ARAP SPRING Labour protests preceded the popular revolution in Egypt, and when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in 2010 to protest his life conditions and the police’s humiliating treatment of him, his message resonated with many. “Bread, freedom, and dignity” – and later “social justice” – became the rallying cry of protestors. However, amidst the systematic marginalization of the Left, the eventual disintegration of the Arab revolutions followed by the domination of Islamism and the return of army generals was foreseeable.
From the beginning, the dominant discourse of the revolutions in the MENA region displayed a fatal deficiency in universal values. Those who manufactured the revolutionary discourse, namely middle class elites who co-opted the revolutions, quickly betrayed their own philosophical poverty and disinterest in de-normalizing the neoliberal myth of the end of history. In spite of the significant role played by labour movements in the revolutions, the paradigm of class, and thus the problem of class society, was completely absent from the revolutionary discourse and vocabulary.
http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/opinion/with-the-left-absent-islamism-took-the-fast-lane_25028