A worldwide wave of anti-establishment movements-from Tea Party to Gezi-Park broke out 2009-2013

Evidence

Ever since reporter Rick Santelli called for a “Chicago Tea Party” live from the trading floor in February 2009 against Obama administration’s bailout plans, the Tea Party movement had been driving Republican lawmakers ahead of it, pressuring them to block Obama’s legislation and nearly pushing the United States into default in the summer of 2011. In October 2009, Italian comedian Beppe Grillo—who had already staged a first Vaffanculo (Fuck-off) Day in 2007 in protest of political corruption—founded the ideologically amorphous Five Star Movement (M5S) together with internet entrepreneur Gianroberto Casaleggio. From December 2010, mass protests erupted in North Africa and the Middle East, beginning in Tunisia; in Cairo, demonstrators occupied Tahrir Square, and long-standing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February. In May 2011, demonstrations by the Indignados—the “outraged”—took place in cities across Spain, citing Hessel as an inspiration; at the same time, angry citizens in Athens protested on Syntagma Square against their government’s austerity policies. In mid-September, Occupy Wall Street protesters occupied Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Four weeks later, activists set up camp outside Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. “People are waking up from their coma,” read one placard. At the end of December, Time magazine named “The Protester” as its Person of the Year. After the Russian presidential elections in spring 2012, mass demonstrations broke out in Moscow, and in May 2013, anti-Erdoğan activists invaded Gezi Park in Istanbul. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 167

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘People are waking up from their coma’ placard and Time’s ‘The Protester’ Person of the Year are memorable headline-sized anchors for the wave.
• XREF: connects to: The Tea Party was a product of engineered state-legitimacy crisis, not grassroots spontaneity — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950; Occupy mirrored the Tea Party’s anti-government populism while ignoring its commercialization of protest — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 909; Gezi Park’s model let daytime workers join evening-only while diaspora flew in — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 342 (+3 more)