| Author: | Vincent Bevins |
| Pub Date: | 3 October 2023 |
| Isbn: | 978-1-5417-8897-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Hachette Book Group |
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution is a 2023 political history and journalism book by author and journalist Vincent Bevins.[1] The book concerns the wave of mass protests during the 2010s decade and examines the question of how the organization and tactics of such protests resulted in a "missing revolution," in that most of these movements appear to have failed in their goals and even led to a "record of failures, setbacks, and cataclysms".[2] The title refers to a protest sign during the 2014 Hong Kong protests which quoted The Hunger Games line, "If we burn, you burn with us."
The book begins by tracing the history of left wing activism from the end of the October Revolution, through the new left and into the present day. In particular, it traces the history of vanguardism in left wing movement politics and the shift toward distributed, horizontal structures in mass protest movements since the early 20th century.[3] The final chapter assesses the problems with the horizontally-structured movements of the 2010s and observes that the lack of central leadership enabled media misrepresentation of movement interests which subsequently defused and dissipated the energy and efficacy of the movements. Simultaneously, the lack of leadership structure also allowed right-wing groups to coopt social movements for their own purposes, leading in part to a full reversal of momentum as in Brazil.
The book draws on four years of research and hundreds of interviews, including with many of the original organizers of major protest movements. Bevins admits to not being a neutral observer: he was an active participant in the Movimento Passe Livre in Brazil. The book stems in part from observations on the failure of that movement and Bevins is clear to indicate where his own actions alter the trajectory of the movement.
Movements included in the book, inter alia:
According to literary review aggregator Lit Hub, the book received mostly "Positive" reviews. It currently has a score of 4.31 stars on Goodreads.[4]
"I was not expecting this, but I think If We Burn is even better than The Jakarta Method."—Benjamin Fogel, editor at Jacobin[5]
Writing for The New Republic, Osita Nwanevu agreed that future protest movements should take Bevins' conclusions into account, but critiqued the implicit horizontalism of the protest movements themselves:
Lenin aside, this is all rather commonsensical—or at least it ought to have been for the movements surveyed. Change is best pursued with a particular tactical or ideological direction in mind, clearly; without a designated leader or group of leaders to set that direction—a "vanguard," if one prefers—one cannot predict the direction a movement will ultimately take, or what ideas and actors might prevail in the aftermath of a movement toppling the existing political order.[6]