Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Barrie Dunsmore, a former ABC correspondent. The commentary first appeared in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus.
I do not text or tweet. I have no Facebook page. I use my cell phone to make calls, not take pictures. I am computer literate, but hardly fluent. I primarily use the Internet for research and email. I do watch 24/7 cable news, including al-Jazeera in English when I can find it. But at best, for many, I must seem like someone with an acute case of old-fartitis.
But despite my limited personal use of the “Social Media,” I’ve been around long enough to recognize their transformative value. In fact, as we all take a break after the breathless moments of the new Egyptian revolution, I’m about to make a radical claim on behalf of the new communication technologies including social media — which may be obvious but is rarely mentioned.
There has been no shortage of news and analysis about the important role social media played in the non-violent overthrow of a 30-year dictatorship by the Egyptian masses. But most of this has focused on how they were powerful organizing tools in bringing Egyptians of all walks of life together to achieve this historic success. I would not dispute this — but I would argue they were all this and much more.
To illustrate my point let’s revisit three events in relatively recent history.
In Syria, after many years, the conflict between the secular Baathist regime of then President Hafez Assad and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, reached a climax in February of 1982. Previously the Brotherhood had nearly succeeded in assassinating Assad and he responded by executing about 1,000 brothers being held as political prisoners. The showdown occurred around the city of Hama, when 12,000 government troops with tanks, artillery and air support surrounded this Brotherhood stronghold and demanded its surrender. Considering the recent executions, this was out of the question. Over the next three weeks the army virtually leveled the city, killing from 20,000 to 40,000 people. Snippets of what had happened eventually came to light but there were no witnesses and no pictures. Once again, a murderous suppression had succeeded in virtual secrecy.
In the spring of 1989 China, like most of the countries of the communist bloc, was coping with disparate groups generally against the government’s authoritarianism and calling for economic and democratic reform. Gatherings of intellectuals and students began in April in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and continued for seven weeks, over time drawing 100,000 demonstrators. From its inception, the People’s Republic of China had zero tolerance for internal opposition. In the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao had shown no mercy in dealing with perhaps millions of perceived political opponents. But in 1989 the authorities hesitated, allowing hundreds of the world’s journalists to descend upon Beijing to witness these rare events in Tiananmen and elsewhere in China. By the time the regime decided to act, first by expelling the journalists and shutting down all communications satellites — and then clearing the square of protestors with tanks and armed troops — it was, in a sense, too late. Even though by historical Chinese standards, the estimated casualty count of between 800 and 3,000 people killed was almost minor, never before had there been such widespread international condemnation of the PRC for its excessive use of force against its own unarmed and peacefully protesting citizens.
By the autumn of 1989 the Iron Curtain had been sliced open by the Hungarians and the Austrians allowing tens of thousands of East Germans to use that breach to escape their Stalinist oppressors. For many weeks in Leipzig, East Germany’s second largest city, people had been gathering every Monday in a church in the old city square for a prayer meeting to protest the regime’s emigration policies. In the beginning they were only hundreds. By late September there were tens of thousands, peacefully marching around the city’s main thoroughfare. Like all Western journalists, I was forbidden to go to Leipzig but ABC News among others had numerous locals who shot video coverage of the protests with small cameras we had given them. After a huge anti-government rally on Oct. 2, Erich Honecker, the long time communist party chief, decided this could not continue. He ordered that the next Monday’s demonstration should be forcefully stopped. On the night of the 8th, thousands of troops were trucked into the city to reinforce the State security police. Riot control weapons and a large number of Kalashnikov automatic rifles were issued. Hospitals were placed on alert with extra doctors, nurses and blood supplies. Ambulances were ready in the side streets. Seventy thousand demonstrators had gathered by Monday afternoon. The stage was set for a bloodbath.
But not all Politburo members were on board. At the last minute, the No. 2 man, Egon Krenz, cancelled Honecker’s orders. Krenz, who was in fact plotting to overthrow Honecker, worried that a bloody crackdown on unarmed citizens would spell doom for his political future and for the regime. We later learned that before countermanding Honecker, Krenz consulted with the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin who argued strongly against a “Chinese solution.”
So went the evolution of repression in the 1980s. Fast forward to Feb. 11, 2011, when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns. In my view, the most important point in the 17-day revolt was the day the Egyptian military pledged not to attack protestors as long as they remained nonviolent. The generals knew the whole world was watching. Mubarak should have resigned right then, because unless the military put down the revolution, he could not survive.
Throughout the ages, from the Roman Caesars to the 20th century’s Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the most appalling massacres and atrocities committed against millions of civilians have been all too frequent. But that is changing — thanks to the new communication technologies and the social media of the 21st century. Today, perhaps for the first time in human history, few tyrants will be able rule through the mass slaughter of their political opponents — and get away with it for very long.
