Nothing left to lose

I don't know how many people are following the protests in Lebanon.  God knows there's a lot going on all over.  But I listen to NPR, which has covered this, and I read the Economist.  The people of Lebanon have been in the streets protesting for the last 9 days, ignoring all the Lebanese government's attempts to calm them.  I just heard Marco Werman of The world interviewing a Lebanese activist on the protests.  She said things that resonated with me (paraphrasing):

The government has been "making the rich richer, and the poor poorer" for years, and nothing ever changes, and the same faces keep doing the same things.  She said that "we have nothing left to lose" by demonstrating, despite the fact that Hezbollah, at least, is now beating demonstrators.  Yes, Hezbollah is Iran's Shiite militia in Lebanon, put there to make trouble for Israel; but it's part of the Lebanese government, and its people are attacking the ones protesting the government.

"Nothing left to lose" made me think of a historical incident in 1789 in which "the people" felt they had nothing left to lose.  We call it the French Revolution, and it led to the death of a king and queen, and of a lot of other wealthy and prominent people, by an aroused public that felt it had nothing left to lose.  France is now a republic, but by the late 1790s the revolution had led to the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte and eventually a war that covered Europe.

I don't know if the leaders of Lebanon read European history or not.  They may think they can get away with this, and continue as they have been.  But if their population really feels it has nothing left to lose, they may be as wrong as the French aristocracy was.