That's a great advantage -- to know what you don't know. You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and you're not arrogant. --Gene Sharp
That's going up on my wall. My real wall, with the tacks and whatnot.
Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gandhi's techniques aren't really generalizable to anything else People frequently say this (right down to the cliché about how lucky he was to be facing the British), but it's obviously untrue. Gandhi's great insight was that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance. He is increasingly being proven correct. (Popular movements pretty much instantly lose their legitimacy when they turn violent.)…
It requires an opponent who is capable of being shamed. Hitler wasn't shameable, nor Stalin. America wasn't in fighting the native tribes in the 19th century, or the Philippines at the turn of the 20th. The Japanese at Nanking and elsewhere. The Ottoman Empire in Armenia (a matter Turkey to this day will not acknowledge or discuss), in Greece, in Assyria, and Kurdistan following WWI. China in Tibet. Britain/Australia…
Nonviolence is a simple idea. It works when majority of people stop working, enough to cause loss to a company or the ruling party. It requires that the ruling party gains it power from the working class, which was the case in British ruled India and similarly in Iran.
It will fail if one nation is attacking another. It would have worked against Hitler if the German people had revolted (I guess they did not because they believed in Hitler's ideas, few minority that did not could be got rid off). Nonviolence would not have worked if British people used it against Hitler.
Being shameable is not necessary (but is helpful). For example, the occupy movement in America, even though nonviolent is not successful because the companies (or the top 1%) are not losing anything. There is not enough critical mass to the movement to affect the profits (enough that they take notice).
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Gandhi's techniques aren't really generalizable to anything else - any other imperial power than the British Empire would simply have shot him and massacred his followers. You couldn't do it in China for example (remind me what happened to the guy in the photo in Tianenmen Sq, standing in front of the tank). By the time Gandhi started his movement, the British had learnt the secret that had eluded everyone else…
That wasn't my point. My point was simply regarding calling someone the father of something, when clearly there were others who had been-there-done-that. Technique has nothing to do with it. In other words, there is clear and documented prior art. Regarding the rest of your comment Britishers would have left India for sure, its just that things would have been a lot more bloody without Gandhi's non-violence movement.
True, but it is not the important focus of the article. Most of these people would not care as to whether they are being called the Father-of-whatever.
Instead of focusing on who gets the credit for the idea, it should be more on implementation and outcome of the idea.
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#24The article didn't mention the billions of Dollars that (for example) Egyptian dictators have been getting every year to keep the Egyptian people under the boot and to make sure they don't push Israel to end its military occupation or to allow the Palestinian refugees to return. Egypt is the 2nd highest recipient of US aid after Israel. The 1000+ civilians that the Egyptian military regime has killed were killed with…
Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer?
Are you under the impression that all Americans (e.g. the Executive branch, and Dr Sharp) are equivalent? Because they're not; they're actually pretty varied, and pursue opposing goals sometimes!
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#25The article didn't mention the billions of Dollars that (for example) Egyptian dictators have been getting every year to keep the Egyptian people under the boot and to make sure they don't push Israel to end its military occupation or to allow the Palestinian refugees to return. Egypt is the 2nd highest recipient of US aid after Israel. The 1000+ civilians that the Egyptian military regime has killed were killed with…
Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer? Are you under the impression that all Americans (e.g. the Executive branch, and Dr Sharp) are equivalent? Because they're not; they're actually pretty varied, and pursue opposing goals sometimes!
To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski, all online conversations about geopolitics expand until the United States is at fault.
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer? Are you under the impression that all Americans (e.g. the Executive branch, and Dr Sharp) are equivalent? Because they're not; they're actually pretty varied, and pursue opposing goals sometimes!
To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski, all online conversations about geopolitics expand until the United States is at fault.
That's a fabulous line, I'm going to remember that one.
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#27Amazing that CNN is this scared of the people to be pushing the CIA-funded method of social resistance.
You mean Sharp himself is funded by the CIA?
What are your sources for this claim?
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Gandhi's techniques aren't really generalizable to anything else - any other imperial power than the British Empire would simply have shot him and massacred his followers. You couldn't do it in China for example (remind me what happened to the guy in the photo in Tianenmen Sq, standing in front of the tank). By the time Gandhi started his movement, the British had learnt the secret that had eluded everyone else…
Gandhi's techniques aren't really generalizable to anything else People frequently say this (right down to the cliché about how lucky he was to be facing the British), but it's obviously untrue. Gandhi's great insight was that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance. He is increasingly being proven correct. (Popular movements pretty much instantly lose their legitimacy when they turn violent.)…
I think you're confusing what you'd like to be true with what actually is true.
>Gandhi's great insight was that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance.
Except: that isn't true. Or rather, it's true only in certain circumstances.
>Popular movements pretty much instantly lose their legitimacy when they turn violent
Perhaps, but "legitimacy" and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Power accumulates in the hands of whoever controls large numbers of men with guns.
>That some authorities massacre people doesn't refute it.
Actually it pretty much does. In the contest between a nonviolent movement with "legitimacy" and a violent authority without it, the violent authority wins every time.
The few times that nonviolent movements have succeeded, they have done so against a tired power that was pretty much in the process of withdrawing anyway -- the Soviet Union circa 1990 and Great Britain circa 1950.
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#29The article didn't mention the billions of Dollars that (for example) Egyptian dictators have been getting every year to keep the Egyptian people under the boot and to make sure they don't push Israel to end its military occupation or to allow the Palestinian refugees to return. Egypt is the 2nd highest recipient of US aid after Israel. The 1000+ civilians that the Egyptian military regime has killed were killed with…
Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer? Are you under the impression that all Americans (e.g. the Executive branch, and Dr Sharp) are equivalent? Because they're not; they're actually pretty varied, and pursue opposing goals sometimes!
Why on earth would an article about struggle against dictatorship mention the main force that keeps the dictators in place (i.e. money, the weapons, diplomatic support) when talking about the "dictator's worst nightmare?"
I never suggested that Gene Sharp represents the government or that all Americans are equivalent but it's funny to attribute the recent Arab protests to some book written by Gene Sharp, these movements are homegrown.
Another commentator mentioned Gandhi, his nonviolence didn't force the British out, the threat of violent independence struggle was very real if the British didn't leave. Behind Martin Luther King there was Malcolm X. Nelson Mandela's ANC was called a "terrorist group" by the US in their struggle against apartheid (Mandela's name was on terror list until mid 2008). https://www.google.com/search?q=mandela+terrorist+list
Re: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer? Are you under the impression that all Americans (e.g. the Executive branch, and Dr Sharp) are equivalent? Because they're not; they're actually pretty varied, and pursue opposing goals sometimes!
To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski, all online conversations about geopolitics expand until the United States is at fault.
Simple one-liners often work well to brush aside the real issues, you don't need an argument, just a simplistic phrase that plays with emotions is enough.
May I suggest that you read about who was at fault at what place and when? The current Syrian dictatorship is not US-supported, neither are Iran and North Korea. Does that mean that Britain and US have no part in bringing Iran to where it is today (i.e. 1953)? Do you deny that 2 million Koreans were brutally murdered as a part of an imperial struggle in 1940s? Should we not mention that our one part Republo-crat government gives billions of dollars to dictators around the world and at the same time denies social services to its own citizens because we don't have enough money?
I suggest another link if you're not familiar: https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+us+interventions+sin...