“We want the downfall of the System!”
That was the message from radicals on the streets of Cairo this week as the
Morsi regime tottered towards today's collapse.
From Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro, from Santiago
to Manama, the
battle against neoliberalism is one and the same.
Nobody expects it to be easily won – there will always be
yet another phoney saviour lined up in the political wings to ensure it’s “business
as usual” in the corridors of power.
But the numbers and the anger on the streets all over the
world in the last few weeks will have had the elite shaking in their boots in
fear of what is to come. People power on this scale is something they can neither
control nor ignore, as Morsi found out to his cost.
In an online statement this week, some “Comrades from Cairo” outlined how the
neoliberal agenda is the common factor among the regimes currently facing
popular uprisings.
They explained: “In Egypt, the Brotherhood only adds a
religious veneer to the process, while the logic of a localized neo-liberalism
crushes the people.
“In Turkey
a strategy of aggressive private-sector growth, likewise translates into
authoritarian rule, the same logic of police brutality as the primary weapon to
oppress opposition and any attempts to envision alternatives.
“In Brazil
a government rooted in a revolutionary legitimacy has proven that its past is
only a mask it wears while it partners with the same capitalist order in
exploiting people and nature alike.
“These recent struggles share in the fight of much older
constant battles of the Kurds and the indigenous peoples of Latin
America. For decades, the Turkish and Brazilian governments have
tried but failed to wipe out these movements’ struggle for life.
“Their resistance to state repression was the precursor to
the new wave of protests that have spread across Turkey
and Brazil.
We see an urgency in recognizing the depth in each other’s struggles and seek
out forms of rebellion to spread into new spaces, neighborhoods and
communities.
“Our struggles share a potential to oppose the global regime
of nation states. In crisis as in prosperity, the state — in Egypt under the
rule of Mubarak, the Military Junta or the Muslim Brotherhood — continues to
dispossess and disenfranchise in order to preserve and expand the wealth and
privilege of those in power.
“None of us are fighting in isolation. We face common
enemies from Bahrain, Brazil and Bosnia,
Chile, Palestine,
Syria, Turkey, Kurdistan,
Tunisia, Sudan, the Western Sahara and Egypt. And the
list goes on.
“Everywhere they call us thugs, vandals, looters and
terrorists. We are fighting more than economic exploitation, naked police
violence or an illegitimate legal system. It is not rights or reformed
citizenship that we fight for.
“We oppose the nation-state as a centralized tool of
repression, that enables a local elite to suck the life out of us and global
powers to retain their dominion over our everyday lives.
“The two work in unison with bullets and broadcasts and
everything in between. We are not advocating to unify or equate our various
battles, but it is the same structure of authority and power that we have to
fight, dismantle, and bring down. Together, our struggle is stronger.
“We want the downfall of the System.”
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