Tunisian revolt goes on unabated: ‘We do not fear you anymore!’¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter, written in the immediate heat of the January 2011 Tunisian uprising, captures a decisive psychological rupture: fear has changed sides. The core argument is that a spontaneous, mass revolt, rooted in decades of poverty, unemployment, and police-state brutality, has broken the paralysis that once gripped Tunisian society. The author insists that the regime’s escalating violence—twenty protesters killed in a single weekend, live ammunition used in Thala, Kasserine, and Regueb—is not a sign of strength but of panic and weakness. The regime’s response, a mix of empty promises and bullets, is contrasted with the desperation of youth willing to immolate themselves in protest.
The chapter draws on concrete evidence of the uprising’s spread: attacks on government buildings, banks, and RCD party offices; the forced about-turn of the Union Général des Travailleurs de Tunisie (UGTT) leadership, which, under rank-and-file pressure, condemned the government while offering only a “one minute silence” rather than a general strike; and the involvement of students, lawyers, and cyber-activists, including a rapper whose song “President, your people are dead” became an anthem. The author notes the international solidarity of the hacker group Anonymous, which brought down government websites.
Historical context is implicit: the uprising is situated within a longer cycle of struggle in the Arab world, beginning in Egypt years earlier, and is explicitly framed as class struggle against capitalism, local dictators, and imperialist masters in Europe and the US. The chapter polemicises sharply against the “domesticated leadership” of the UGTT, the “His majesty’s” opposition parties (the Progressive Democratic Party and Ettajdid, the former Communist Party), which called only for an end to violence, and the regime’s promises of reform—pointing out that a 15 billion Dinar development plan represented one-fifth the value of a single villa owned by the president’s son-in-law.
The author argues that the movement, though spontaneous and lacking central democratic organisation, is generating a layer of activists reaching new conclusions. Tensions within the UGTT and the student union UGET are highlighted as signs that the dictatorship-friendly leaderships are being challenged from below. The chapter concludes by noting the spread of revolt to Algeria, where price hikes on sugar and salad oil triggered protests rooted in 75 percent youth unemployment and a housing crisis, and insists that Tunisia will not be the same again: the regime has entered its decline, the speed of which depends on mass action.