“Revolution can happen even if people do not think about it” — an interview with Asef Bayat

There is a growing consensus that our society is experiencing substantial changes. Over the past two decades, processes of exclusion and necropolitical governance, which involve the further destruction of nature and society, have intensified. This has led to a pervasive sense of insecurity, uncertainty, and fear in our increasingly unjust world. The rise of far-right governments and movements, as well as the expansion of the logic of war in everyday life, pose global threats in response to increasing social panic.

Indeed, we are witnessing an authoritarian shift that is not limited to autocratic contexts but is a fundamental aspect of global governance. This is evident in the ongoing repression against anti-war and pro-Palestinian protests—nevertheless, the processes began a few years ago. At the same time, massive anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial movements, revolutions, and autonomous politics have been emerging in marginalized neighbourhoods and territories all over the world. Despite facing violent repression, these movements continue to be crucial in shaping the present and possible futures.

In the following interview with Professor Asef Bayat, we discuss the characteristics of twenty-first-century revolutionary movements and their conditions of possibility in the future. Bayat, a leading scholar of revolutions and social movements, particularly in the Middle East, elaborates on the defining features of the new revolutionary movements and draws comparisons with twentieth-century revolutions. 

The interview also highlights the impact of global political shifts on revolutionary activism. It examines the role of neoliberalism, the emergence of new forms of resistance under authoritarian conditions, and the evolving relationship between state power and social movements. The conversation also considers the significant impact of advancements in technology, particularly surveillance technologies, on the future of social change.

Farvardin: Professor Bayat, you have always been a dedicated and passionate researcher and observer of revolutions and (non-) movements, particularly those in the Middle East, over the past 45 years. You have traced their commonalities and differences to develop a more comprehensive and convincing analysis of social transformation and upheaval. In your book Revolution without Revolutionaries, you compared two revolutionary episodes from the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. You examined the 1979 revolution in Iran and the early twenty-first-century revolutions, specifically the initial phase of the Arab Spring. You argued that these two periods differ significantly, particularly in terms of ideology and visions. You contended that the latter lacked the radicalism seen in the former episode. Can you discuss this further, particularly your argument about their differences in ideology?

Bayat: Anybody who studies contentious politics acknowledges that the past decade, the 2010s, had arguably the most active periods (in terms of the volume and intensity of popular struggles) in recent history at the global level, which began with the unfolding of the Arab Spring revolutions.

I have been interested in the idea of revolution and its practices since my youth, particularly the 1979 revolution in Iran, in which I partially participated and then studied. When I looked at the Arab Spring and the episodes in the 2010s in general, I realized a significant difference between these two episodes. It is important to note that I had been living in the Middle East, Egypt in particular, for a long time before its 2011 revolution.

The Arab Spring, in terms of modes of mobilization, the spread and the extent of it, was quite remarkable. It began in one country, Tunisia, and then spread almost all over the Arab world. Its numbers, massive participants, and rapid diffusion were truly spectacular. It kind of worked against the previously popular understanding of the revolution as a rare entity, as something that very hardly happens. But, in the past decade, it was never rare — it was as if it were occurring everywhere. A BBC leftist journalist Paul Mason wrote a book about it earlier on called, Why It’s Still Kicking off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions.

I believe there have been significant differences between the revolutions of the twentieth century and what I call the “new generation of the twenty-first-century revolutions”. Firstly, the new generation of revolutions has been remarkably rich and spectacular in terms of mobilization, but depressingly poor in bringing about meaningful change at the state level, in terms of transforming the elites and the state institutions in a democratic direction. Secondly, these revolutions, by and large, cried for and lacked the kind of organization and leadership that the twentieth-century revolutions had. So, these new revolutions didn’t have leaders like we had in the twentieth century revolutions, such as Ayatollah Khomeini or Václav Havel, not to mention Mandela or Gandhi. So, they were very much horizontal and connected to one another through the new communication technologies and social media platforms. And, of course, people were also connected through the various networks and non-movements on the ground.

Thirdly, these new revolutions had little intellectual precursor. Most major revolutions have had some kind of philosophy, a vision, that has inspired revolutionaries to take action in order to realize such visions. Some of these visions were utopian, very powerful and inspiring. So, the new generation of revolutions resulted from a remarkable popular mobilization, and yet mostly didn’t lead to the changes that many of the protagonists and activists had hoped for — that is, some kind of accountable government, democracy, human rights, and dignity.

Finally, these revolutions didn’t have the kind of radicalism that the earlier revolutions enjoyed, things like demands for redistribution, change in property relations, and economic justice . Of course, the masses of people were very much concerned with the issues of bread, jobs, and social justice. But I think the political classes only gave lip service to such concerns, without having a vision of how to materialize such demands. They invariably took the market rationale for granted.

Now, the question is why this was the case. How do we explain this change in the characteristics of the twenty-first-century revolutions? First, it is important to acknowledge and show that these do represent a “new generation” of revolutionary movements and uprisings. I disagree with those who think that the revolutions of the Arab Spring are a continuation of what we had before, that is, the “negotiated revolutions” of 1989 in Eastern Europe. Yes, the Eastern European experience of 1989 was of “negotiated revolutions”. But they resulted in a total transformation of those societies, ideology, the elites, the economic system, et cetera. Almost everything significantly changed. And this differentiated them from the Arab Spring revolutions whose outcome came to minimal change. The protagonists took the existing political and economic system for granted, even though they called for things such as political accountability, openness, democratization, lesser repression, human rights issues, and individual liberties. These things were indeed crucial demands and necessary. But as I said, issues of redistribution and social justice were not taken seriously. In this sense, I’m saying they were not radical compared to the earlier revolutions in the developing countries, which were strongly left-populist, socialist, anti-imperialist, distributionist, and so on.

The truth is that these new revolutions occurred at a different time in the global political culture. I have tried to explain this in my book Revolution Without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring that these revolutions happened in the post-Cold War, post-socialist, post-colonial and post-Islamist times. In the twentieth century, these strong movements — that is, socialism, anti-colonialism and radical Islamism — carried the idea of radical revolution. But by the time the Arab Spring came in 2011, these movements and the very idea of revolution as a path for fundamental change had been undermined or disappeared altogether. In fact, the 1989 anti-communist revolutions ended the idea of revolution in the way that we knew it. So, when the largely spontaneous uprisings of the Arab Spring surprised many observers, few participants had really thought a priori about the idea of revolution. Consequently, when the spectacular uprisings in the Arab world and elsewhere came to fruition, many of the protagonists were not attuned to the idea and modalities of revolution; they had not thought of how to wrest power from the existing elites and establish a new way of doing politics and conducting economics.

Farvardin: I recall that somewhere in one of your works, you also pointed out the “marketization of politics” in the twenty-first century. Indeed, what you talk about now or have argued before is a description of neoliberal subjectification, which has affected how the protagonists of the twenty-first-century revolutions have imagined, experienced, and eventually perceived their actions. 

Bayat: Yes! Exactly. The post-1989 revolutions and post-Cold War period coincided with the flare-up and emergence of neoliberalism in the world. From the West, neoliberalism spread throughout the rest of the world, even though its intensity, impacts, and consequences were very different. In general, ordinary people have resisted neoliberalism in practice by, for instance, opposing privatization or temporary contracts and by reclaiming urban lands for informal construction, etc. Even if ordinary people might not necessarily understand or care much about the discourse of the laissez-faire market and the marketization of their societies, they have shown opposition to its rationale and its consequences in their everyday practices.

But neoliberalism is more than economic policies or marketization of everything. It also acts as a form of governmentality. It affects the way in which we think about the world, about how it works, what kind of change we want and the like. In this sense, I think the neoliberal governmentality had a negative impact on the oppositional political class, on the protagonists — those whose voice we hear and are visible and involved in thinking and imagining.

In other words, they took the marketization and the existing economic structure for granted. They also believed that the time for fundamental socio-economic and political transformation, or revolution, had passed. This is because the revolutions of the twentieth century had mostly failed. Consequently, they could not consider revolution as an alternative project to the existing social and political order. Nor for that matter did they ever entertain any utopian vision for the future. They were mostly stuck to the present.

But, as I have said before, no matter what we, people, think or do not think about revolution, it can happen. Revolution can happen even if people do not think about it. But having or not having ideas about revolution would have a tremendous impact on the outcome when it comes to fruition. And that explains how the protagonists had to deal with the uprisings, had to improvise, and then the uprisings emerged in many parts of the Middle East and beyond. This situation has caused a fascinating debate about the recent revolutions. Some consider this situation in positive terms. But I do not necessarily.

Farvardin: I believe it’s important to directly address the recent uprising in Iran, known as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement or the Jina uprising. You mentioned that regardless of what it’s called or perceived, a revolution may occur. I would like to highlight that, in the case of the Jina uprising, the impact of previous revolutions, such as the 1979 revolution and the Arab Spring, influenced people’s perceptions of their actions. This is why they referred to it as a “revolution” and not just a movement or uprising from the early days of the uprising. The collective memories and images of past revolutions, both positive and negative, have influenced the potential for experiencing another revolution or revolutionary movement. In one of your writings, you mentioned that the Jina uprising is a movement aimed at reclaiming life. You compared it to the first wave of Arab revolutions but refrained from calling it a revolution. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the 2022 uprising in Iran. 

Bayat: There are many points you’re raising, but because you talked about reclaiming life, let me talk about it first. This notion of “reclaiming life” is quite particular to the case of Iran, because of the particular nature of the Islamic State (velayat-e Faqih) in the Islamic Republic. It is important to see the differences in the nature of the state and the regime in power. The Iranian regime is very different from the Egyptian or Tunisian regimes before the revolutions, their state projects were different. I think that the Iranian regime, nizam-e velaii or Velâyat-e Faqih (the guardianship regime of Islamic jurists), is somehow totalitarian in the sense of controlling people’s everyday life and culture; how people behave, what they wear, what they listen to, etc. These are very basic everyday life issues, which many people of the world take for granted even under horrible dictatorships. In Iran, these are subjects and areas of politics because of the state’s strict control over them. Consequently, the Iranian regime, I mean those non-elected but powerful institutions under the Vali-ye Faqih, the Supreme Leader, is a kind of religious and military authority that tends to politicize life. So, it is not surprising that, in response, people want to free life from the diktats and control of the regime. Here is what I mean broadly by the struggle to “reclaim life”. And in this sense, I think, it is quite different from the Arab world and the revolutions of the Arab Spring.

Regarding your other point, it’s probably true what you said about the contested notion of the revolution in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In other words, you’re suggesting that people were thinking about revolution because of their collective memory and past experiences. I would add that since Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom uprising happened ten years or so after the Arab Spring revolutions, Iranian protestors might have thought about it in those terms. But still, this does not make that uprising a revolution as such. It was, in my view, a revolutionary uprising, a revolutionary movement, but not a revolution.

In this sense, it is comparable to the Arab Spring; different segments of the population, such as workers, women, youth, farmers, ethnic minorities, etc. came together as a united entity called “the people” and mostly called for the fundamental structural transformation and regime change. This makes it revolutionary. But whereas revolutionary uprisings entailed the toppling of dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, this was not the case in Iran. Nothing much changed at the top in Iran; it even made the regime more aggressive and disciplinary.

Farvardin: So, shall we now say, based on what you have already argued, that the 2022 Jina revolutionary uprising was, in fact, a vivid case of the emergence of “revolutionaries without revolution”? I don’t know whether you agree or not, I think there is or was a vision realized in the slogan of Jin, Jiyan, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) in the Jina uprising, albeit it is a contested vision. We have progressive segments of the population that have interpreted this slogan to envision a future with bodily autonomy, social, ethnic-national, and ecological justice, and thus implicitly centred the political agenda of reclaiming life in their practices.

But there is also a reactionary vision of the slogan; we have monarchist and nationalist opposition, which have tried translating the slogan according to their own political agenda and imposing an addition to it, which is “Mard, Mihan, Abadi” (literally means “Man, Homeland, and Development”). This translation of the Woman, Life, Freedom vision has indeed advocated for returning to what they have imagined as the glory of the past, mostly in the Shah era. So, they reclaim the past, not life.

What I am trying to say is that there is or was a contesting vision during the Jina uprising and it, at least discursively, claimed political alternatives and put forward certain visions for the post-Islamic Republic.

Bayat: I see your point. It is possible to suggest that various people who participated in the uprising might have a particular vision of the future. But we do not know what that was exactly since this is something that needs to be researched. Yes, some people might have interpreted Woman, Life, Freedom in terms of what you suggest — a very contested and perhaps contradictory vision. But these were only two groups whose voices could be heard. We do not know about the rest. I think that many thousand tweets that responded to the question “what was the uprising for” may give some indication of what people broadly wanted. On this basis, I suggested “reclaiming life” was a key demand, but one which highlighted the centrality of woman and the “woman’s question”. In this sense, the movement had a strong feminist undertone. And all these, in my view, derived from the particular totalitarian nature of this regime that has in many ways colonized life, a life in which women occupy a central place.

Yes, people might have had certain visions of the future order in their minds. I wanted to see an articulated version of such visions. They needed to be articulated clearly so that they could be translated into a tangible language that the majority of people could understand and identify with it. In the 1979 revolution in Iran, people also imagined their vision of the future in that major slogan, “Independent, Freedom, and Islamic Republic”. But theirs was a mere imagination and not an articulation. It was an imagined vision (political freedom, democratic governance, and independence from big powers) that turned out to be different from what the Islamist leaders of the revolution had in mind.

Farvardin: So that’s why I suggest they are revolutionaries but without revolution!

Bayat: Yes, in the sense of having an unarticulated image of the future. But revolution also requires means, resources, and strategic vision as to how to bring about political change. These were mostly absent, too. Unlike the Arab Spring uprisings, which did cause a revolutionary situation and, in some cases, the ousting of dictators, Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom did not even reach that stage. 

Farvardin: Many things have changed since you wrote Revolution Without Revolutionaries. A second wave of Arab revolutions occurred in the region and Black Lives Matter protests took place in the USA. Chile and Argentina experienced massive protests against their governments, with feminists as the main protagonists. Since 2017, a different wave of protests has taken place in Iran, which led to the Jina uprising, as we discussed earlier. More recently, there has been a new wave of anti-colonial and anti-war protests as well as university encampments happening across the globe triggered by by Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza/Palestine. There are many other examples. Would you argue any differently in your book if you were to write Revolution Without Revolutionaries now? Do you recognize something significantly different between the current situation and a decade ago? 

Bayat: This is a great question. I think that the key thing to think about is this element of temporality. We have been talking about revolution over the span of 14 years, and about uprisings since 2011. Clearly, the occurrence of a revolution in one country affects uprisings in other countries; in particular, in today’s world where it’s very well connected, and people actually follow the news, etc. So, people learn from each other but so do the regimes in terms of how to suppress the movements and control them. Now, I think that the revolutionary movements that have spread all over the world are creating some kind of “event” in individual countries; they are changing subjectivities and are producing new norms and alternative narratives that are opposed to those of the elites. In this sense, these movements are generating important changes in societies. But the regimes and the elites continue to remain in power. In other words, the movements are changing societies but are unable to change the political systems and their economic structures.

In fact, not only are these movements unable to change the regimes and the elites, but they actually make them scared and more security conscious. So, in response, the elites are taking extraordinary measures to suppress the protests and neutralize the changes that are happening in society, including shifts in attitudes and narratives brought about by revolutionary movements and uprisings. In other words, we are witnessing an extraordinary disjunct between the narratives of the elites and regimes and the narratives of society. In this sense, I am suggesting that we are experiencing a post-Gramscian moment. That is to say, the old Western liberal democracy, in which you were not supposed to see a separation between civil society and the state, is shifting. The hegemony of liberal democracy is crumbling. The states and the elites feel that they are losing control. They are losing control of dominant narratives because people simply do not buy them. People are developing their own alternatives through the new means of communication and media, etc. As a result, the elites and states are resorting to extreme legal measures and police violence. When your soft power does not work, you resort to hard power, legal manipulation, and police violence. In short, these liberal democratic states are becoming increasingly despotic and repressive. They are becoming like the repressive regimes of the Global South, which they used to criticize for violations of human rights.

Farvardin: You once highlighted non-movements or quiet encroachment strategies of the ordinary because there exist some free zones out of the control of the state authority. If I am right, you have a similar line of argumentation about the conditions of the possibility of Arab Spring. In other words, you contend that some degrees of opacity would be essential for resisting the state’s authorities in everyday life politics. Considering the current situation with regards to the advancement of surveillance technologies and AI, all these new technologies of coercion have been either exported to or produced in every corner of the world. In this context, how do you anticipate the future of the non-movements or social transformation from below in general?

Bayat: As I pointed out earlier, the elites seem to be losing control over the narrative (on, say, the economy, corruption, or the war on Gaza), especially among youth. This is partly because alternative sources of information and means of communication exist. But the new digital technologies have contradictory impacts. Although they are helping the protest movements, they are helping the elites even more. Yes, there was a time in the early twenty-first century, when the states, especially in developing countries, had not yet gotten their grip on social media and their potentialities. Many were caught by surprise. But then the states learned how to use the new technologies to manipulate and discipline. And now they are putting a lot of money into controlling social media and using it to reproduce their power. And in the past decade, there seems to be evidence in the countries of the Global South, especially in the Middle East, that the states have begun to bring those free zones or uncontrolled territories under their information node. For instance, they are gathering data and digitizing many things in the informal sectors. This is likely to restrict non-movements and subaltern resistances in the under-society where opacity works in favour of these everyday struggles.

Now, the states are the ones who are encroaching into those uncontrolled territories in order to colonize and control them. In some parts, such as in Egypt, the digitization of information from informal communities has caused a shift in control. Previously, residents had exclusive control over the information on these spaces, but now, the state is becoming more aware of the activities happening in these places. Residents are required to disclose their names, addresses, and income for taxation purposes, etc., which was not previously the case since they were not part of the formal economy. This shift may have a significant impact on the function and effectiveness of poor people’s struggles in these communities.

I think it is necessary to conduct research and study these new developments. Still, I would suggest that if the elites are able to restrict those free zones and limit the workings of the non-movements and everyday resistances, it could lead to an increase in street politics. This is because the street is a crucial space for expressing frustration and making claims for the subaltern groups. This change could shift non-movement dynamics from direct action to the politics of protest — that is, to mobilize in order to put pressure on the authorities to meet their demands, since actors may not be able to achieve their goals directly.

Farvardin: You mean the likelihood of a revolution is now higher than it was before.

Bayat: I think that we might see more incentives for street action, revolts, and even riots. Now, in such circumstances, if other social classes get involved, it could potentially lead to wider mobilization and protestation. However, this is a big if and depends on many contingencies, on how the state behaves. Would it reform or repress? But the potential for social upheavals becomes greater.

Farvardin: But it won’t necessarily be a progressive upheaval. It could be a fascist one!

Bayat: Here comes the vision—the idea of leadership, the idea of organization, and, more importantly, what people want and how emancipatory the vision is. The vision of what kind of future we want becomes even more crucial at such times, even more than what we’ve seen in the past. 

Farvardin: On this point, it’s important to discuss hope. Vision inherently involves future. In other words, hope represents our expectations and aspirations for the future. What are your thoughts on hope and how it might manifest in our time?

Bayat:Hope is often associated with the future, but I think it also has ties to the past. Our past actions and achievements can shape our sense of what is possible in the future. Personally, when I think of hope, I recall a time when I was hiking in the mountains in my youth. I would look ahead and feel overwhelmed and dispirited by the long distance to the summit. However, instead of focusing solely on how formidable it is to reach the summit, I would look back and see how far I had already hiked. This reflection helped me realize that if I had achieved that much, there was no reason why I couldn’t achieve more in the future. In this way, hope is connected to our past accomplishments and experiences. By reflecting on these, we can envision possibilities for the future, find new strategies, and act accordingly. To me, envisioning those possibilities and acting on them becomes an arena of hope.