[P2P-F] Fwd: Let Fury Have the Hour: Online, Angry Youth Sweep Away Old Structures of Dissent

Thu Jan 6 04:50:43 CET 2011

I hadn't, thanks chris!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: chris at cataspanglish.com <chris at cataspanglish.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:19 AM
Subject: Let Fury Have the Hour: Online, Angry Youth Sweep Away Old
Structures of Dissent
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

Hey Michel,
did you see this?

[image: star]ReadWriteWeb
6 de enero de 2011 00:00
by Curt Hopkins
 Let Fury Have the Hour: Online, Angry Youth Sweep Away Old Structures of
Dissent<http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/readwriteweb/%7E3/b1fGveI43V0/let_fury_have_the_hour_angry_youth_reject_old_stru.php>

[image: gybo.jpg]Two recent groups of cheesed-off kids have used online
tools to circumvent both those who put them down and the creaky old
activists who they believe no less authoritarian. Gaza Youth Breaks
Out<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679?v=info>,
from Palestine, and the *fenqing*, or "angry
youth<http://www.brookings.edu/events/2009/0429_china_youth.aspx>"
movement in China have rejected the whole lot of old farts who they believe
are responsible for stranding them in the present. And they're not being
nice about it.

Gaza Youth are a group from the strip who have taken Facebook by storm,
printing a manifesto that is so uncompromising and so full of rejection not
just for Israeli occupiers but the bullies and schnorrers in their own
communities that reading it is like coming up for air.

*Sponsor*
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[image: gaza.jpg]
GYBO

Here's an excerpt from their manifesto. If you're of a sensitive
disposition, well, you could probably insert your name in there somewhere.

"Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the
youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the
violations of human rights and the indifference of the international
community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and
indifference like the Israeli F16's breaking the wall of sound; scream with
all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that
consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice
between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope,
no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political
struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes;
sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are
taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their
guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people
demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that
separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a
stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade
fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the
indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts
in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing
anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being
kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the
rest of the world."

These aren't witless stone-throwers or kids who just want to rage. "We do
not want to hate," they say, "we do not want to feel all of this feelings,
we do not want to be victims anymore. We want three things. We want to be
free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too
much to ask? "

They're also smart about how they use social media to get their message out.
(*Their *message, not the creaking, self-defeating message of their bankrupt
elders.) Although they also have a blog <http://gazaybo.wordpress.com/>,
their primary online presence is their Facebook
page<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679?v=info>,
which is "liked" by almost 12,000 people so far.

As of today, however, Facebook has blocked
them<http://gazaybo.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/new-facebook-pages-policy-why-we-cant-post/>from
uploading anything more! (Anyone who thinks social media is free by
its
very nature needs to have their head examined.)

"Pls consider supporting us by taking one or more of the following actions:

1) Promoting our manifesto by sharing it on your profile on Facebook
2) Sending an email to your friends asking them to like our page FB
3) Translating the manifesto to your language and sending it to us (we have
it in Arabic, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch,
Danish, Greek, Chinese, Russian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish,
Estonian)
4) Sending the manifesto to journalists in your country
5) Making organizations in your countries that are concerned with the
Palestinian issue and/or youth rights know about our existence
6) Posting links about violation of youth's rights in Gaza on our wall
7) Suggesting us ideas for reaching out to a greater number of people"

[image: chinese students.jpg]
Angry Youth

The Brookings Institution<http://www.brookings.edu/events/2009/0429_china_youth.aspx>describes
this group.

"These young men and women often use the Internet and other channels of
political discourse to publicly express their critical views. Their
hyper-nationalistic and often anti-American sentiments, which first emerged
in the late 1990s and are widely disseminated today, stand in sharp contrast
to a generation of Chinese youth just 20 years ago."

In his keynote<http://www.brookings.edu/%7E/media/Files/events/2009/0429_china_youth/20090429_china_youth.pdf>to
a Brookings conference on this topic, Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Microsoft
Research Asia and founding president of Google China, described them much
more completely. He has reservations about the term "angry" (as in
"enraged") and prefers to highlight their passionate engagement and
impatience; he also credits them with patriotism but disagrees with
characterizing them as "nationalistic."

"(W)hen we talk about angry youth, I think we're talking about post- 80's,
people born after 1980, that they had access to the internet, and that they
often use it to vent their frustrations and that frustration often comes
from either their patriotism or their desire to seek which is righteous,
fair, true, and transparent. They care about social issues. They're
concerned, and they feel they need to be outspoken to have their voices
heard, and they often use the internet to gain knowledge and to have their
voice heard."

What have angry youth done?

   - Descried plagiarism among academics and set up a website to battle it
   - Created a help-and-resource platform to assist people and communities
   crushed by the Chengdu earthquake
   - Created a site to list earthquake donor levels among China's rich
   - Banded together against the high-powered manager of a multinational who
   abused his young secretary and got him fired

These were not all positive, as any anonymous group can do things that no
sensible person would do in the light of day. They set up a website to help
others harass a husband whose wife committed suicide, as well as his lover
and their families. They also promoted the rumor that a chain of foreign
stores, Carrefour<http://www.carrefour.com/cdc/group/our-business/our-stores/>,
supported Tibetan independence. People boycotted and protested and the store
had to shut down countrywide until the furor died down.

[image: Armenia.jpg]
Compare and Contrast

Although China is huge and Palestine small and the *fenqing *less coherent
as a group than GYBO, both share a number of things in common. Although they
love their people and their country, they're fed up with what's been done to
it. They're not just at their wits' end with "the enemy" but with those who
have set themselves up as "the opposition." They're suspicious of authority
in general. They're devoted to the truth: finding it, embracing it and
sharing it, largely online. They're technically literate and impatient with
common wisdom. They're young, energetic and growing.

Anyone who ignores or minimizes these groups does so at their peril. These
kids are going to either rule the world or wind up in a host of unmarked
graves. Anyone who believes in their right "to strive, to seek, to find, and
not to yield" will want to step up and get their backs.

But the members of these groups also have a part to play in ensuring they go
forward in a way that ensures they don't self-destruct. The American
writer Delmore
Schwartz <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1117/> famously said, "in
dreams begin responsibilities." The responsibilities of the youth in these
groups is to carry the reason, empathy and desire for truth forward, even as
they are powered by their anger and impatience, to translate their vision to
those who aren't part of the digital world even as they acknowledge the
social web's help in defining those ideas. (Lord, I'm André
Gide<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_retour_de_l%27enfant_prodigue>over
here.)

These aren't the only groups like this, of course. Nor are Palestine and
China the only countries with such groups. So, if you're a part of one, or
know of one, in another place, speak up in the comments.

*Gaza photo by Free Gaza <http://www.flickr.com/photos/freegaza/> | China
photo by Irish Typepad<http://www.flickr.com/photos/irisheyes/22315565/sizes/l/>|
Armendian photo from Wikimedia Commons | other sources: Barking
Robot<http://www.debaird.net/blendededunet/2011/01/trend-watch-china-angry-youth-movement.html>
*
*Discuss<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/let_fury_have_the_hour_angry_youth_reject_old_stru.php#comments-open>
*

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 Government

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