly viable.
“You’re
looking at a generation of 20– and 30–year–olds who are used to
self–organizing,” said Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Center
for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “They believe life can be
more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on the traditional
models of organization, either in the state or the big company. Those were the
dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they aren’t
anymore.”
Yonatan
Levi, 26, called the tent cities that sprang up in Israel “a beautiful
anarchy.” There were leaderless discussion circles like Internet chat rooms,
governed, he said, by “emoticon” hand gestures like crossed forearms to
signal disagreement with the latest speaker, hands held up and wiggling in the
air for agreement — the same hand signs used in public assemblies in Spain.
There were free lessons and food, based on the Internet conviction that
everything should be available without charge.
Someone
had to step in, Mr. Levi said, because “the political system has abandoned
its citizens.”
The
rising disillusionment comes 20 years after what was celebrated as democratic
capitalism’s final victory over communism and dictatorship.
In the
wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, a consensus emerged that
liberal economics combined with democratic institutions represented the only
path forward. That consensus, championed by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in
his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” has been shaken if not
broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises — the Asian financial
collapse of 1997, the Internet bubble that burst in 2000, the subprime crisis
of 2007–8 and the continuing European and American debt crisis — and the
seeming inability of policy makers to deal with them or cushion their people
from the shocks.
Frustrated
voters are not agitating for a dictator to take over. But they say they do not
know where to turn at a time when political choices of the cold war era seem
hollow. “Even when capitalism fell into its worst crisis since the 1920s
there was no viable alternative vision,” said the British left–wing author
Owen Jones.
Protests
in Britain exploded into lawlessness last month. Rampaging youths smashed
store windows and set fires in London and beyond, using communication systems
like BlackBerry Messenger to evade the police. They had savvy and technology,
Mr. Jones said, but lacked a belief that the political system represented
their interests. They also lacked hope.
“The
young people who took part in the riots didn’t feel they had a future to
risk,” he said.
In
Spain, walloped by the developed world’s highest official rate of
unemployment, at 21 percent, many have lost the confidence that politicians of
any party can find a solution. Their demands are vague, but their cry for help
is plaintive and determined. Known as indignados or the outraged, they block
traffic, occupy squares and gather for teach–ins.
Ms.
Solanas, an unemployed online journalist, was part of the core group of
protesters who in May occupied the Puerta del Sol, a public square in Madrid,
the capital, touching off a nationwide protest. That night she and some
friends started the Twitter account @acampadasol, or “Camp Sol,” which now
has nearly 70,000 followers.
While
the Spanish and Israeli demonstrations were peaceful, critics have raised
concerns over the urge to bypass representative institutions. In India, Mr.
Hazare’s crusade to “fast unto death” unless Parliament enacted his
anticorruption law struck some supporters as self–sacrifice. Many opponents
viewed his tactics as undemocratic blackmail.
Hundreds
of thousands of people turned out last month in New Delhi to vent a visceral
outrage at the state of Indian politics. One banner read, “If your blood is
not boiling now, then your blood is not blood!” The campaign by Mr. Hazare,
74, was intended to force Parliament to consider his anticorruption
legislation instead of a weaker alternative put forth by the government.
Parliament
unanimously passed a resolution endorsing central pieces of his proposal, and
lawmakers are expected to approve an anticorruption measure in the next
session. Mr. Hazare’s anticorruption campaign tapped a deep chord with the
public precisely because he was not a politician. Many voters feel that Indian
democracy, and in particular the major parties, the Congress Party and the
Bharatiya Janata Party, have become unresponsive and captive to interest
groups. For almost a year, India’s news media and government auditors have
exposed tawdry government scandals involving billions of dollars in graft.
Many
of the protesters following the man in the white Gandhian cap known as a topi
were young and middle class, fashionably dressed and carrying the newest
smartphones. Ms. Singh was born in a village and is attending a university in
New Delhi. Yet she is anxious about her future and wants to know why her
parents go days without power. “We don’t get electricity for 18 hours a
day,” she said. “This is corruption. Electricity is our basic need. Where
is the money going?”
Responding
to shifts in voter needs is supposed to be democracy’s strength. These
emerging movements, like many in the past, could end up being absorbed by
traditional political parties, just as the Republican Party in the United
States is seeking to benefit from the anti–establishment sentiment of Tea
Party loyalists. Yet purists involved in many of the movements say they intend
to avoid the old political channels.
The
political left, which might seem the natural destination for the nascent
movements now emerging around the globe, is compromised in the eyes of
activists by the neoliberal centrism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The old
left remains wedded to trade unions even as they represent a smaller and
smaller share of the work force. More recently, center–left participation in
bailouts for financial institutions alienated former supporters who say the
money should have gone to people instead of banks.
The
entrenched political players of the post–cold–war old guard are
struggling. In Japan, six prime ministers have stepped down in five years, as
political paralysis deepens. The two major parties in Germany, the Christian
Democrats and the Social Democrats, have seen tremendous declines in
membership as the Greens have made major gains, while Chancellor Angela Merkel
has watched her authority erode over unpopular bailouts.
In
many European countries the disappointment is twofold: in heavily indebted
federal governments pulling back from social spending and in a European Union
viewed as distant and undemocratic. Europeans leaders have dictated harsh
austerity measures in the name of stability for the euro, the region’s
common currency, rubber–stamped by captive and corrupt national politicians,
protesters say.
“The
biggest crisis is a crisis of legitimacy,” Ms. Solanas said. “We don’t
think they are doing anything for us.”
Unlike
struggling Europe, Israel’s economy is a story of unusual success. It has
grown from a sluggish state–dominated system to a market–driven
high–tech powerhouse. But with wealth has come inequality. The protest
organizers say the same small class of people who profited from government
privatizations also dominates the major political parties. The rest of the
country has bowed out of politics.
Mr.
Levi, born on Degania, Israel’s first kibbutz, said the protests were not
acts of anger but of reclamation, of a society hijacked by a class known in
Hebrew as “hon veshilton,” meaning a nexus of money and politics. The rise
of market forces produced a sense of public disengagement, he said, a feeling
that the job of a citizen was limited to occasional trips to the polling
places to vote.
“The
political system has abandoned its citizens,” Mr. Levi said. “We have lost
a sense of responsibility for one another.”
(*) Ethan Bronner contributed
reporting from Tel Aviv, and Jim Yardley from New Delhi.