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This is a false assumption as it ignores several mechanisms behind the riots themselves. A better conclusion would be "rising food prices make riots easier to
by kposehn 14y ago
This is a false assumption as it ignores several mechanisms behind the riots themselves.
A better conclusion would be "rising food prices make riots easier to incite". The reason for the false assumption is the notion that the Arab Spring was largely leaderless or organic; it was not.
Most of the Arab Spring protests were encouraged and incited by the Muslim Brotherhood. The crippled economies were an excellent motivator for people to take to the streets - they did, after all, not have any work to do.
However, food prices were only a small piece of the puzzle that made the countries ripe for unrest. Many other components helped it along, including our country's naive actions.
- lifeguard 14y agoI think you are confusing "riot inciters" with community leaders.
- yzhengyu 14y agoI would point out that one man's 'riot inciter' is another man's 'community leader'.
- nl 14y agoMost of the Arab Spring protests were encouraged and incited by the Muslim Brotherhood. Err.. citation required? The Arab Spring riots in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt certainly weren't, although the Muslim Brotherhood did become involved in some cases once the protests were going. Only in Jordan did the Muslim Brotherhood do anything that could be classed as "inciting"[1], and that was mostly unsuccessful. The conventional wisdom for the organisation (such as it was) of the Arab Spring protests (especially in Egypt) is that it mostly had origins in the Otpor![2] movement in Serbia, and followed the model used by protesters in the Ukraine and in Georgia[3]. The later domination of the Egyptian government by the Muslim Brotherhood was due to a political miscalculation by the two main moderate groups (basically they lost votes to each other, giving the Muslim Brotherhood party enough votes to make the run-off poll) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Summary_of_conflicts_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Summary_of_conflict... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor! [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/the-revolutionist/308881/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/the-revo...