IN THE DECADE FROM 2010 TO 2020, humanity witnessed an explosion of mass protests that seemed to herald profound changes. These protests started in Tunisia and erupted across the Arab world, before huge demonstrations also rocked countries like Turkey, Ukraine and Hong Kong. By the end of the decade, protests were roiling Sudan, Iraq, Algeria, Australia, France, Indonesia, much of Latin America, India, Lebanon and Haiti. During these 10 years, more people took part in street demonstrations than at any other point in history.
Many of these protests were experienced as a euphoric victory by their participants and met with optimism in the international press. But years later, after most foreign reporters have gone, we can now see how the uprisings preceded – if not necessarily caused – outcomes that were very different from the goals of the protesters. Nowhere did things turn out as planned. In many cases, things got much worse.
Take Brazil. On 13 June 2013, I was standing on a street in São Paulo reporting on a growing protest movement, when the military police, without warning, began shooting at the crowd. Teargas, shock bombs, maybe rubber bullets – it was hard to know in the moment. I found refuge in the entrance of a residential building. It took me a few moments to regain my senses and realise where I was, after I had confirmed I could still breathe with some regularity.
The police crackdown led to an explosion of sympathy for the demonstrations, which had been organised by the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL), a small group of leftists and anarchists demanding cheaper public transport. Millions of people took to the streets across Brazil, shaking the political system to its core. New demonstrators brought new demands – better schools and healthcare, less corruption and police violence – into the mass movement.
The movement wasn’t in direct opposition to Brazil’s ruling Workers’ party (PT). This left-leaning government had managed to combine economic growth with social policies that meaningfully alleviated poverty, garnering widespread support. It appeared to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, that the people on the streets in June 2013 were simply asking for more.
But you can draw a line from the 2013 protest movement to the events of just a few years later, which would culminate with Brazil being ruled by Jair Bolsonaro, the most radically rightwing elected leader in the world. Public services would fall apart as poverty mounted and officials bragged about the state murder of Brazilian citizens. In short, the Brazilian people got the exact opposite of what they appeared to ask for in June 2013. This is a pattern that played out across the world throughout the 2010s.
The protests of the 2010s, like many waves of political revolt before them, were contagious. Hong Kong’s “umbrella movement” was inspired by
