Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions
The world is facing a wave of uprisings, protests and revolutions: Arab dictators swept away, public spaces occupied, slum-dwellers in revolt, cyberspace buzzing with utopian dreams. Events we were told were consigned to history—democratic revolt and social revolution—are being lived by millions of people.
In this compelling new book, Paul Mason explores the causes and consequences of this great unrest. From Cairo to Athens, Wall Street and Westminster to Manila, Mason goes in search of the changes in society, technology and human behaviour that have propelled a generation onto the streets in search of social justice. In a narrative that blends historical insight with first-person reportage, Mason shines a light on these new forms of activism, from the vast, agile networks of cyberprotest to the culture wars and tent camps of the #occupy movement. The events, says Mason, reflect the expanding power of the individual and call for new political alternatives to elite rule and global poverty.
Paperback, 244 pages
ISBN: 9781844678518
January 2012
$19.95 / £12.99 / $25.00CAN
Other Editions
Ebook, 256 pages
ISBN: 9781781682456
March 2013
$9.99
ISBN: 9781844670284
March 2013
$16.95 / £9.99 / $18.00CAN
Reviews
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“The writing style of this reportage is compact, urgent, present-tense, declarative, and addictive.”
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“He’s lively, funny and engaging, trading in the energy derived from the thrill and significance of what he’s witnessing.”
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“Superb overview of the global protest movements of 2011.”
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“This book not only reads as an in-depth consideration of global politics today, but offers a personal memoir from a man who has had a ringside seat. We are blessed that the BBC, for all the criticisms, still employs journalists whose logic and unfailing inquisitiveness brings us such analysis.”
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“You will learn something new and challenging on every page of this book.”
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“The mix of wide-ranging reportage and historical analysis is lively and insightful.”
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“A cogent, accessible analysis of the ongoing forces of global upheaval….[a] lively collection of essays and reportage.”
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“Testament to his instincts as a veteran journalist, Mason managed to be everywhere right as things were kicking off—traversing the globe from the Middle East to Europe to America to Asia. [T]he book combines a feel for the breathlessness of events as they unfold with a historian's eye for patterns and precedents...Mason's prose beautifully captures the almost surreal mood that often accompanies mass shifts in consciousness.”
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“These reports are good journalism. One feels as if they are present at the rallies, occupations and riots that Mason describes. The anecdotal tales he provides should remind anyone who participated in any kind of popular resistance in the past decades of the energy and hope one finds and feels at such events. These are the stuff that makes one join such movements. Worthwhile and provocative.”
Blog
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Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere
Two days before International Workers Day and Paul Mason, BBC Journalist and author of Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, asserts a global revoultion is taking place.
Read the article in full here."Two years on from the Arab Spring, I’m clearer about what it was that it inaugurated: it is a revolution. In some ways it parallels the revolutions of before – 1848, 1830, 1789 – and there are also echoes of the Prague spring, the US civil rights movement, the Russian ‘mad summer of 1874’ … but in other ways it is unique. Above all, the relationship between the physical and the mental, the political and the cultural, seems to be inverted. There is a change in consciousness, the intuition that something big is possible, that a great change in the world’s priorities is within people’s grasp."
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New Left Review-issue 80 out now
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"The neoliberal era is over"—Paul Mason multimedia links
Earlier this month, BBC economics editor and author of Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere Paul Mason, took part in two conversations in New York, which are now available online.
On April 11, Mason talked to NYU students about his journalism. A video of the talk—which includes his film about the neo-fascist party España 2000—can be viewed here.
Last week, Mason spoke to American labor journalists Sarah Jaffe and Josh Eidelson about Margaret Thatcher, austerity resistance in Europe, and the end of the neoliberal era, for the second episode of Dissent magazine’s new podcast, Belabored. To listen, click here and to subscribe, search “Belabored” in iTunes.
