Mаnipulation of Social Protests as the Technology and Content of “Arab Spring”

Abstract

The latest developments in Syria raised the question about the core reasons of the recent political crises in the Middle Eastern countries. Its bibliography is already filled with the image of the civil war as a sectarian conflict within the Syrian multi-confessional society. Tensions of this kind indeed exist, however, the country had been previously avoiding serious conflicts among the different groups of society. Yet, in 2011, they took the most unpleasant form shortly after the rise of the protest movement. Without underestimating the significance of confessional differences in Syria, it seems perfectly clear that they were not the cause of the Syrian crisis. At the same time, the existing differences of a cultural and regional nature fueled the social protest in the first place, and this protest was quickly turned into a military confrontation. Thus, the Syrian social protest – as well as the protests in the other Arab spring countries – was a tool for achieving political gains. The article analyses the reasons for the Syrian conflict, which are compared to the Arab Spring in other countries, most of which have seen regime change. The author concludes that nowadays there has been a growth of importance in the technologies of social protest management. They have become an important factor of all the ‘democratic’ revolutions. Although these revolutions may take different shapes, including sectarian tensions or calls for political and economic reforms, these grievances are not at the core of conflicts. The author believes that a full understanding of the actual motives of the warring parties may help realize what path the Syrian crisis might take in future.