Media spectacle, insurrection and the crisis of neoliberalism from the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere!

Abstract

I argue that 2011 witnessed a series of challenges to neoliberalism on a global scale perhaps not seen since the political upheavals of 1968, and that media spectacle provided the form of a series of global insurgences from the North African Arab Uprisings to the Occupy movements. Crises of neoliberalism also generated movements in Italy, Spain, Greece and other European movements that utilised strategies of the Arab Uprisings and provided global media spectacles of popular struggle and insurrection. In fall 2011, Occupy Wall Street adapted these tactics to symbolically attack the citadel of neoliberalism and the Occupy movement provided a democratic response to crises of capitalism and neoliberalism that have resulted in global economic crisis since 2008. The Occupy Wall Street movement in turn generated Occupy movements throughout the world under the slogan of Occupy Everywhere!