Nathan Goldberg reminds us that the driving force behind the current popular freedom movements is brave men and women, not the technology hero myth. There was a time when all you had to do to make a revolution revolve was throw yourself in front of a tank or set yourself alight.

Not now. You need to bring a mobile phone at least to the barricades before storming. Smartphone is even better. Then you wave it at the non new media savvy media and before you can say Mark Zuckerberg, be praised, the head of this revolution is Fidel Facebook.

The story now goes that the Arab uprisings unseating the tyrants are successful because of the power of Facebook and its comrade Che Twitter. This is disrespectful, hero myth nonsense, the driving force of the revolution is anger and in many cases tremendous courage of people who are being slain and face death for the sake of a better future, one that many of us take for granted.
Any of the techie journalists and others who are now salivating at the thought of being part of the revolution, thanks to the social networks, albeit from behind a computer scene, are simply having a good old fashioned, vicarious wank.

However, as in all good stories, there is also a truth. It is that the ghastly regimes around the world are on notice. The social media has you covered. Your crimes will never again go unnoticed. There is a new truth out there and it will find you out. And as much as China bans the social media, even its day will come when it has to account for its wrongs against its own people.

Fact, most young people rely on Facebook, Twitter to get their voice heard, the western media is fast becoming surplus to demands. That way their message gets out unvarnished, it’s what they want.
It will not save some of those people from perishing. Yes the truth will out, but as it does the lights will go out in the lives of so many young people, killed by weapons ironically supplied by the arms dealers such as UK premier David Cameron to tyrants around the globe.
If it is important we know who the real heroes of the revolution are, we must also be aware of the villains. All of them.

By Nathan Goldberg, originally published on wowdewow.co.uk.