Two recent books, one about violent Islamist networks and the other about the white power movement, find that they have some traits in common. The seeds for each were sown by US military interventions from Vietnam to Iraq, and they have both proved adept at adapting media formats for propaganda purposes.

Protests against a dysfunctional and corrupt political class have erupted nationwide, crossing sectarian divides. A frustrated younger generation, unscarred by the civil war, is in the vanguard.

Did the same pro-market economic policies that gave rise to the Arab Spring also doom the would-be revolutionaries by sapping their capacity for envisioning radical alternatives?