Gene Sharp RIP

[purves grundy]

Who he? No-bullets revolution chap.

I don't know enough to assess his influence on the Arab Spring, but I'm guessing it'll be overstated in the media. I do know that he was quite influential among 88 and 96 Generation political activists in Burma.

 

[ska invita]

From Dictatorship to Democracy - Wikipedia gets given a lot of credit for its influence on history, and it definitely has been photocopied, passed around, translated all over the place, but ultimately how much influence a text can have is impossible to pin down.

I think his concept of pacifism not for pacifisms sake but for strategic reasons is a good one in a majority of situations. The core of his argument as far as i understand is that the one thing the state has going for it is a monopoly on violence and therefore thats the one fight we shouldnt have. Coming up with an seemingly endless list of ways to undermine the state has got to be a useful exercise. I rate him. RIP

 

[elbows]

I don't know enough to assess his influence on the Arab Spring, but I'm guessing it'll be overstated in the media. I do know that he was quite influential among 88 and 96 Generation political activists in Burma.

I know he used to get a fair amount of credit for some aspects of a lot of the 'colour revolutions' too. Even including late, failed attempts to copy the colour model like the 2009 Iranian protests.

Certainly easy for media to tell oversimplified stories, especially when searching for 'already established in the west/acceptable to the west' figureheads and groups to tie headless arab spring uprisings down to. eg el Baradei in Egypt, who was often hailed internationally as being part of the solution despite being worthy of little more than us taking the piss out of him as el-blah blah when it came to his actual ability to influence events or be any use whatsoever on the ground.

It was also convenient for those with specific regime-preserving agendas to overstate his direct influence too, and tell stories about him being a US government tool during the arab spring.