11 ms·

Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare

113 points by gruseom 14y ago

dredmorbius 14y ago
All that an no link to his seminal work itself, "From Dictatorship to Democracy". Free download. Or drop a dime on him. http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html
- jdale27 14y ago
  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drop_a_dime http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drop_a_dime ?
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    My idiomatic Earthspeak ain't always so hot. "Spend a penny" apparently isn't quite what I had in mind either. Fork over some bread to the guy is the sentiment I'm trying to get across.
- mkramlich 14y ago
  Given the recent trend of yet-another-hipster-digital-doodad raising millions on Kickstarter hopefully enough socially progressive folks exist out there as well to drop a million or so on Gene and his team.
vijayr 14y ago
This reminds me of a story I read as a kid, not exactly a fight against brutal regimes though (don't know if it is a true story either): When shoe factory workers went on strike in Japan, they used a very interesting method - no shouting, or blocking roads etc. They simply made just one half of a pair (just the left side, I think). Thousands of shoes produced every day, but just the left shoe. Didn't take long for the management to sit down at the table to talk. There are many many peaceful ways to protest, I guess.
- hnhg 14y ago
  I was told a story of a body of students who wanted to protest something in W. Germany in the '60s (I am recalling this from a night spent drinking so I might have every detail wrong!). As I recall it, instead of taking to the streets, they put on suits and amassed themselves at the relevant government office. A group of representatives then asked for a meeting, which was granted, and they put forward their case. They got what they wanted. I think the point was that the government officials thought they were respectable and reasonable and so their requests seemed so too.
- mynameishere 14y ago
  That would normally result in mass firings or a lockout, both legitimate in a case like that.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    Japan must have more reasonable labor laws.
yumraj 14y ago
Not to take anything away from Gene Sharp, but per CNN: He's been called the father of nonviolent struggle. Should Gandhi be the father of nonviolent struggle, or someone before him.
- keeptrying 14y ago
  Well Gandhi never wrote it in book form that could be read by others and implemented. Gandhi could be the father and Gene could be the "Engineer" of non violent struggle ... :)
  - locopati 14y ago
    Gandhi was a prolific writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Literary_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Literary_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Primary_sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Primary_sources
  - bgilroy26 14y ago
    Henry David Thoreau - On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849) http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Thoreau/Civil%20Disobedience.htm http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Thoreau/Civil%20Disobedience.h...
- gaius 14y ago
  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: empires are actually more trouble than they're worth, how do we get out of here?
  - yumraj 14y ago
    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.
scarmig 14y ago
A dictator's worst nightmare is most likely a coup d'etat from some military general you've crossed or decreased funding for 10%. And if all you're going for is regime change, it's not clear that violent action is a bad route. But what (good) people usually want is social change, not merely regime change. And achieving that is much, much more difficult through violence: justice is achieved by broadening civil society and strengthening its institutions, and violence always does harm to those.
accountswu 14y ago
The 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 US-made bullets and were showered with US-made teargas canisters, the armored cars they were run over with were US-made and paid for by us American taxpayers. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm "U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/biden_01-27.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/biden_01-... "JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel. And I think that it would be -- I would not refer to him as a dictator." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0AUd8U_8jY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0AUd8U_8jY 'Egypt bullets made in US' January 2011 http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-tear-gas-rubber-bullets-suppress-peaceful-uprisings-around-the-world/ http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-tear-gas-rubber-bullets-su... U.S. Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets Suppress Peaceful Uprisings Around the World June 30, 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/tahrir-square-us-teargas-used-egypt http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/tahrir-square-us... US firm's teargas used against Tahrir Square protesters Egypt's military junta fired CS gas cartridges made by Combined Systems Inc of Pennsylvania, say demonstrators The story of the murdered civilians of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel/Palestine and Bahrain is the same; American taxpayers' money is used to fund the brutal dictatorships as long as the dictators are willing to follow orders. Same story, different faces, different numbers. As long as they are "Our sons of bitches." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García Though the Somozas were generally regarded as ruthless dictators, the United States continued to support them as a non-communist stronghold in Nicaragua. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) supposedly remarked in 1939 that "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."[4][5][6] Edit: The only country that gets more aid than the Egyptian junta is Israel which gets more than $3 billion in military aid as well as diplomatic shielding for its nukes (as opposed to Iran which is an NPT-signatory, has the right to civilian nuclear power and is under sanctions since 1979 when they kicked out the US-installed dictator Raza Shah Pehlvi who was installed in the 1953 coup carried out by CIA and MI6), diplomatic shielding against any UN resolutions against its 40+ years old military occupation and 60+ years of denial of right of return to the UN-registered 1948 non-Jewish refugees that made up about 65% of the country until 1947 and many more billions of dollars in the form of direct and indirect subsidies (google up if you're curious, US has used some 40 vetoes in UN since 1970, almost all of them to protect Israeli occupation). Democrats and Republicans agree; no money for grandpa's healthcare or student loan bailouts but we'll fund and arm the butchers of Israel, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen and more.
jackolas 14y ago
Amazing that CNN is this scared of the people to be pushing the CIA-funded method of social resistance.
- theorique 14y ago
  You mean Sharp himself is funded by the CIA? What are your sources for this claim?
  - regularfry 14y ago
    Besides, even if it were "funded by the CIA", that would mean the CIA would be helping ordinary people avoid ending up face down with a boot on their neck. I would have very few problems with that.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    No, he's saying Sharp is irrelevant. Change only comes through violence or threat of violence so the Parent apparently meant that uprising is so feared that Sharp's methods are being trumpeted as being effective in the hopes of keeping everyone peaceful and controllable.
noonespecial 14y ago
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.
stcredzero 14y ago
A friend told me that for awhile, the Welsh separatist movement protested by translating road signs -- from English to Welsh, then removing the English version. (Which to me is nonviolent, so long as no information about hazards was obscured.)
gallerytungsten 14y ago
A contrary opinion. This blogger has repeatedly stated that these puff pieces about Gene Sharp (of which the CNN article is only the most recent example) are total BS. http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/06/oh-arab-influence-of-gene-sharp-unknown.html http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/06/oh-arab-influence-of-g...

113 points by gruseom 14y ago

All that an no link to his seminal work itself, "From Dictatorship to Democracy". Free download. Or drop a dime on him. http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html

jdale27 14y ago
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drop_a_dime http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drop_a_dime ?
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  My idiomatic Earthspeak ain't always so hot. "Spend a penny" apparently isn't quite what I had in mind either. Fork over some bread to the guy is the sentiment I'm trying to get across.
mkramlich 14y ago
Given the recent trend of yet-another-hipster-digital-doodad raising millions on Kickstarter hopefully enough socially progressive folks exist out there as well to drop a million or so on Gene and his team.

vijayr 14y ago

This reminds me of a story I read as a kid, not exactly a fight against brutal regimes though (don't know if it is a true story either): When shoe factory workers went on strike in Japan, they used a very interesting method - no shouting, or blocking roads etc. They simply made just one half of a pair (just the left side, I think). Thousands of shoes produced every day, but just the left shoe. Didn't take long for the management to sit down at the table to talk. There are many many peaceful ways to protest, I guess.

hnhg 14y ago
I was told a story of a body of students who wanted to protest something in W. Germany in the '60s (I am recalling this from a night spent drinking so I might have every detail wrong!). As I recall it, instead of taking to the streets, they put on suits and amassed themselves at the relevant government office. A group of representatives then asked for a meeting, which was granted, and they put forward their case. They got what they wanted. I think the point was that the government officials thought they were respectable and reasonable and so their requests seemed so too.
mynameishere 14y ago
That would normally result in mass firings or a lockout, both legitimate in a case like that.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Japan must have more reasonable labor laws.

yumraj 14y ago

Not to take anything away from Gene Sharp, but per CNN: He's been called the father of nonviolent struggle. Should Gandhi be the father of nonviolent struggle, or someone before him.

keeptrying 14y ago
Well Gandhi never wrote it in book form that could be read by others and implemented. Gandhi could be the father and Gene could be the "Engineer" of non violent struggle ... :)
- locopati 14y ago
  Gandhi was a prolific writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Literary_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Literary_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Primary_sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Primary_sources
- bgilroy26 14y ago
  Henry David Thoreau - On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849) http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Thoreau/Civil%20Disobedience.htm http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Thoreau/Civil%20Disobedience.h...
gaius 14y ago
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: empires are actually more trouble than they're worth, how do we get out of here?
- yumraj 14y ago
  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.

scarmig 14y ago

A dictator's worst nightmare is most likely a coup d'etat from some military general you've crossed or decreased funding for 10%. And if all you're going for is regime change, it's not clear that violent action is a bad route. But what (good) people usually want is social change, not merely regime change. And achieving that is much, much more difficult through violence: justice is achieved by broadening civil society and strengthening its institutions, and violence always does harm to those.

accountswu 14y ago

The 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 US-made bullets and were showered with US-made teargas canisters, the armored cars they were run over with were US-made and paid for by us American taxpayers. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm "U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/biden_01-27.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/biden_01-... "JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel. And I think that it would be -- I would not refer to him as a dictator." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0AUd8U_8jY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0AUd8U_8jY 'Egypt bullets made in US' January 2011 http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-tear-gas-rubber-bullets-suppress-peaceful-uprisings-around-the-world/ http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-tear-gas-rubber-bullets-su... U.S. Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets Suppress Peaceful Uprisings Around the World June 30, 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/tahrir-square-us-teargas-used-egypt http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/tahrir-square-us... US firm's teargas used against Tahrir Square protesters Egypt's military junta fired CS gas cartridges made by Combined Systems Inc of Pennsylvania, say demonstrators The story of the murdered civilians of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel/Palestine and Bahrain is the same; American taxpayers' money is used to fund the brutal dictatorships as long as the dictators are willing to follow orders. Same story, different faces, different numbers. As long as they are "Our sons of bitches." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García Though the Somozas were generally regarded as ruthless dictators, the United States continued to support them as a non-communist stronghold in Nicaragua. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) supposedly remarked in 1939 that "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."[4][5][6] Edit: The only country that gets more aid than the Egyptian junta is Israel which gets more than $3 billion in military aid as well as diplomatic shielding for its nukes (as opposed to Iran which is an NPT-signatory, has the right to civilian nuclear power and is under sanctions since 1979 when they kicked out the US-installed dictator Raza Shah Pehlvi who was installed in the 1953 coup carried out by CIA and MI6), diplomatic shielding against any UN resolutions against its 40+ years old military occupation and 60+ years of denial of right of return to the UN-registered 1948 non-Jewish refugees that made up about 65% of the country until 1947 and many more billions of dollars in the form of direct and indirect subsidies (google up if you're curious, US has used some 40 vetoes in UN since 1970, almost all of them to protect Israeli occupation). Democrats and Republicans agree; no money for grandpa's healthcare or student loan bailouts but we'll fund and arm the butchers of Israel, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen and more.

jackolas 14y ago

Amazing that CNN is this scared of the people to be pushing the CIA-funded method of social resistance.

theorique 14y ago
You mean Sharp himself is funded by the CIA? What are your sources for this claim?
- regularfry 14y ago
  Besides, even if it were "funded by the CIA", that would mean the CIA would be helping ordinary people avoid ending up face down with a boot on their neck. I would have very few problems with that.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  No, he's saying Sharp is irrelevant. Change only comes through violence or threat of violence so the Parent apparently meant that uprising is so feared that Sharp's methods are being trumpeted as being effective in the hopes of keeping everyone peaceful and controllable.

noonespecial 14y ago

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.

stcredzero 14y ago

A friend told me that for awhile, the Welsh separatist movement protested by translating road signs -- from English to Welsh, then removing the English version. (Which to me is nonviolent, so long as no information about hazards was obscured.)

gallerytungsten 14y ago

A contrary opinion. This blogger has repeatedly stated that these puff pieces about Gene Sharp (of which the CNN article is only the most recent example) are total BS. http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/06/oh-arab-influence-of-gene-sharp-unknown.html http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/06/oh-arab-influence-of-g...