The chain of mass protests that swept through the countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East led not only to the undemocratic replacement of political elites and destabilized the socio-economic situation in the region, but actually became the beginning of the use of a new mechanism for the global redivision of the world. The use of so-called “soft power” as a set of predominantly non-violent measures to achieve political and economic goals with the involvement of large protest masses of the population was called the “Arab Spring”. These events in the Arab region demonstrated to the world community the effect of so-called “controlled chaos” technologies, which have not been fully studied by specialists and require a comprehensive analysis at the intersection of various sciences, from political science to neurophysiology and human psychology. The techniques used in hybrid wars are not based on socio-economic or political problems, but are based on new technologies for turning off the critical consciousness of people and involve the emotional and subconscious spheres of the personality of those being manipulated. It is important to note that mass protests of civilians against the authorities took place in countries with high rates of economic growth, with a poverty level of no more than 20% and a relatively low level of corruption. In the traditional understanding of the term “revolution,” in these countries there were no objective prerequisites for popular anti-government protest. However, the destabilization of the situation occurred almost instantly and led to the overthrow of the existing governments. In these cases, fundamentally new mechanisms were used to control the protest crowd [1]. An important point in the events of the “Arab Spring” was the widespread use of the Internet and various information and communication technologies, which played the role of a driver and system-forming principle for the protest masses.
The starting point can be considered the events in Tunisia in 2009, when almost immediately after the outbreak of mass unrest, President Ben Ali left the country, after which a transitional government was established. The armed forces were not involved, changes took place according to the Western scenario through political debates and elections. Events in Egypt, Libya and Syria followed a similar scenario. Everywhere at the first stage of revolutionary protest events, the leading role was played by educated youth who actively used the Internet. Most experts studying the “Arab Spring” name the following factors for the radicalization of the protesting masses.
The first factor is associated with a significant increase in the number of educated youth in the country. The high level of education that young people often receive abroad (especially in Libya and Syria) contrasts sharply with the lack of well-paid jobs available to people with higher education. The values of civil society and democracy instilled in the West are pushing young people to express their discontent and actively protest.
The second factor was the increasing availability of the Internet in the Arab world. The wave of the Arab Spring coincided with the Internet boom in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and other countries in the region. For example, in 2010, the number of Facebook users in the Arab world grew by 78%, and by 2011, the number of Internet users in Egypt was already 26 users per 100 people. and in Tunisia this figure has reached the global level. In almost all countries of the region, the creation of a Facebook event page associated with a national rally led to real street protests [2].
Thirdly , as the Internet spread and its users increased in the 2000s, the so-called “Arabization” of the virtual space and the expansion of the Arabic-speaking audience actively took place. Initially, a significant problem for Internet communication was the lack of generally accepted standards for writing letters and the difference in dialects in the regions of the Arab world. This led to problems with software and, accordingly, with the use of Arabic on the Internet at the turn of the 2000s. In 2006, Arabic accounted for less than 2% of Internet content, but by 2011, most resources functioned in Arabic, which was close to the literary version, which significantly facilitated the processes of communication and dissemination of various types of information [3].
The fourth factor of the “Arab Spring” in the field of information and communication technologies was the widespread use of mobile television systems and various gadgets connected to the Internet and, as a result, the growth of users of social networks. Over the past 10–15 years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of mobile phone owners in the Arab world. For example, in Tunisia, the number of mobile phones per 100 people has increased 18 times since 2002, and the share of smartphone owners in Egypt was 15%. Smartphones allowed protesters to post information live, as well as organize interactions that were virtually uncontrollable by censorship [4].
Social networks themselves have become one of the main navigators of the protest movement in the Arab Spring. Modern information technologies, in suitable conditions of the social environment, can provide the necessary behavior and activity of the revolutionary masses, mobilize them and direct them in the right direction. Moreover, all this is done remotely, which allows the manipulator of simple movements to remain completely safe and, most importantly, maintain anonymity. An illusion is created in the minds of the population that the protest movement and the information battlefield organized in the Internet space are the work of the people themselves, so to speak, their will and the embodiment of righteous anger directed against injustice. In reality, the situation is completely different. The consciousness of Internet users is skillfully manipulated for purposes that are far from justice and truth. Thus, in a matter of hours, and sometimes even minutes, quite large groups can be created, literally “out of nothing,” capable of collective mass protest without the participation of any parties or movements. The most famous example of this is the situation in Tunisia, when on December 14, 2010, a resident of the city of Sidi Bouzid, vegetable seller M. Bouazizi, as a sign of protest against poverty and police brutality, committed an act of public self-immolation at the city hall. Bouazizi’s self-immolation served as the starting point of the Color (Jasmine) Revolution. The tragic fate of the young Tunisian was widely circulated in all media; the news of suicide spread throughout the world in a matter of hours and shook up the Arab public. Bouazizi himself was presented as a martyr to the regime and played the role of a sacred victim – a kind of quintessence of all Tunisian troubles and social problems. Within a couple of hours after the death of the young man, the Al-Jazeera channel provided the public with its own version of events. Thus, it was indicated that Bouazizi could not find a job and earned his livelihood by selling vegetables. His goods were confiscated for a trumped-up reason by police officials who insulted him with a slap in the face. Unable to bear the moral suffering and humiliation, M. Bouazizi committed suicide by self-immolation. Active commenting and voting began on Internet blogs. The deceased was portrayed as a martyr to a corrupt and brutal regime. Two days after his suicide, demonstrations began in Tunisia for social rights and against unemployment. However, economic slogans were quickly replaced by political demands for a change in the Ben Ali regime. In reality, this story was very far from the real life of a Tunisian. M. Bouazizi left school at the age of 14. He never worked, but was an unemployed drunkard who did odd jobs. But in order to move the audience, he was presented as a certified specialist who was looking for, but could not find, a job. This must have resonated with young people with university degrees, who saw in it in many ways a reflection of their destiny. For the poorly educated public, a story was invented with a slap in the face that never happened. It was aimed at awakening sympathy among the country’s rural residents. Thus, from everyday suicide, a national myth was created about the martyr and victim of a cruel regime [5]. The creation of various kinds of emotional myths, widely circulated in the media, is a typical and extremely effective technique of “color revolutions.” At the end of December 2010, British journalist for The Guardian B. Whitaker described the protest events in Tunisia as sufficient to end the rule of President Ben Ali. In an interview that B. Whitaker gave for the Al-Jazeera television channel, the following commentary on the current events was made: “This uprising is the result of a deadly combination of poverty, unemployment and political repression – three characteristics of most Arab countries” [7]. Already on December 24, the number of protesters in the city of Menzel-Buzayan, where M. Bouazizi was born, reached 2 thousand people. Demonstrators destroyed police stations, cars, and administrative buildings. In January, popular discontent spilled beyond Menzel-Buzayan and escalated into mass demonstrations, pogroms and clashes with government officials throughout the country. Demonstrations and violent clashes between youth and police took place in three Tunisian cities – Kasserine, Tala and Ragheb. The protest movement was actively regulated with the help of social networks, which had gained great popularity among Tunisians by this time. So, if in 2008, only 30 thousand Tunisians had a page on Facebook, then by the end of 2009 there were 800 thousand. When the revolution reached its climax and Ben Ali fled the country, there were already 2 million Tunisian pages on Facebook. A fifth of the country’s population used this social network. Takriz also used other public networking tools. A false account of the Tunisian Foreign Minister was created on Twitter, and Skype and Mumble were used to communicate with each other [6]. administrative buildings. In January, popular discontent spilled beyond Menzel-Buzayan and escalated into mass demonstrations, pogroms and clashes with government officials throughout the country. Demonstrations and violent clashes between youth and police took place in three Tunisian cities – Kasserine, Tala and Ragheb. The protest movement was actively regulated with the help of social networks, which had gained great popularity among Tunisians by this time. So, if in 2008, only 30 thousand Tunisians had a page on Facebook, then by the end of 2009 there were 800 thousand. When the revolution reached its climax and Ben Ali fled the country, there were already 2 million Tunisian pages on Facebook. A fifth of the country’s population used this social network. Takriz also used other public networking tools. A false account of the Tunisian Foreign Minister was created on Twitter, and Skype and Mumble were used to communicate with each other [6]. administrative buildings. In January, popular discontent spilled beyond Menzel-Buzayan and escalated into mass demonstrations, pogroms and clashes with government officials throughout the country. Demonstrations and violent clashes between youth and police took place in three Tunisian cities – Kasserine, Tala and Ragheb. The protest movement was actively regulated with the help of social networks, which had gained great popularity among Tunisians by this time. So, if in 2008, only 30 thousand Tunisians had a page on Facebook, then by the end of 2009 there were 800 thousand. When the revolution reached its climax and Ben Ali fled the country, there were already 2 million Tunisian pages on Facebook. A fifth of the country’s population used this social network. Takriz also used other public networking tools. A false account of the Tunisian Foreign Minister was created on Twitter, and Skype and Mumble were used to communicate with each other [6].
If previously television played a dominant role in influencing the consciousness of citizens, it could be easily controlled by government authorities, but now it has been replaced by the Internet. One of the main roles in the Arab Spring was played by Google’s free service for posting videos on the Internet – YouTube. In addition to amateur filming from the streets in riots, the site had quite professionally made videos that artificially inflamed the protest movement. For example, one of these videos was the recordings of the famous rap artist El General. The youth anthem of the Tunisian revolution was his song “Allah Akbar” with the following words: “I will fight with my songs! I want to be a martyr!” On January 5, 2011, similar riots engulfed Algeria. On January 25, the opposition took to the streets of Egyptian cities and then the “Arab Spring”, following a similar scenario, moved to Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco and Libya. However, television, which has faded into the background of information wars, is also actively used by manipulators. When the protest events in Tunisia reached their climax, they began to be actively covered on television. The leading role in covering the events of the “Arab Spring” belongs to two Arab television channels, Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, whose broadcasts in Arabic and English were supposed to generate sympathy for the rebels. In fact, it was the news clips of these channels that became the most important source of information for both Arab countries and the Western world. The effectiveness of television is determined both by its wide distribution and the impact of the visual series, which imposes a ready-made “picture” on the viewer, leaving no time to analyze this information. Thus, television programs vividly talked about the luxurious life enjoyed by the population of Western countries. The result was not long in coming. Among the thousands of Arab youth, who compared their own poverty with the prosperity of Western states, a gap arose between expectations of prosperity and reality, which prepared a protest in the minds of young people. According to A. Jungerr, a professor at the University of Bamberg, “if social networks mobilized people to protest and take to the streets, then satellite electronic media became the real structures that drove these revolutions” [10]. The role of the Qatari channel Al Jazeera in broadcasting video footage of events and major news reports is recognized by all analysts. The channel has influence on a huge audience. It has 65 offices around the world with 3,000 employees transmitting information 24 hours a day. In 2008, its audience was more than 40 million Arabic-speaking viewers. In 2011, the English version of Al Jazeera already had about 120 million viewers. According to experts For the Arab public, Al Jazeera has become a kind of sacred channel, the habit of watching news reports of which has become second nature to the Arab population.
Active coverage of protest events in the international media provides protesters not only with moral support and legitimizes their actions, but also creates additional information pressure on current national leaders. After all, the main goal of “color revolutions” is to nonviolently replace political elites with their puppet henchmen. A wave of severe criticism of the “inhumane regime and its tyranny” is unfolding in the international media; statements by Western leaders about the inadmissibility of using force against protesters are being circulated. For example, back in 2010, on the eve of the “Arab Spring,” the media began to create an information space and prepare the ideological basis for the protest. On the Internet, as well as on the pages of many Western periodicals, a statement was distributed by the international legal organization Amnesty International, which stated that “most of the Arab countries bear the heavy burden of the results of absolute non-respect for human and civil rights. We can look at this issue through the prism of countries in which the revolution achieved what it wanted – rulers who had been sitting in their places for decades left their posts. Some left voluntarily, some with a scandal that weighed down the lives of hundreds of citizens, and some held on to the back of the chair until the end, not wanting to part with what they had become so accustomed to over many years” [7]. In addition to criticism of the regime in the media, frank recommendations to local leaders to resign from their powers may also be circulated, naturally for the sake of maintaining freedoms and democracy. All this only adds fuel to the fire and leads to a greater escalation of the internal political conflict. The most obvious example of this technology of information pressure on a national leader is the events in Egypt in 2011, when the Swiss Foreign Minister stated “that she is concerned about violence in Egypt” and called on the Egyptian authorities to “respect freedom of speech,” the Turkish Prime Minister addressed Hosni Mubarak with in the following words: “Listen to the cries of the people and their demands. Act in the interests of peace, security and stability in Egypt. Take measures to satisfy the people. The rules of democracy require respect for the will of the people, their demands and call not to ignore the people,” the US State Department called on the Egyptian authorities to deal peacefully with the demonstrators, and the American president himself called for an immediate start to the transfer of power procedure. Rallies in support of protesters in Egypt were held in several cities in Canada, including Montreal [8]. The US President was the last to speak out on this issue, advising Mubarak to immediately resign in order to “save the population from the bloody swamp of civil war” [9]. Naturally, this position of the West and its allies further cultivates chaos, demoralizes the government and adds confidence to the protesting masses in victory.
Naturally, Western countries and especially the United States, which are actively implementing the policy of “controlled chaos” and striving to establish global dominance in the world, are trying in every possible way to spread the freedom of the Internet and social networks, naturally controlling them. Moreover, this policy is carried out completely openly and is not hidden from the public. For example, in January 2010, in her interview, Hillary Clinton stated that it was necessary to raise the idea of Internet freedom to the level of US foreign policy priorities. The US government “supports the development of new means that allow citizens to exercise their rights of free expression without politically motivated censorship. We provide groups around the world with the tools and make sure they reach the people who need it” to “have secure access to the Internet.” In September of the same year, within the framework of the Freedom 2010 Internet conference organized by Google, the prospects for using the Internet to spread democratic values in the world were discussed. At the conference there was a separate section “Network of Bloggers of the Middle East and North Africa” [5]. A year later, the US Secretary of State declared that “the Internet has become the public space of the 21st century,” and that “demonstrations in Egypt and Iran, supported by Facebook, Twitter and You Tube, reflected the power of technology as accelerators of political, social and economic change” [ 12].
Speaking about the mechanisms of the “Arab Spring”, it is necessary to understand that the vast majority of protest groups are directly or indirectly connected with Western structures, their leaders are trained abroad, receive financial funding in the form of various grants, and are also well technically equipped. Many news agencies and developers of social networks on the Internet actively cooperate with the American State Department in the matter of political machinations. For example, in 2008, the United States began creating a global “Alliance of Youth Movements.” All kinds of technical and organizational support were provided, training and coordination of opposition youth movements on a global scale was carried out, primarily in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and the countries of the former USSR. The first founding summit, held in New York, included State Department officials, members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), former National Security Council staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers, and a host of representatives from US corporations and news organizations, including AT&T, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and MTV. The Alliance’s mission statement says it is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering grassroots activists to make a greater impact on the world. In 2009, the idea of the “Alliance of Youth Movements” was actively supported by H. Clinton. The founders of the Alliance were: former adviser to Condoleezza Rice – Jared Cohen, now a top manager at Google, working for the powerful Council on Foreign Relations [8, 11]. Google employees often appear in the events of the Arab Spring. For example, back in the summer of 2010, Internet activist El Shaheed began calling for protests in Egypt through his Facebook page. His real name is Vail Ghonim, a 30-year-old manager at Google. Thanks to his organizational skills and extensive use of social media, Weil was able to assemble a large demonstration in Cairo. On January 28, he was arrested, which was filmed using a mobile phone, and the new information spread instantly spread throughout the Egyptian segment of the Internet. Google, immediately after the arrest of Vail Ghonim, published a telephone number where witnesses to the incident could call, thereby showing solidarity with its employee. One of the founders of Twitter, B. Stone expressed confidence that the open exchange of information has a global positive effect in uniting the protesting masses.
Social Internet networks have become one of the most significant mechanisms for organizing the Arab Spring. In almost all countries that became victims of such a “revolution,” operational control of crowd actions was organized by sending messages about upcoming rallies and other actions through social networks and email, as well as on mobile phones. For these purposes, servers of Facebook, Twitter, as well as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail located in the USA were actively used. Further, the crowd, heated to the maximum, only needs the most insignificant incident or provocation for an outbreak to occur, brawls with law enforcement agencies to begin, and a full-scale civil conflict to break out. For example, one of the participants in the revolutionary events in Egypt noted that the protests were planned by the “Revolutionary Youth Council,” which included only 15 people. They were either members or supporters of the April 6 youth movement. Facebook and Twitter were used by the guys not for communication, but to deceive the security services. When X-Day arrived, Egyptian security forces were waiting for Protestants in some places, while they gathered people in others. In five minutes, using regular telephones, more than 300 people could be mobilized (invitations were sent out like a fan). Thus, one of the protest organizers, Amr Salah, told a correspondent that they constantly forced the police to disperse their forces and misled them. Twitter and Facebook were used to direct the crowd only when activists were already in the required positions. Sometimes poor areas, such as the Cairo outskirts of Imbada, were deliberately chosen to “ignite” actions, where people could be stirred up more quickly [13].
The use of information and communication technologies in “color revolutions” is especially effective in the following conditions:
Lack of information in the official media about the ongoing events, when many government television channels either kept silent about the flaring revolution or simply did not pay enough attention to acts of isolated protest (as was the case with M. Bouazizi in Tunisia).
Lack of access to media or blocking of mobile communications. Responsive actions by law enforcement agencies aimed at partially restricting Internet content or banning it completely, as well as temporary shutdowns of mobile communications, could further provoke the crowd and lead to an escalation of the conflict. Such measures, for example, were taken in Egypt, when all providers in the country stopped working almost simultaneously. The websites of the president and government of the country also did not open. The work of the social network Facebook and the Twitter service was stopped, but this could not prevent the use of the Internet by protesters. They continued to use microblogs through mobile applications, SMS messages and online “mirrors”.
The ruling regime lacks a proactive mechanism for action in the blogosphere. The development of mechanisms for completely shutting down the Internet throughout the country in such a way that it does not lead to systemic failures of infrastructure and logistics processes is still being discussed among specialists. China and Iran are actively working to create their own local information networks, which would become an alternative to the World Wide Web. However, at the moment, all countries in the world and their citizens are very dependent on the Internet. This allows it to be used to carry out “color revolutions”.
The events of the Arab Spring clearly demonstrated the power and importance of information and communication technologies in managing the masses and achieving set goals. Television, the Internet, social networks, mobile phones and other fashionable gadgets have become an effective instrument of international politics. The modern information society, which actively uses the Internet, has demonstrated its easy manipulation and gullibility. A modern urbanized person practically cannot imagine himself outside the Internet space and is heavily dependent on it even in everyday life. It is this anthropological view that is most convenient for manipulation. A person who falls asleep with a mobile phone in his hand and wakes up, the first thing he does is reach for the touch panel of his gadget, and is easily ready to perceive the virtual reality offered to him on the Internet. Such a user’s critical thinking is reduced to a minimum, gullibility and submissive agreement with everything that is demonstrated on the network become the norm of the modern world. The largest age group of the Arab Spring are young people aged 14 to 25 years old who actively use the Internet. Demographic, physiological and social characteristics make this group very susceptible to radicalism. Lack of life experience, idealism and uncertainty of goals make it possible to perceive any revolutionary trends. The modern young generation spends most of their time on the Internet, their communication takes place there, young people get their basic information from there, all their entertainment and games are there. Especially Internet games and quests, which gradually cause an addictive effect in the user. When a person receives the next task and strives to complete it, and in conditions of blurring the boundaries in a person’s mind between the virtual world and the world of real reality, this leads to the fact that the user is easily ready to carry out any commands of the manipulator. For example, go to the square and participate in protests. The high anonymity inherent in cyberspace and the lack of connection between a person and his virtual reflection determine a tendency towards radicalism even in real life. Modern information and communication technologies have demonstrated to the world almost endless possibilities for manipulating people. This phenomenon, clearly demonstrated by the Arab Spring, was realized by all interested forces: from politicians to totalitarian sects and international terrorism. People’s dependence on the Internet in the near future may well become one of humanity’s global problems, and the information network is already a weapon of a major geopolitical war.
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