The protesters were divided between those who said, "We don't even talk to the government. We just want to change the system" And some completely unspecified way that brings about social justice. The affluent class of Israel was in revolt because their apartments cost too much money. It did not include marginalized people. They do not include minorities. If you looked at Occupy, there was hardly any minority, minorities in that. In Egypt and entire square, it was the educated. It was the golden youth. You could put a few hundred thousand people on the street. These were not the poor, the downtrodden.
Author Martin Gurri, Visiting Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, talks about his book The Revolt of the Public with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Gurri argues that a digital tsunami--the increase in information that the web provides--has destabilized authority and many institutions. He talks about the amorphous nature of recent populist protest movements around the world and where we might be headed politically and culturally.