'The Invisible Arab'

The following is the first of a series of excerpts that Al Jazeera will be publishing from The Invisible Arab: The promise and peril of the Arab revolutions by Marwan Bishara.

In much of the world's media, the narrative goes like this: An oppressed people who have suffered passively suddenly decide that enough is enough and, thanks to Western technology and inspiration, spontaneously rise up to reclaim their freedom, inspiring what is called the Arab Spring.

Like most revolutions, however, this one was a long time coming. The historic takeover of Tunis's November 7 Square, Cairo's Tahrir Square, and Manama's Pearl Square, among others, were the culmination of a long social and political struggle - countless sit-ins, strikes, pickets, and demonstrations by people who risked and suffered intimidation, torture, and imprisonment.

What started as a desperate act of self-immolation by Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, soon became a viral event on the internet, one that led angry Tunisians to pour into the streets by the thousands. Demonstrations turned into national upheaval and culminated in a full-fledged revolution that toppled the Tunisian dictatorship and spread east to other countries to kindle the greatest Arab transformation in memory. Never had the region witnessed such collective vigour and yearning for change.

Read more of our Tunisia coverage Within a few weeks, millions of Arabs filled their streets and squares, giving new meaning to Mark Twain's claim that there's power in numbers. The silent majority finally spoke, breaking the psychological barrier of fear erected by regimes through decades of oppression, and discovering in record time that, as the fairy tale foretold, the emperor had no clothes.