Tsunami, 20. Not This Way

There have been protests every day since the rapper Pablo Hasel has been imprisoned for speaking his mind. In many major Catalan cities, and even in Madrid, rioters have taken over the protests, trashing businesses, setting trash containers on fire, destroying bank offices, and even attacking journalists. In other words, raising holy hell.

It makes no sense. I agree, the rapper shouldn't have been incarcerated for putting his opinion in his music. But, the government has declared it will change that law, to make sure freedom of speech is duly protected. Going violent won't change anything, and will turn people against them. 

Those creating the violence are the self-declared anti-system groups. Yes, the system is rotten. Yes, it needs to be changed. Yes, it's very difficult because humans are selfish by nature. But destroying everything that is part of it won't get us anywhere. The system can't be changed or destroyed overnight by those methods. But, what is the "system"? 

The system that is being protested with everything from Molotov cocktails, to cobblestones, is the neoliberal free-market that came into being at the beginning of the 1970's, as a reaction to the true liberal policies that pulled most of the western world out of the Great Depression. With the crash of 2008, and the austerity imposed on societies weakened by lack of prospects, people grew dissatisfied with the system that had brought them to that. Trickle down policies didn't work. Globalization as it was being imposed, benefited only the big corporations. 

That is why both far left and far right anti-system political parties came into being. They offered a change; either driving everything back to a period of time when things were good for the "correct" people, or trying to advance the progress that has been beaten back since the time of Reagan and Thatcher. Too many people have seen their expectations diminish in these last years. Too many have lost what little they had saved. Most of those hooded protestors throwing sign posts against store windows are the children of those who have grown embittered at their economic downturns. 

Not all those protesting are necessarily those left behind by the failure of the neoliberal marketplace, of course. That would be generalizing. But many are, and they have been beguiled, as others before them, by messages of utopias. In the wake of the disappearance of life as they knew it with the First World War, minority thinkers, like Bakunin or Lenin, found fertile ground in the discontent and dismay that followed the War. Not only did the Communists win the battle in Russia, but the Fascists in Italy paved the way for other nationalisms in many other countries, including Hungary, Poland, Germany, and Spain. Both extremes tried to put into play their ideologies, promising change for the better to the people they subjugated. Which only led to a greater war and loss of life.

Those rioting in the Catalan cities these days are following in the footsteps of others before them. The neoliberal free-market experiment is a bust. Trickle-down doesn't work, and the rise of the 1% is creating restlessness and anger in those left behind. But we have to be careful. Utopias don't usually work, either. There is a middle ground, that the western world was on fifty years ago. We have to go back to it if we want to progress together. 

Life continues.