Purest - The violence in Arab Spring and nearly every effective revolution was nearly always started by the police. Self-defense is not violence.
Abacab - Whatever Gene Sharp is does not make his words any more or less true. Considering the source is one thing, discounting a message only because of the source is ignorance. What I do know is that there have been many successful revolutions in the recent past from the 1988 student uprising in Burma, to the Otpor! takeout of Milosevic, to the Orange revolution in Ukraine, to Arab Spring, which have been guided by leaders who have had a thorough understanding of the list of 198 specific, effective, non-violent actions Gene Sharp details in From Dictatorship to Democracy. Those people are actually interviewed in How To Start A Revolution, and give at least partial credit to the success of their revolutions to Gene Sharp.
He says that if we give them the option of violence, they will choose violence. And that that is the very arena in which they have the most power over us. They have the big guns. They have the big bombs. They have the surveillance equipment and the files on all of us. What we have is numbers and willpower. If we couple numbers and willpower with a steadfast belief that violence will not solve our problems, then we need alternative actions to force the change that is needed. Gene Sharp gives us those options.
Maybe he hasn't ever held a gun, but people who have held guns give him credit, so maybe trust fund kids who cant think beyond their scene and their nose need to shut the fuck up about topics which are obviously way the fuck over their head (which is buried in the sand).
|