A review by takecoverbooksptbo
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins

challenging inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Vincent Bevins might be the best journalist-historian working today. Between his outstanding 2021 book The Jakarta Method and this one, he’s laid out a convincing set of events that both confound and elucidate the modern era. If We Burn takes aim at what it calls « the Mass Protest Decade » (the 2010s) and tries to find the reasons why internet-fueled and hypermediated uprisings in far-flung places like Egypt, Brazil, Hong Kong and Tunisia had such varied and often disastrous political effects. Bevins uses first-hand accounts of the events, along with rigorous historical research to look into how reactionary forces were able to co-opt protests that almost universally began as horizontalist, neo-Anarchist demonstrations and movements. If you’re looking for the reason why the mass protests of the 2020s have failed to result in meaningful progressive change, this is your book.