REVOLT. From the trenches of the global uprising

About the book

Globalisation promised development, prosperity and a different distribution of wealth. But in many corners of the world, people feel that this promise has been broken and that the only way to confront what they see as a new elitist and corrupt system of power is to return to nationalism, populism and identity politics.

With a vibrant journalistic style, Nadav Eyal takes us from a home in an old mining town in the American Midwest to the protests in Athens against the European Union, from a Japanese village where the demographic crisis has caused the virtual disappearance of children to the odyssey of a family of Syrian refugees who want to reach Europe, or to the German neo-Nazis who see Muslims as a threat to their lives and their culture. Revolt is a mix of reportage, political analysis and travel book that allows us to understand to what extent globalization is unsustainable as we understood it and why those who want to end it do not necessarily promise a better world.

Much has been said and written about Brexit, the coming to power of Donald Trump, the rise of the far right, Islamic terrorism, European anti-establishment movements and the rejection of immigration. But, for the first time, this book explores the global link that, paradoxically, unites all these anti-globalisation demonstrations, ranging from radical anarchists to religious fundamentalists.

Driven by growing social unrest, radical and reactionary ideas have begun to make inroads into the middle class. They express resentment against the rich, bureaucratic elites and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few who feel comfortable in an interconnected and apparently free world. But these ideas are the manifestation of much older discontents. To understand them, it is necessary to look at the last few decades and reconstruct the political and historical mosaic that constitutes our current world. The era of revolt is too momentous and relevant to be thought of as the fruit of a mere whim or of a handful of deceitful and clever politicians.

The rebels in this revolt are a disparate coalition of the marginalized. Some of them claim that globalization, the liberal values ​​to which it is attached, and the technology it has spawned and fueled have proven toxic to their lives, their communities, and their values ​​and beliefs. Others have taken up arms, sometimes literally, against a political class that promised that global solutions would bring prosperity for all while at the same time becoming bedfellows with the richest 1 percent. They have rebelled because they were told that globalization would make the world flat: everything is spread out before you, everything is immediate, everything is within reach, all you have to do is grab it. Which is a false notion, because the international economy is based more on inequality than on equality. The COVID-19 pandemic that swept across the globe in 2020 exposed the degeneration of 20th-century politics and its inability to cope with contemporary challenges, such as the spread of a new pathogen in a highly interconnected world, further catalyzing the uprising against a broken world order. This outpouring of grievance, this rise of resentment, is changing the world. Contrary to the image often presented by the media, protests against international trade or, on a different level, against universal values, are much more than outbursts of hatred and ignorance or a passing phenomenon. Protests against increased immigration in Western societies are not always ultra-nationalist propaganda. Globalization has improved the human condition, but it has also decimated communities and devastated ecosystems, thus sowing the seeds of insurrection.