Introduction

The past decade or so was marked by mass protests—in fact, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring to the 2020 George Floyd uprisings and even more recently with millions upon millions pouring into the streets in support of Palestinian liberation. So why, then, have conditions not improved? Why have they, in many cases, only gotten worse?

This is the question that Vincent Bevins set out to answer in his latest book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. The search for an answer took Vincent all over the world, from Brazil to Ukraine, Turkey, Chile, Hong Kong, and Middle East. The answer imparts an extremely important lesson to the left: we’re simply not organized. Or, rather, we’re not organized in an effective way. The shift in the left’s tactics and strategies since the 1960s has left us with movements that rely far too heavily on horizontalism, spontaneity, and an extreme form of prefiguration that subordinates ends to means. This New Left ideology abandons the principles of Marxism-Leninism, revolutionary theory, and the importance of leadership. This, Vincent believes, is why the mass protest decade failed to win its demands and bring about real change.

Vincent Bevins is a journalist and writer and, in addition to If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, he’s the author of The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World.

Further Resources:

• If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, by Vincent Bevins
• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
• The Tyranny of Structurelessness, by Jo Freeman
• On Authority, by Frederick Engels
• All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (TV series), Adam Curtis
• Upstream: What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante

Thank you to Menstruação Anarquika for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.