Here's a history lesson for these young fire-filled anarchists around the world. During the Indian Mutiny of 1857, which has often been wrongly described as the first attempt at Indian independence from the British, the myriad bunches of rebels had no cohesion among themselves. They came from different groups, religions, castes and faiths, different feudal and linguistic entities. They shared a barbaric hatred of liberal British modernity, and joined together in support of preserving the decayed and senile Indian medieval feudal order in which they prospered and ruled. However, their first act was to re-establish under the banner of the Mughal Empire, the very central power that corroded and lost control of India and gave them their small feudal identities. The reason why they chose to revive the Mughal identity is that even rebels needed central authority since anarchism, with all its passionate burning fuel, could never give them the direction they needed.

The "conservative" preservation of the centralized order, often accomplished through the use of force, after the Congress of Vienna gave Europe the necessary peace, time, and internal development, which in turn helped spur the industrial revolution and made the continent the ruler of the globe for the next two hundred years. It gave Europeans a better and more modern standard of living than the rest of the world until the forces of geo-politics led to the inevitable breakdown in relations between the great powers. The mistakes made by the West during the Arab Spring in supporting the toppling of the leaders who were at least forces of stability are now coming back to haunt them. A similar disaster awaits leaders who support mass movements that undermine centralized authorities in rival countries. The biggest challenges faced by humanity were never clashes between ideologies or economic paradigms, nor were they clashes between different religions or cultures. The tension between order and chaos has always been at the heart of conflicts. Those with different ideologies and religions learn to live with each other, economies learn to inter-operate. What occupiers and jihadists and other supporters of mass movements should learn is perhaps an old lesson from the French revolution: that the world doesn't just improve by chopping someone's head off, or forcing a change in the established order.

Things only change when they are meant to change due to the forces of innovation and economics, under the guidance of a strong authority that preserves order. Robespierre, the hero of the French revolution, himself got beheaded in a guillotine in perhaps the most glowing irony. Perhaps the "twenty-somethings" who are at the forefront of these movements should get back to school for a history lesson.

Sumantra Maitra is an international relations and economics scholar and a freelance journalist. His research interest is Neo-Realism. You can find him at Twitter @MrMaitra.

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