SHE WAS LEFT ALONE IN THE HOUSE WHILE SHE WAS YET A KID AND THE HOUSE CAUGHT FIRE DUE TO A GAS EXPLOSION. SHE'S SURVIVED IT. IRRESPECTIVE OF THIS, SHE'S STILL GRATEFUL TO BE COUNTED AMONG THE LIVING

 She was left alone in the house while she was yet a kid and the house caught fire due to a gas explosion. She's survived it. Irrespective of this, she's still grateful to be counted among the living.

The 2010s were a decade of revolt. From Athens to Atlanta, Santiago to Seoul, a global wave of protest brought masses of people into confrontation with the status quo, demanding an end to neoliberalism, racism, climate change, and more.

Yet despite this upswell of grassroots political activity, little lasting, positive change followed. What sparked the past decade of mass protest? Why didn’t it result in political transformation? 

Vincent Bevins, author of If We Burn, joins The Chris Hedges Report for a retrospective on the decade that set the world on fire, and how to adapt its lessons for the challenges ahead.

There was a decade of popular uprisings from 2010 into the global pandemic in 2020. These uprisings shook the foundations of the global order.

They denounced corporate domination, austerity cuts, and demanded economic justice and civil rights.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the execution of George Floyd in 2020 are cases in point.

There were also popular eruptions in Greece, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Chile, and during South Korea’s Candlelight Revolution.

Discredited politicians were driven from office in Greece, Spain, Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Chile, and Tunisia.

Reform, or at least the promise of it, dominated public discourse. It seemed to herald a new era. Then the backlash, the aspirations of the popular movements were crushed.

State control and social inequality expanded. There was no significant change. In most cases, things got worse. The far-right emerged triumphant.

What happened? How did a decade of mass protests that seemed to herald democratic openness, an end to state repression, a weakening of the domination of global corporations and financial institutions, and an era of freedom sputter to an ignominious failure? What went wrong?

How did the hated bankers and politicians maintain or regain control?

What are the effective tools to rid ourselves of corporate domination? Joining me to discuss the failure of these popular movements and the resurgence of the right-wing is Vincent Bevins, former foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and the author of If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and The Missing Revolution.

I have to say, I was far more optimistic. I spent a lot of time in Zuccotti Park, but you’re right, it completely…

all of the advances that we thought we had made have been, at best, erased and often rolled back. But let’s go back to, as you do in the book, where we were in that moment in history and what happened.