What if revolution is not what a revolution should look like, what if all the previous revolutions that occurred in the past -including the Arab spring revolution- were missing one crucial component or maybe they all made a common mistake and that is why the aftermath of most these revolutions were not as good as it was before the uprising.
While in other revolutions, things became better, but only later it turned back the way it was, as totalitarian if not more totalitarian than before, this is actually a question that came to my mind many times before, especially when watching the news on the Arab spring revolutions, so why revolutions never seem to make things better only on a short term? What could be wrong? What is this possible “Common Mistake”? If, somehow we could find that common mistake, could it be avoided to make an even better revolution, and maybe the world will finally become a better place?
First, to understand the “perception” of the past revolutions, we must study its history, starting with the most famous example of a revolution, which is, the European revolutions, also known as The Revolution of 1848, these revolutions had one thing in common, they all took place after the renaissance, which means, after the awakening of the people, and most countries in which these revolutions have occurred, were ruled under a monarchical regime in addition to a fundamental religious authority, which makes the situation of the awakened people yet more ruthless and more difficult to support and to accept living under, due the conditions which the authority forced the people to live under, which explains why –in the countries of the Arab Spring revolution- the established order doesn’t seem tolerate nor to trust people that are well informed in the society, because it is clear that when people are informed of their natural rights and that there is no difference between a “Bourgeois” and a “Proletarian”, once they are informed and enlightened out of the darkness in which the brain washing of the regime puts them, they will reclaim their rights, equality and the dignity in life, but there is always the problematic of the religious authority, since ancient history religion always had an authority on people, both mentally and as a power, and so it was used by many politicians to serve for their political goals, because the majority of believers, are actually easy misguide using religion.
To quote from Niccolo Machiavelli “religion is very essential for the government, not for good actions, but to misguide the public”, to demonstrate the power of religion before the renaissance, there was the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France in 1572, under the realm of the king Charles IX, which was believed to be instigated by Charles’s mother Catherine de’ Medici, in which approximately one million of Calvinists Protestants –commonly known as Huguenots- were brutally killed, by the hands of Catholic civilians, but this religious persecution problematic is not only demonstrated in Christianity, but in almost in every religion including non-Abrahamic religions ; like the recent persecution of Copt Christians in both Egypt and Libya which assimilates in various activities but mainly burning churches in Egypt and arresting anyone with a form of Christianity symbolism which includes the Bible or a picture of Jesus Christ or a cross.
The Farhud of Baghdad most commonly known as the Iraqi holocaust in which more than 500 Jews were killed by the Iraqi Muslims in 1941, and the Bosnian genocide of Muslims in 1991 which was committed by the hands of a Serb liberation group, in addition to that, there was a part of history when the majority of the Balkan population converted to Islam to avoid persecution and taxation under the realm of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
What we resolve from these acts, is that tolerance in religion is only possible to a certain extent, so a revolution must always put religion aside and revolutionaries need to be unbiased, but in order to be very tolerant religiously –because people in religious states are usually vulnerable to a “Religious Propaganda” like the “Muslim Hate Jews” or the “Christians Hate Sinners” and “The Jews Are God’s Chosen People”- a solid and open minded education is vital to the matter of question, but unfortunately in most religious states, a “solid and open minded education” is only an illusion, and governments don’t really accept well educated and well informed people that is why most pre-revolutionary countries (Arab Spring) are ranked in the last places in the education index.
Schooling is not really the only way to be open minded, reading –in my own personal opinion- should be considered the primary source of knowledge, because schooling is provided to the people by the government, and this latter would never teach anything revolutionary, so by learning, people develop that feeling of rebellion inside their heads and now to the mistakes of the revolution are easy and could be easily avoided in simple steps.
When the people start developing a rage towards the current unscrupulous system, all of a sudden, everyone has had enough and there is a rage among the people, but creating this rage among people is an easy step, to get people to an agreement is a hard task if not impossible, and that is usually unnoticed, and that is a critical mistake, because without clear objectives and views of the future, the revolution can easily be “stolen” or “bought” per say, like the case in Morocco and Egypt in 2011 which happened with the Islamist Parties.
If the latter doesn’t happen, the rising system after the revolution is as bad if not worse than the one before, so to avoid these problems we must start from the root of the problem, the people divided themselves into different categories and sub categories and different cultures which sometimes resolve to the clash of cultures –or civilizations- such; Jews, Christians, Anarchists, Anarcho-Capitalists, Berbers, Arabs, Hippies, Gothics, Punks –and even our favorite sports team can create clashes between people- … etc. and more, and because of these divisions, people from different background can’t get along easily if it was even possible, and how do we expect from people with different background to let go their differences and make a revolution together, but most importantly, how are we going to convince all these people from different views with the same idea of a revolution, and that is the problem with most past revolutions, they were built with a certain political doctrine or ideology, which not everyone would agree on, people should take a certain view, but a clear view of the future that everyone would agree on, a view that is suitable for everyone who is for the revolution and ready to revolt, because you can’t convince each one your way is right and that your way is better than the others, everyone who wants to revolt must unit.
In the end I want to quote from someone who might have said it better than me, I want to quote from the famous work “The Communist Manifesto” saying: “Proletarians of the world, Unite” and I want to paraphrase it to be more suitable for the context, REVOLUTIONARIES OF THE WORLD, FORGET YOUR DIFFERENCES AND UNITE