Not All Revolutions Are Worthy of Our Support

The Maidan in Kiev, Jan 2014, before the explosion

And (so-called) progressives and leftists are fools to support the ones under way or recently manifested. Some of these uprisings and revolts are rightist, reactionary, counter-revolutionary, corporatist, globalist, and deeply contrary to the People's interests and well-being.

This sequence of reactionary, rightist, crypto-Fascist uprisings seemed to get going in Cairo last year when tens of thousands, and then reputedly millions, turned out in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt to denounce and demand the end of the elected Morsi regime. When Morsi refused an ultimatum from the military, the military removed him, by main force, and when Morsi supporters gathered in the squares of Egyptian cities to protest this clear violation of the democratic process, the military mounted snipers on rooftops to shoot into the crowds of protestors -- something that Morsi didn't do in the face of the protests against him and his rule.

When the snipers weren't able to adequately control the protests against the military coup in Egypt-- a "coup" by any other name, since the "world community" (ie: the United States government) refused to call it a coup -- the golpistas sent in the infantry and armored transport (otherwise known as tanks) and massacred hundreds and then thousands of Morsi supporters, massacred as many as it took to kill the protests against the coup, but the protests wouldn't die. Thousands, then tens of thousands of survivors of the massacres were arrested, disappeared, many were tortured, and still the protests would not die.

[Potentially] Alarming Developments in Kiev, Bangkok, Caracas, Sarajevo. Cairo Set the Standard...

Morning Screen Grab from Kiev

Generally speaking, people have a right -- and duty -- to rise up in the face of tyranny and oppression. It's not easy, and it can be very risky for those who engage in it, but by and large, large scale social progress is made by means of protests and uprisings of the oppressed all over the world and in all eras.

Generally speaking, the progress that has been made through the means of protests and uprisings has been more or less liberating to those who have previously been oppressed, and that liberation has generally led to more liberation from tyranny and oppression. Thus, most uprisings of the sort we have witnessed for decades now, since the beginning of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union in the '80s, have led to more and more liberated societies and nations.

But the liberation from tyrannical regimes, be they Communist or otherwise, often comes at a huge price to the erstwhile liberated masses, a price that's paid in institutional failure, economic collapse, desperate living conditions, and destruction of social cohesion. The notion that what is lost is somehow "creative" -- thus the term, "creative destruction" so popular among the economic, social and political hit men (and women, I'm looking at you, Legarde) and mercenaries roaming the globe -- simply ignores or even celebrates the suffering left in the wake of so many Color Revolutions and the like over the years.

"Ukraine is burning" ran a breathless headline by one of my favorite authors over at dKos, jpmassar, one of the usually brightest and most keyed in to matters of uprising, revolt, and revolution they have over there. Well, I'd been watching the livestream from Kiev for a good portion of the day already, a livestream that I noted was labeled: Євромайдан -- революция,(ie: "Euromaidan -- Revolution"),  in the upper right corner, something most Americans might miss because they can't read the Cyrillic alphabet, and the corner label would just appear to be some gibberish in a foreign language. Probably (ick) Russian and therefore, given the way media and politics work in the world, slanted to favor the (ick) Russian point of view about (the foreign and unfamiliar) Ukraine.

Uh, no. In fact, the video feed was coming from a rather slick media operation run by the rebels who were burning their barricades in a spectacle in Independence Square in Kiev. As I watched the livestream, it was clear this wasn't just a slick media operation, the visuals were being consciously designed for maximum propaganda impact, not unlike Soviet filmmaking back in the day. It was really very well done, I have to say, but at the same time, it was highly deceptive and manipulative.

First of all, the images made it seem as if the city was on fire -- it's not -- and that the uprising was... general. It's not. These sorts of things don't generally involve a large percentage of the whole population, but they can involve a large proportion of a certain segment of that population (which is apparently what was going on in Cairo and Egypt too just prior to the al Sisi coup which overthrew the Morsi government and led to a brutal and bloody crack-down on Muslim Brotherhood resistance to the coup. But I'll get to that in due time...) The theory is that if a large enough segment of a single population sector or multiple sectors can be convinced to participate in demonstrations and protests and rebellion, then the Revolution is not only nigh, it has already come -- and quite likely whatever results from it will be something like victory for the rebels.

Revolution does not require and will hardly ever involve the whole population in any case. Most people will rationally choose to stay out of the way.

The images last night from Kiev also made it seem that there was some kind of "heroic" action taking place. Debris was being continually fed into the bonfires burning ("gloriously") in Maidan Square, luridly illuminating the scene. Police and firefighters were occasionally seen milling around the margins of what seemed to be a large -- but indistinct -- crowd. Now and then, there would be close ups of the fires and some silhouettes of the crowd passing back and forth in front of the blaze. From time to time, fireworks would be ignited and Molotov cocktails would fly through the air. There was no sound most of the time, but occasionally, there would be heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire or fireworks, and from time to time, one could hear what sounded like many voices raised in song (was it the Ukrainian national anthem? It was.) Flags were flying, but what was on them was indistinguishable in the dark and the smoke. Some seemed tattered, battle worn, others more or less pristine.

The images from from at least three cameras, and probably more, were being intricately and expertly interwoven, so as to show close-ups, medium and long shots in turn, and at one point, a camera was focused on the silhouette of a young person climbing the outside of a building near the square. A lurid orange glow came from inside the building, and soon enough it would be apparent that the building was on fire. What was the silhouetted figure doing, though? I couldn't tell, and I didn't watch that scene long enough to find out, but in daytime views this morning, it appears he may have been heroically hanging a heroic Revolutionary banner on the outside of the burning trade union building -- or maybe he was just showing off, who knows? It made for some dramatic imagery, however.
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Since the murderous rampages of Al Sisi's forces in Cairo in response to protests against the military coup there, I haven't been much inclined to watch the Global Revolution streams or closely follow the various uprisings that have been or are taking place, whether in Venezuela or Thailand, Ukraine or Bosnia  or much of anywhere else, because it seems to me that they are all rightist rebellions for the purpose of installing rightist regimes which will serve the interests of international finance. It's sickening.

This is not at all what the Occupy Movement was and is about, but every one of these uprisings is using Occupy tactics (along with a little ultra-violence) to gain and have its way. It has reached the point where even otherwise rightist supporters are wary and somewhat puzzled at what is going on.

It's fairly obvious to me. By utilizing the successful tactics of the Arab Spring and the later Occupy Movement to gain the attention and widespread sympathy of media and oppressed peoples around the world, factions of the oppressor class are seeking to mobilize media and world opinion on their behalf to undermine and overthrow governments which dare to take more interest in the people than in the oppressors.

This is obviously what's been going on in Caracas, so obvious it's breathtaking in its chutzpah. But in Thailand, Bosnia, and Turkey it's not been so obvious at all, as it seems the rebels have valid complaints and they are not trying to impose rightist rule -- and the oppression of the lower orders that goes with it -- at least not on the surface. Scratch a bit below the surface, however, and you will find many of the same dynamics, of a minority class based revolt, generally of the relatively well off, backed by a rising plutocratic class, trying to force ("inject") their interests into the popular consciousness enough to be able to overthrow the duly constituted and elected government and replace it with their own unelected one.

They use the tactics of Occupy, Arab Spring, and the Color Revolutions of Gene Sharp -- because they work, or they can work. But their intentions are to impose, to rule, to plunder, and to oppress.

Kiev is not actually burning, but it could erupt in flames at any time. The fires in the square last night were for show, and the show is one of a rightist, populist character, one we're seeing more and more of around the world.

And I have no doubt our metastasizing surveillance and security state apparat is deeply involved in every one of these uprisings. But will that story ever be told in the chest thumping, fist pumping, but largely content-free New Media ventures of Omidyar or any other billionaire? I doubt it.

Even the once iconoclastic Mark Ames and Yasha Levine now of Pando appear to be neutered and are mostly silent about the global rightist coups.

Yes, it's alarming.

Kiev Is Burning

See more US News from ABC | World News

They tell me this is yet another Color Revolution in Kiev, Ukraine, like that in Bangkok, one in which a militant and rising middle class demands that the more or less populist -- though oppressive -- government aligned with the 'lesser people' be gone and neo-liberal "democratic" government and economic policies be instituted.

When Gene Sharp's manual for Color Revolutions was being promoted heavily at Occupy events, I read it, tried to understand Sharp's philosophy about these things, and looked deeper into their results, and I said, "Whoa! Wait. Is this what you want? Is this what you really want from Occupy or any other revolutionary movement?"

Few knew what I was saying, or why, because very few understood the nature and purpose of Color Revolutions, nor did it ever occur to most of them that there were particular -- and highly exploitative -- economic interests behind every one of them, interests that were perfectly delighted to use whatever discontents they could find among the People to get what they wanted out of them, at whatever cost to the People it took.

Those who did understand what I was asking wanted nothing more than to shut me and anyone else who questioned the semi-divinity of Gene Sharp up.

Where I saw the Sharp methods and revolutionary practices had value was in their systems and organization -- which any movement can adopt and utilize, even anarchist ones. The problem is that any movement can adopt them, and that includes counter-revolutionary and reactionary ones. Sharp's directives and directions for carrying out a Color Revolution, and the Revolution itself, are not required to be "leftish" or carried out on behalf of the People (though they are always "in the name of the People.")  Yet that's a marketing slogan. It doesn't have to be -- and typically isn't -- real at all. It's marketing. Bernays on steroids.

In fact, the whole "Color Revolution" schtick is marketing. That's what Sharp was selling. How to organize and market your uprising so it will be successful in the marketplace, how to sell it. Not, by any means, how to achieve the revolutionary ends most beneficial to the greatest number of People. Apart from some yammering about "freedom" and "democracy" the ends are never discussed in Sharp's extensive work. I even dared to ask why that was so. If you don't know why you're having an uprising -- apart from some vague concepts of "Freedom" (for whom, from what?) and "Democracy" (In what way?), then why are you having it?

So I glance every now and then at what's been going on in Kiev and Bangkok, and ponder the disasters in the aftermath the Arab Spring, the general failure of the populist movements in Spain and Greece (among other places), and I see a common pattern. We can go all the way back to the Philippines insurrection against Marcos, or the numerous "Color Revolutions" in Eastern Europe and the eventual destruction of the Soviet Union and any hint of popular resistance to the looming economic and political catastrophe Soviet citizens were being forced to endure,  and see a common thread: these "populist" uprisings were all -- every one of the them -- conducted on behalf of a nascent 'new' oligarchy which wanted to replace the sclerotic 'old' one, using the discontents of a rising but blocked middle class and the often suppressed longings of the poor to gain the leverage necessary to overthrow the Old Order and institute a New one -- a new one that is as bad as, or even worse than, what it replaces. Every. Single. One.

And it is always all about the marketing in Sharp's vision.

Of course, it's supposed to be nonviolent, with nonviolence used as a weapon against internal opposition and against the Old Order, but on the margins, these successful "revolutions" -- or reactionary movements, which is what I came to believe they were -- were remarkably not non-violent at all. The "peaceful revolutionaries" always -- ALWAYS -- held the threat of violence over the state or oligarchy they wished to replace, while simultaneously claiming otherwise, and they sought ways to precipitate or initiate violent repression by the police and authorities so as to gain sympathy for their cause. This is not non-violence; it's an embrace of violence. In Kiev -- and in many other sites where this sort of double-tracking goes on -- there is a lot of violence initiated by the state to be sure, but there is also sabotage and violence initiated by the reactionary-revolutionaries, whether it is burning down symbols of the regime (as happened over and over again in Cairo, for example) to actually burning members of the police force with Molotov cocktails (Kiev, Athens, etc.) .

By comparison to almost any revolutionary movement in history, Occupy was almost preternaturally non-violent. Yet it was met with extraordinary levels of state violence that was widely approved by the general population in large part because they were convinced that Occupations were dirty and disgusting hotbeds for disease, rape and murder.

That, too, was marketing -- by the authorities -- to ensure that Occupy could not become a successful Revolution against the oligarchy that rules the world with rod and staff. Many of the same tactics that were used in the United States (and elsewhere) against Occupy and similar demonstrations are being used against protesters in Kiev and Bangkok, whereas in Cairo, the authorities just shoot into crowds, killing and maiming many thousands so far -- with no apparent end to the mayhem in sight.

But what is it for?

Some loud and energized Ukrainians would would rather be under the thumb of EU Bankers, Neo-Liberals and Technocrats than be aligned with (ick) Russia? Oh Kay, then. Let's have a Revolution!

They say that this year will mark another in a series of years of rage and rebellion around the world. We shall see, shan't we?


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UPDATE: This video has been making the rounds. It shows a phalanx of police in Kiev confronting a large and enthusiastic crowd, members of which are hurling rocks, bottles, paving stones, smoke bombs, and Molotov cocktails at the police who are arrayed behind barricades and shields. Someone in the crowd is driving a front-loader repeatedly into the police line and appears to break through at one point but retreats. The version that is going around stops as the front-loader retreats, but there is another one that shows the action from the ground level, and that's the second one posted here.





You'll note that members of the crowd are attempting to stop the driver of the front-loader and try to speak/reason with the more militant members of the crowd. Others have pointed out that if anything like this demonstration were to happen in the United States, the front-loader driver would be taken out by a police sniper, and the crowd would be gassed and bludgeoned and shot by the police who would promptly arrest any survivors.

Though we're given to believe that the uprising in Kiev has wide popular support, some observers and commenters in this country and elsewhere have noted that much if not all of the violence has been instigated by what amount to Neo-Fascists whose determination is not at all in the interests of the Ukrainian people. In addition, the Ukraine apparently has a broadly divided population, with Eastern populations widely supporting closer ties with Russia (many ethnic Russians live in the Eastern areas) while Western populations widely support closer ties with Europe.

Eventually, this may lead to the break up of the Ukraine -- which wouldn't be the first former Soviet sphere republic to split apart or even engage in civil war.

This Turkey Thing

Woman in Red

I'm not quite sure what it is about it, but there's something going on in Turkey that doesn't sit quite right with me.

My first question was, "Why Turkey?"

It's the Big (Muslim) Player in the region, and during the last few years, especially, its government under Erdogan has become more and more assertive of Turkish interests and prerogatives -- and history. Its diplomatic clashes with Israel, particularly over the Mavi Marmara business, are legendary. The entire (former) Ottoman Empire appears to be the sphere of influence over which modern Turkey wishes to assert itself. But then, what of Israel and the United States -- not to mention Russia -- all of which assert influence over much the same territory and have been committing atrocious acts against the peoples of the region for many years now. They've been enabling and permitting atrocities when they are not committing them as well.

So it occurred to me, when the revolt began in Istanbul, ostensibly over the re-development of a park -- the last open space in central Istanbul, they say -- into an Ottoman-style shopping mall, that this had all the earmarks of one of those "springtime revolutions" that have been roiling North Africa and the Middle East for some time now, some of them, such as Libya and Syria, leading to gross and massively destructive civil wars, and all of them having at least an initial similarity to Gene Sharp's famous Color Revolutions that resulted in the installation of neo-liberal regimes in the former Soviet sphere, the Philippines and elsewhere.

Why Turkey? Why now? Who have they offended?

This revolt is ostensibly over a neo-liberal project in the center of Istanbul, as well as the increasingly authoritarian impositions of the Erdogan regime in Ankara.We hear the usual calls for freedom, justice, dignity, etc. "It's not about the park," say the rebels and demonstrators themselves. "It's about 'not being heard.'"

Now wait.

"Not being heard" is a straightforward rhetorical device. Turkey is a complicated society to be sure, but so far as I can tell, it is a modern western-style democratic republic as well. Its democracy operates with at least as much freedom and fairness as that of the United States (say), probably more freely and fairly when you get down to it.

Erdogan and his party, so I understand it, are very popular, their programs and policies widely supported -- at least until recently. But now, all of a sudden, they are "arrogant" and "dismissive" of the popular will, and the regime has become an "authoritarian dictatorship" which is symbolized by the redevelopment project under way at Taksim Square and Gezi Park. The regime "doesn't listen to the People" who want to preserve the park as the sole remnant of former parks and open spaces in the center of Istanbul.

Wait. Something is off here.

In his public statements, Erdogan has indicated he is really pissed at the fact that these malcontents are making trouble -- and he has been at pains to point out that they are in essence acting on behalf of the main Turkish opposition party and of some nameless, faceless foreign interests, regardless of any discontents they may have with him and his rule and that of his party. But, as he says (in paraphrase), "elections have consequences" and he and his party have been elected three times by popular vote, in elections that (so far as I know) have been free and fair.

Operating a "Color Revolution" - style popular revolt under these circumstances is somewhat dicey, but that's the way these things go.

"Color Revolutions" can work against actual dictatorships, and they can be successful when those dictatorships are rotten to the core and on their last legs, as was the case in the Soviet Empire back in the day. Of course the nearly universal result of "Color Revolutions" is the triumph of neo-Liberalism -- to the extent that I have long assumed that's the real point of them -- and the gross impoverishment of the masses for the benefit of a new oligarchy. But when a "Color Revolution" is attempted against a functioning representative democracy, it runs into all kinds of ideological, philosophical, and practical mine fields. Basically, the revolutionaries are acting in opposition to what they say they want.

That can make it easy for authority to clamp down hard on the rebels and prevent them from succeeding.

In other cases, the internal contradictions of the rebel movement(s) can trigger civil war as we saw in Libya and now in Syria.

I doubt the Turks are interested in engaging in civil war, but the rebels don't seem to be relenting in the face of pretty serious crackdowns by police.

I've read that the Turkish economy is booming, certainly compared to Europe, but that there is very high unemployment, especially among the youth -- as in Europe -- and that most of the benefits of the booming economy are going to a handful of well-placed individuals and interests. It's the classic neo-liberal "success story" in other words. The People are not benefiting from the economy; they're losing ground. But that's how neo-liberalism works. The People (or a portion of them) are rising up, using the rhetoric of revolts against socialist/fascist dictatorships, but what they are rising up against -- if they are being truthful -- is what results from the success of revolutions against those dictatorships. They're rising up against neo-liberalism.

Or so it would seem.

The result of these revolts against neo-liberalism, however, seems to be even greater applications of neo-liberalism (for example, in Spain... or the United States) . The physical violence used to suppress the revolts is sometimes extreme -- we've seen plenty of that in Turkey -- and almost always, the suppression leads to greater hardships for the People through even more severe applications of neo-liberal economics.

There may be something else entirely happening in Turkey. Some of what's going on, for example, seems primarily intended to overturn the results of the most recent election and to embarrass Erdogan in the eyes of the world. "Too big for his britches" as the saying goes. What with Syria's civil war next door (which Erdogan has remarked upon at some length) and Israel's constant carping about and interference in practically everything, one could easily see a "foreign" aspect to the Turkish revolt. While foreign influence could help trigger a domestic revolt in Turkey, I doubt it could be sustained. The Turks are too proud and defiant to be led around by either Syrians or Israeli self-interest. But slapping around Erdogan for uppity-ness may well be in a whole lot of domestic and foreign interests, so we'll see how that plays out.

He sounds very Bush-like in his denunciations of the demonstrators.

Which leads me to the whole question of why things are as fucked up in general as they are. It goes back to the success of the Bushevik Revolution when time was. They were able to get away with some of the most atrocious acts imaginable, and because they were able to do what they did, without serious repercussions (at least to themselves), they became examples for leaders in the rest of the world to follow -- which as been going on for years now. I don't know how much of it is conscious emulation, but a great deal of Bushevism has been inculcated into governments throughout the world, and it leads directly to the kind of outrageous -- and very stupid -- behavior of governments we see nearly everywhere today.

Erdogan is certainly part of the picture.

While there are no doubt other elements in play in the revolt against him (and it seems to be quite a personal thing at times) I suspect the underlying motivation is that instinctive rebellion/revulsion against the kind of monstrousness that the Busheviks introduced to the world -- a monstrousness that has become the New Normal nearly everywhere. Turkey is no tired-old-dictatorship on its last legs, but it is going through a period of Bushevik-style neo-liberal reorganization that is severely affecting the peoples' sense of security and well-being. Whatever else may be driving the uprising, I suspect that is the underlying problem, as it is in the uprisings sporadically occurring elsewhere in Europe and the United States, and which has been the motivation for so much of the Occupy Movement.

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I wrote this post well before I looked at Scott Creighton's "Color Revolution" conspiracy musings over at American Everyman. For a more thorough examination of what might -- or might not -- really be going on in Turkey, Ché say Check It Out.

Talking Strategy For A Little Bit -- And What Occupy Is Not

As a rule, I prefer to use what's on hand in order to develop strategic thinking and planning rather than try to impose a strategic template from another source.

Occupy has been up and running for more than six months now, and it has its own templates for taking action. Not all of it is strategic, to be sure, but it is surprisingly effective on its own terms.

It was really tough for me, coming from a relatively organized and hierarchical background, to deal with the way Occupy was and is operating. If it was tough for me I can only imagine how tough it was for many others who were far more rigidly programmed than I was.

I know Socialists who were freaked out about Occupy from the beginning and are still nay-sayers despite the overall success and durability of the movement to date. I'm aware of plenty of political interests and operatives of all kinds who insist that "you have to have" certain kinds of structures and strategies in place in order to have any effect at all on The Powers That Be. Parts of the nonviolence community have been having a field day denouncing the movement for its lack of strict discipline and Gandhi-esque purity.

I think that those who insist that Revolution has to be done in a certain way following a certain template of strategy and action may be missing the point. Much of that argument has been made and heard long since, and some of it has been adopted. But much of has been rejected.

Occupy is not a Sharp-style color revolution. It doesn't come from the same space, and it doesn't appear to be going in the direction of a Sharp-style revolution. From my perspective, Occupy is not ultimately about overthrow or seizing power or any of the standard revolutionary motifs that are central to Revolutionary Theory and Practice As Done By Past Revolutionary Masters.

I linked to David Graeber's "Revolution in Reverse" in an earlier post because I think it is much closer to the ideological and strategic framework that OWS and Occupy in general have "adopted" -- without any formal consensing on it -- as a working model for accomplishing the deeper revolutionary objectives of the Movement.

For the record:

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2007graeber-revolution-reverse

It's not the be-all/end-all guidebook of this revolution by any means; I see it more as a theoretical starting point for the imagination process that's been going on throughout the Occupy movement since before there was a movement.

The key word is "imagination."

After all, another world really is possible. Making it so is not so much a matter of forcing it as allowing it, making the space for it, nurturing it, and letting it grow. That's up to us to do, not something we ask of government or corporate power. We don't need their permission, and we don't need their power to create another world. We just do it.

Starting with imagining it, which is what hundreds of groups (both formally organized and highly informal) have been doing, some of them for decades. In other words, Occupy is not starting from square one, and we're by no means operating in a vacuum. Much of the ground work for "another world" has long been in place, and many of the physical aspects of the Occupy movement have been ways of highlighting what to do and how to get there.

You take the square.

You clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless. You speak out against injustice, treat one another with dignity, you form communities, you foster and enable peace.

You face down oppression.

And you allow the alternatives to happen.

Pie in the sky? Sure. Magical thinking? Absolutely. Impossible? Maybe not. I don't know.

Right now I'm working on an analysis that compares and contrasts the Sharp-style revolution with what Occupy is doing. There are many parallels and many divergences. What is very clear, however, is that the premise of Occupy is essentially 180° opposite the Sharp premise of power and purpose.

"Revolution in Reverse."

On Gene Sharp and The Revolution This Time

The Revolution This Time: Oakland General Strike and Port Shut Down, November 2, 2011. Photo by Nathan Jongewaard via Flickr



Gene Sharp, author of "From Dictatorship to Democracy" and many other works on Revolutionary theory, has been both hailed and denounced as the godfather of the Color Revolutions that swept much of the world, as well as being a central thinker relied on by the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring and its current descendants. His works are considered by many to constitute the Rulebook for Modern Revolution.

I'm not much of a theoretician; I'm more inclined to study practice and results, and when Gene Sharp's name is raised in connection with the Occupy Movement, I tend to encourage people to really think about what kind of results have come from Gene Sharp-inspired revolutions and ask themselves whether that's really what they want from this revolution.

The first "color" revolution that I can recall was the People Power revolution in the Philippines against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. It's color was yellow, and its symbol was a hand sign: index finger raised with thumb at a 90 degree angle in the form of the letter "L" (for "Laban.")



It was an astonishing event, and it helped trigger a cascade of revolutions against dictatorship throughout the rest of the 1980's and continuing to this day. These revolutions eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the stark hegemony of the United States and vulture capitalism.

In other words, things today are the way they are, socially, politically, and most especially economically, largely as a consequence of the numerous revolutions against dictatorship that have taken place under "colors" (all but red and black allowed, apparently!) and the theories of (sometimes the direct consultation with) Gene Sharp and his disciples.

But wait. Aren't we conducting something of a revolution against the way things are?

Indeed.

From the Sharp-ian point of view, then, isn't the Occupy Movement really a counter revolution?

This is where things can get very muddled indeed.

"The Politics of Nonviolent Action" (1973) was Gene Sharp's seminal nonviolent uprising study that became something of a manual for the People Power uprising against Marcos in 1986. Many of the forms of nonviolent resistance that Sharp advocates were codified in the Philippines: a distinctive color, a charismatic leader, mass rallies and marches, refusal to comply with the orders of the state, varied forms of nonviolent resistance and so on. Key to the Sharp version of nonviolent revolution is the Demand. The Demand was part of the initial call to Occupy Wall Street from AdBusters in the summer of 2011 when the poster announcing Occupy Wall Street carried the heading: "What is our one demand?"

That's straight out of the Gene Sharp recipe. The Revolution must have a demand or a series of demands.

The Revolution must have a leadership as well.

The Revolution must appeal to the masses.

The Revolution must have a Grand Strategy.

And in some of his works, Gene Sharp seems to be saying, "The Revolution must follow my recipe exactly -- or it will fail."

To date, there has been no set of demands from Occupy as a unit -- in part because it is not a unit -- nor has an identifiable leadership for the Movement emerged. There is no Ninoy or Cory Aquino. The Occupy Movement has a strong resonance with the People, but it is not, by any means, a mass movement, nor does it look much like it will become one. There is no identifiable Grand Strategy beyond slogans and ideals. "UnFuck the World" is about as close to a Grand Strategy as the Movement has come, and that came very early, and it's not really a strategy. It's also about as close to a unifying demand as Occupy seems able to get. And there are those who would dispute it's value because of "language."


Photo by Nathan Jongewaard via Flickr

To my way of looking at these things, that's quite all right, but it is deeply dissatisfying in the Sharp vision of Revolution.

Very little -- at times, nothing -- that Occupy is doing fits the Sharp model, and thus to many of Sharp's disciples and devotees, the Occupy Movement hasn't really started yet. It isn't a "movement." And it's not "revolutionary."

The Sharp recipe for revolution is very exact and exacting. Certain things must be done, or it is not a revolution. They must be done in a certain way, under certain authorities, or they will not succeed. The movement must develop in stages, generally over a long period of time, building into a mass movement, or it will fail.

The many failures of Sharp-style revolutions of late (as examples see: Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc.) are typically blamed on the revolutionaries for not following the recipe Sharp lays out with enough exactitude, and not having established the proper groundwork before rising up.

On the other hand, many of those who now live under regimes where the Sharp-style revolutions succeeded -- in the Philippines, throughout Eastern Europe and much of the former Soviet Union, as well as more recently Tunisia and Egypt -- are saying, "Wait just a minute here, this isn't quite what we bargained for at all..."

Yes, well. That's part of what I see as the chief problem with the Sharp recipe for revolution: it's not really a revolutionary recipe at all. It is a recipe for a marketing campaign that has certain aspects of a revolution. New bosses, but a similar -- and in some cases arguably a worse -- system.

It's a political and economic marketing campaign that aims to gain popular support to replace the present ("dictatorship") with a new product (an ersatz "democracy") that serves the interests of the oligarchs and plutocrats while giving the People the semblance of "liberty" which they are -- somehow, oh how can it be? -- unable to utilize successfully on their own behalf.

The thrill of revolutionary victory often leads to serious reassessment of what actually took place. It was not what many people thought it was or should be.

I would argue that the Sharp recipe for revolution works poorly against dictatorships these days, and it doesn't work at all against what I call "civil democracies," which is to say the kinds of governments that are now the norm. They are not real democracies, but they have the appearance of civil democratic procedures.

Which is not to say that there is no value in studying Sharp; there is value, plenty of it. He's thought long and hard and has written extensively about how the People (or more precisely, an activist faction thereof) can effectively change the conditions under which they live, and change the governments by which they are ruled, through a multipronged program of strategic nonviolent resistance.

That's why I say that those who wish to follow the Sharp model really should give it a go. Try it. I have never seen it successfully deployed in a civil democracy, but there is no reason it couldn't be. Or is there? Others have pointed out that the Sharp model of revolution can only be employed overseas. It could never be done in the United States, and it's not meant to be utilized here. After all, the Neo-Libs and Neo-Cons are already in power and they are the ones we are struggling against...

(h/t to Cuchulain in comments for spurring me to actually write something about this topic...)