Talk:Arab Spring

Lord Shang, discussion is great. I haven't been able to elicit any discussion from wee mister Mikalos209 and you haven't offered any reasons to stay with the obviosuly outdated version of this piece. I have made edits to try to fix it. Your turn. Thorvelden (talk)


 * Firstly, read burden of proof. Since you are the one proposing hypotheses it behoves you to find substantiation for them, not me to refute them. This is especially so because a large proportion of your proposed additions is, without further explanation, strictly meaningless. Consider, for example, this addition:


 * In reality the country was reduced to chaos by the rebellion and NATO bombing campaign.


 * What is "chaos"? Clearly we are not talking about an anarchic free-for-all, since there are bodies practising authority in the country. Secondly, why is this "in reality" &mdash; implying a contradiction? If you cause a regime to collapse then obviously there is a "reduction to chaos" in the sense that the established government is overthrown. But so what? The only way this statement can be seen as relevant to judgement-forming is if you adopt the Hobbesian stance that authority is good in and of itself, and without it we are reduced to a "state of nature". And I think that's pretty clearly not the mainstream view on RW.


 * Working backwards, then:


 * As it happens, the Islamists did successfully hijack the movements launched by Arab liberals.


 * Firstly, again, definitions: What does "hijack" mean? What is "Islamist"? How does one hijack a revolution unless the revolution has some kind of predetermined essence which is then overthrown by external forces &mdash; we're not talking about a political organization here, we're talking about a disorganized movement. Who are you to dictate that the movement had a nice liberal essence that conforms to comfortable Western sensibilities? Edward Said must be rolling in his grave: these are both terms that are thrown around by Westerners who want to deny subjectivity and impose their own sensibilities on Arabs. Let's allow them to sort it out for themselves first, shall we, before deciding that this is Iran 2.0.


 * Rather than a democratic rebellion against tyranny, the Arab Spring in Syria has become a Sunni Islamist rebellion financed by Arab monarchies and encouraged by the West against a modern, secular Arab nationalist government.


 * Pretty tedious stuff. The "it started off democratic and then it became Islamist" is just some boring essentialism again. (And are we to assume that if it's "Islamist" then it's no longer "against tyranny" -- one would assume that whether the Syrian state is tyrannical is independent of whether the opponents are read as being liberal democrats.) Any evidence for the last assertion (beyond the buzzwords like "modern" which can't have evidence anyway)?


 * Among the casualties were large numbers of African migrants, whose bodies were dumped in mass graves by the rebels.


 * Fair enough, though in this context this is basically the same extraneous narrative that the Western media imposed on Sudan (do a search for some of Mahmood Mamdani's writings on Sudan for more info).


 * However, the military remained in power and began maneuvering to contain the Sunni Islamist threat from the Muslim Brotherhood. Whoever wins, Egyptian liberals will lose.


 * How about we wait and find out?
 * How about you contribute something to the writing? &mdash; Unsigned, by: Thorvelden / talk / contribs
 * Perhaps I will if I find the time, but pretty clearly having something that is wrong is much worse than having nothing. We don't publish homeopathy articles in medical journal just to "contribute". --Lord Shang (talk) 02:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Overall, this is just textbook orientalism combined with some usual neorealist alarmism (the two go hand in hand with each other anyway). This isn't analyzing events that have taken place as you claim, it's shoehorning them into a predetermined and tediously predictable narrative. --Lord Shang (talk) 19:09, 20 June 2012 (UTC) As an addendum: I find your edit summary about "dashed hopes" rather silly as well because on my own part, I never for a second bought the tidy liberal narrative &mdash; yes, there is an opposition between an idealist (paternalistic) liberal view that assumes everyone is a Western liberal democrat at heart, and the racist-realist view that assumes everyone outside of the West is a menace to Western norms of rationality and can never become democratic, but I and, I hope, a good proportion of the people reading this page, subscribe to neither of those views. --Lord Shang (talk) 19:21, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Thorvelden's rewrite
Mikalos209 and Thorvelden have recently engaged in some kind of edit war. Can you guys please discuss whatever it is the argument is about? 23:12, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
 * My side is adequately written by shang above. -- il' Dictator   Mikal  00:10, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Thorvelden has gone all over the wiki to insert BS into articles confusing democratically elected governments with theocratic dictatorships. I think he is this guy who had "rewritten" the Gaddafi and the Libya articles but got shot down hard by several editors. Revert, ignore and sort out the good stuff. --Rutherford (talk) 00:14, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It is very very unlikely that he/she is that guy. 17:56, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Let's make sure the Arabs in this edit war understand we're not intentionally being racist.

"The Arab Spring, also known as 'Oh my God! The people with towels on their head want to be equal!' and 'Oh, shit! What's going to happen to our oil?', is an ongoing series of mass protests and civil wars in Arab countries driving regime change or at least change in regime leadership that erupted in 2011. As usually with everything that isn't to the liking of conservatives it's bad and all Obama's fault."
 * The quote above is a criticism of Racist Conservatives, we don't agree with it. Proxima Centauri (talk) 19:40, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Who was arguing we were being racist?-- il' Dictator   Mikal  19:44, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * "The Arabs" in this edit war, apparently. [[Image:non.gif]]  20:12, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Seriously saying people have towels on their heads is insulting unless they've just come out of the bathroom. If the Arabs don't understand our culture they may think we're insulting them rather than making fun of Conservatives. Proxima Centauri (talk) 08:39, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * What Arabs. il'  Dictator   Mikal  08:51, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Well Thorvelden is pressing ahead happily with converting this article into "Muslims are literally incapable of democracy :)" regardless of any calls for discussion so I guess this is a lost cause. FWIW I have however rewritten a portion of the introduction. --Lord Shang (talk) 21:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Lord Shang, the accusation of cultural chauvinism is easily leveled. Indeed, it is made so frequently that it has lost much of its rhetorical power.  Question: Are Muslims capable of democracy?  Answer: Yes.  Caveat: With the fascinating exception of India, consolidated liberal democracies are vanishingly rare in countries with high levels of poverty and/or rentier economies.  Perforce, that would make them rare items in the Middle East.  Since you have accused me of something untoward, let me direct this accusation at you: wishful thinking.  While it is OK (I give you permission) to want liberal democracy to spread across the sands (pardon the lyricism) of the Middle East, it is not OK to deceive yourself into perceiving what is not there.  As is true in the natural sciences, doubt is essential in the social sciences.  Thorvelden (talk) 17:20, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thorvelden (talk) September 17, 2012

Libya
I have just edited the Libya section because from the outset it gave the impression that military intervention in Libya was basically a Bush style desire to overthrow a leader that he had a grudge against and it all went horribly wrong just like Iraq. Am I alone in thinking that it was outrageously misleading? Some people who edit these pages seem to think that they just need to be a counterweight to Conservapedia without the need to be truthful.Zara Thustra (talk) 10:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * True, but it also looks like the West also saw it as an opportunity to get rid of a thorn in their side. Sophie  Wilder  11:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Gaddafi tolerated and even seen as an ally and business partner before the revolutions? 11:02, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yes. Sophie  Wilder  11:09, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yah. Here's the bottomline: Obama & Hillary armed and equiped anti-democratic forces to establish democracy, said so as much at the time, and was reported as such at the time. But no one dare speak up and say, "What the fuck?" cause you dare not criticize Obama or Hillary. nobs 06:14, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

This article's a mess
But it should not be totally whitewashed. It's a prime example of bullshit and fake news that was widely followed and believed then compared to what is known now. A teachable moment. nobs 06:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)