You can tell the genesis of the Arab Spring in other alternative ways ... the comic book about Martin Luther King and civil disobedience that was translated into Arabic and widely distributed in Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring. You can tell of Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience tactics being inspired by Gandhi’s tactics, and Gandhi’s being inspired by Tolstoy and the radical acts of non-cooperation and sabotage of British women suffragists. So the threads of ideas weave around the world and through decades and centuries. There’s another lineage for the Arab Spring in hip hop, ... Tunisian hip-hop artist El General was, along with Bouazizi, an instigator of the uprising, and other musicians played a role in articulating the outrage. 

Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, 2015