
If We Burn
The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
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Narrated by:
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Timothy Andrés Pabon
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By:
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Vincent Bevins
About this listen
The story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world—and what comes next
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. He draws on four years of research and hundreds of interviews conducted around the world, as well as his own strange experiences in Brazil, where a progressive-led protest explosion led to an extreme-right government that torched the Amazon.
Careful investigation reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.
©2023 Vincent Bevins (P)2023 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“This is a wondrous work of mystery writing, an effort to solve the riddle: Why has a decade of large-scale rolling revolts produced no revolution, no significant structural reform? I can’t think of any journalist other than Bevins who would dare to ask such a question, or be capable of weaving together seemingly discrete global events into a stunning history of now. Have we planted seeds for a better future, or have the gears of change frozen for good? Bevins lets the people he talked to, those on the street, answer.”—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth
“In this remarkably assured and sweeping history of the present, Vincent introduces us to the activists, hackers, punks, martyrs, and the millions of ordinary people whose spontaneous acts of bravery spurred the mass protests of the last decade. Bevins’s clear-eyed, sympathetic account of the unfulfilled promise of these protests leaves his reader with a bold vision of the future—one in which his book’s lessons are used to transform an uprising into a true revolution.”—Merve Emre, critic, New Yorker
“Ambitious, diligently researched, and provocative, If We Burn will transform the way you think. Vincent Bevins’ detailed, comparative reporting offers a riveting look at the contradictions, unexpected consequences, and lessons of mass protests.”—Alexa Hagerty, author of Still Life with Bones
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- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
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abridge this for audio format
- By Jeff M. on 02-17-22
By: Dean Spade
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Red Plenty
- By: Francis Spufford
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the 20th-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, and as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant.
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Simple review
- By Jay J Peters on 06-24-18
By: Francis Spufford
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Blackshirts and Reds
- Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
- By: Michael Parenti
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Blackshirts and Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology. These terms are often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark. Parenti shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege.
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couldn't believe this was on audible
- By Amazon Customer on 02-24-22
By: Michael Parenti
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Enemy Feminisms
- TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation
- By: Sophie Lewis
- Narrated by: Helen Phillips
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In recent years, "white feminism" and girlboss feminism have taken a justified beating. We know that leaning in won't make our jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. But in a time of rising fascism, ceaseless attacks on reproductive justice, and violent transphobia, we need to reckon with what Western feminism has wrought if we have any hope of building the feminist world we need.
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brilliant writer, robot reader
- By Jeannine Tang on 04-17-25
By: Sophie Lewis
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Revolusi
- Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
- By: David Van Reybrouck
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after WWII.
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Solid Historical Survey
- By DavidPrestonokwu on 06-05-24
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Method and Madness
- The Hidden Story of Israel's Assaults on Gaza
- By: Norman G. Finkelstein
- Narrated by: Gary Dana
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the past five years, Israel has mounted three major assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped behind its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014) have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions. On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological.
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Insightful and remarkably unbiased
- By Mudir Soroor on 11-03-18
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The Worst Hard Time
- The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes.
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Excellent history ruined by Egan's bias & cynicism
- By Nathan on 03-21-23
By: Timothy Egan
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Brokers of Deceit
- How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East
- By: Rashid Khalidi
- Narrated by: Curtis Michael Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States' involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine.
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Interesting take on history
- By Nancy on 02-17-25
By: Rashid Khalidi
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A Spectre, Haunting
- By: China Miéville
- Narrated by: China Miéville
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1848, The Communist Manifesto was published by two émigrés from Germany. Marx and Engels' apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world reduces every relationship to that of profit, and burst asunder the old forms of production and of politics. It is still a recognisable picture of our world—the vampiric energy of the system being once again highly contentious. This is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today.
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A great follow up to October
- By Amazon Customer on 01-18-23
By: China Miéville
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Washington Bullets
- A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
- By: Vijay Prashad
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. It is a book that could easily have been a song of despair - a lament of lost causes; it is, after all, a roll call of butchers and assassins; of plots against people's movements and governments; of the assassinations of socialists, Marxists, communists all over the Third World by the country where liberty is a statue.
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The US empire needs to fall
- By Savannah Boyd on 04-28-24
By: Vijay Prashad
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After the Fall
- Being American in the World We've Made
- By: Ben Rhodes
- Narrated by: Ben Rhodes
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
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At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression toward Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia.
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A must read, won’t regret it!!
- By Jerrold S. Gertzman on 06-03-21
By: Ben Rhodes
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Capitalist Realism
- Is There No Alternative?
- By: Mark Fisher
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system–a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework.
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Mind-blowing
- By John Erlandsen on 10-04-24
By: Mark Fisher
Incredible.
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A must-read for anyone who has even a passing interest in international politics.
Excellent modern history
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Wonderful overview with a challenging conclusion
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Great book exploring the ups and downs of modern protest movements
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An important read in this new age of revolutions
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Read the book!
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Simply incredible
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Thought provoking reporting and analysis
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The narration is fine, and the few things I didn't like about it didnt detract from an otherwise excellent experience.
Timely and well sourced
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Organization, planning, and political education- these play a key role in deciding who decides the future after any mass rupture.
A worthy follow up to the Jakarta Method!
A thoughtful and powerful read
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