On banning "Arab Spring" from your vocabulary

No one can tell how Arab, Spanish or American you are behind a Guy Fawkes mask.
Photo found on The Examiner.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, you're about to sit through another one of my rants. (It's still not too late to close the tab.)

One of the things that irk me when reading the news (and you must be aware by now that many things irk me) is this easy turn of phrase to summarize just about everything going on in the region for the past two years: the "Arab Spring." Here is my case for why you should stop using this term once and for all.


When protests first arose in Tunisia and Egypt, a lot of the things that people were demonstrating against—high unemployment, dismal life prospects for the younger generation, corruption, a small privileged higher class—were, and still are, issues relevant everywhere. In 2011, we saw Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria... but also Occupy Wall Street, the indignados in Spain and massive protests in the UK. From the very beginning, it was clear that all the above were related because our global capitalist system is broken (or worse, functions exactly as intended) and benefits only a small portion of society. Although it was rarely,if ever,acknowledged by the media, I don't think Occupy Wall Street would have happened if it wasn't for the Tunisian uprisings.

By dubbing this movement the Arab revolutions, we are making a distinction between us and them, them being backward societies thirsting for a taste of our freedom and democracy. We're deliberately turning this into a regional issue, not a global one for which we should all be heading down to the streets. And as the media starts gleefully using their new clever catchphrase, the "Arab/Islamic winter," they are conveying the idea that they tried to be more like us but failed, and implicitly tying this failure to Arabness and Islam. (Interestingly enough, these failures are seen as the demise of the revolutionary process, not a stumbling block on the long road towards democracy—after all, we all know the French revolution transformed France's monarchy into the Fifth Republic overnight!)

The timeline implicit in the "Arab Spring" defines events starting in December 2010/January 2011. With this term, we are redefining the history of "democratic awareness" in the region—conveniently ignoring the 2005 protests in Lebanon, the 2009 demonstrations in Iran, and other popular movements which have existed for years before that. Not to mention that this expression erases those who might not necessarily identify as Arab (Iranians, Kurds, etc...) who fight for their rights in this big and diverse area we call the Middle East.

So not only are the struggles of non-Arabs elided for the sake of a convenient catchphrase, but we never talk about the very real protests taking place constantly in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. There has been a very deliberate distinction made between the demonstrations in Arab countries which weren't necessarily all that friendly to the West to begin with—therefore deemed worthy of media coverage—and protests in the rich Gulf countries the United States and Europe are allied with. I get that this is how the world works, but it exasperates me, and I refuse to use a word that minimizes the scope of a popular movement extending beyond the southern Mediterranean, beyond the past two years, and beyond any racial categorization the term tries to ascribe to it.

With the "Arab Spring," we are saying that only the Arabs needed a revolution, and that their uprisings and subsequent failures all come from the exact same factors, as if all Arab countries were built from the exact same mold, with the exact same problems, to which they react in the exact same way.

Newsflash: there is no Arab hivemind.


(This column makes a compelling case against using the "Arab Spring" if you wish to read someone else's point of view.)