By Abdullah Alkabir, political writer and commentator
Revolution’s Intruders (parasites)
“The outset is for all; resilience is for the truthful.”
Dostoevsky
Not everyone who joined the revolution against the oppressive authority, supported it, and did what he could to end this tyranny, is truly rebelling against injustice, oppression, and the absence of justice, based on a firm belief and firm faith in the necessity of change, after despair of the feasibility of any reforms in power, and that all paths have become blocked. Hence, the revolution becomes inevitable.
They are not the same. Awareness of all the noble values and lofty goals of the revolution is the awareness of the minority, which has acquired a significant share of knowledge and has spent valuable time studying the experiences of people in resisting totalitarianism and tyranny, realizing that their battle is tough, has multiple stages, and its path is longer than a person’s lifespan.
The revolution is a battle of generations on several fronts, and toppling the regime is perhaps the easiest step on this path, but it is certainly the decisive one. As for establishing an alternative authority on the basis of justice, democracy, and respect for human rights, it is the most prominent challenge that cannot tolerate failure or regression, because this means failure and the situation returning to a more severe state, worse than it was before the revolution.
This awareness of the issue of the revolution and everything that surrounds it is not realized by the majority that sided with the revolution. Despite their feeling of the burden of the system of oppression and injustice, and despite all the sacrifices they make to push the revolution forward, they fall short of realizing the lofty goals of the revolution, especially if the enlightened elites neglect their role in disseminating awareness among the masses of the revolution’s values and firm principles.
The paths of the Libyan revolution did not differ from these general principles of all popular revolutions, despite some peculiarities that distinguished it from other revolutions of the first Arab Spring. The few who are most aware of the lofty goals of the revolution are still a minority, and they have not yielded to the temptations of power, nor have they deviated into searching for their personal interests. As for the intruders (parasites), into the revolution, who joined it for various reasons, some of which can be considered a natural inclination for the movement of the masses, some of them in response to tribal or regional fervor, and others as opportunism to catch the rising ship after the first one sank or almost sank.
These people fall on the road one after another, some of them are attracted by the authority, and often he borrows the same practices of the collapsed authority, and he, too, turns into a petty tyrant. He does not hesitate to suppress, persecute, and liquidate his opponents if he can. For some of them, the revolution ends when they obtain a high position in the new authority, and after they hold some power in their hands, and their private properties increase. Huge sums of money flow into his hands, and his goal becomes to continue rising and collect more.
Some others become impatient to achieve change, and despair seeps into their chests, so they throw themselves into the arms of the counter-revolutionary forces, forgetting all the sacrifices, to protect the power, money, and influence they have gained, and rushing to the new tyrants. Hugging him, he asks for forgiveness for what he did against them, defending his failure with all the justifications that, no matter how thick the cover of linguistic rhetoric around them, will not withstand the established truth, which is that resilience and steadfastness belong to the honest, as Dostoevsky said.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Libya Observer
