Out of hopelessness, digitally expressed, a public had crystallized that was interested in the affair of abolishing the whole system. The “key message” of the protesters, wrote Manuel Castells, a student of the movement and a participant in it, “was a rejection of the entire political and economic institutions that determine people’s lives.”14 This meant nothing less than the elimination of representative democracy and capitalism. If these idols of the modern world could be overturned, society would be purged of exploitation and distrust, and the individual would once again be free to
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