Purchased with a bunch of other books on organisation and social movements and seeing it recommended quite a lot in my circles.

What is it about

The author starts from the constatation that the 2010s have seen more protests, both in raw number and participation but they had outcomes ranging from nothing to the opposite of what the participants were asking.

The book is built in two parts. The first goes deep into the events, from explaining the emergence of the New Left in the sixties, their strategies and what they learned what worked and what didn’t and then details the main protests of the 2010s.

His position as a journalist allowed him to reach, contact and interview a lot of the actors from these protests and get first hand on the events, context and motivations. And still as a journalist, he had a first seat on how the narrative was created and/or muted.

The second part switches to the second moment of the protests, when they either faltered or were redirected and abused by other political forces toward their own goals.

A few comments

I really liked how the book focuses on protests outside the US (Occupy Wall Street does make an appearance but a very minor one). I would have loved to see Japan’s SEALDs mentioned (which I think would have fit perfectly in the author framework, but in a country inside the US imperium and agains a topic imposed by the imperium), or the huge protests in India or the Gilets Jaunes in France. But even without that, the book is already packed.

Final word

The book is mostly built around the description of the protests, interviews with the actors, during and after the events and the place of Vincent Bevins and other journalists in them. Based on the numerous interviews I listened to while waiting for my book to be delivered, I was expecting a bit more analysis and theory but it is mostly in the last two chapters. But the way it is written was good enough.