ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces two unique western contributions to the Arab revolutions: political theory and social media. ‘Public intellectual’ Bernard-Henri Levy helped catalyze the fall of Moammar Qaddafi and Libya’s descent into chaos. The works of political philosophers Murray Bookchin and Gene Sharp contributed to the Syrian Kurdish uprising and the Egyptian revolution. In a different dimension, Facebook, Twitter and additional social media offered deceptively accessible and ultimately counterproductive revolutionary tools to regime opponents in Egypt and elsewhere in early 2011.
