Failed revolution, fake genius: Gene Sharp and the Myth of the Arab Spring.
22 March 2020 [link youtube]
A critique of civil disobedience, and the people who profit from propounding "non-violent" political change.
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Youtube Automatic Transcription
the myth of the genius of gene sharp
look at this list of revolutionary suggestions from the white english-speaking American man who claimed credit for the success of the Arab Spring who clicked click on credit for the amazing success that we see in Syria today in the year 2020 for the unbelievable transformation of the nonviolent transformation of Libya that you see ongoing today here you go you're a suggestions number 123 through 132 right there in the middle withdrawal from government educational institutions in plain English drop out of the school what what a great suggestion Toby's like I'm not gonna read out this whole list to you there are fully 198 items in the list I'll characterize them describe further but just just looking at this section the list do you think this would have prevented the ascent of fascism in Japan in the years leading up to World War two if all the people of good conscience dropped out of school you think that would have prevented tyranny in Japan how about um how about indigenous peoples in North America you know what let's even take easy examples like the Navajo Indians who weren't completely driven off their land weren't completely driven to extinction through violent means people but a little bit of a chance to negotiate with government authorities far from the most extreme examples in terms of the history of genocide around these parts do you think um do you think dropping out of school would have been good if I sue them do you think that would help their people survive the pressures of genocide and tyranny from the government United States America or British Empire before that no hmm can you think of any conflict in the world past present or future in which this is good advice let alone genius can you think of any conflict whether it be Syria or Libya where you know this list of advice could be could merit calling this man the Machiavelli behind the Arab Spring the brains behind the Occupy Wall Street movement all the other laurels and praise heaped on gene sharp and to some extent appropriated by irrigated by gene sharp in the video I made before this one I was alluding to gene sharp when I said there was a rotating cast of characters in the year 2011 2012 2013 who kept appearing on BBC hard talk and so on I checked my memory gene sharp was indeed on the BBC talk show hard talk he was really precisely and especially the first thing I was alluding to in that book wasn't the only one um why was he so prominent there's money involved guys like gene sharp survived on donations given to his foundation so in the same way that you have a completely cynical self-serving charity in our times like extinction rebellion getting out in front of those headlines and saying we were the ones responsible for this put money into our bank accounts now gene sharp left at the chance to get donation dollars flowing into his bizarre or eccentric organization organization that he called the Albert Einstein foundation no connection to Albert Einstein I think that he you like to think of himself as the Albert Einstein of non-violent regime-change activism okay here are numbers 181 to 182 the obviously this is towards the end of a list of 198 methods hmm politically motivated counterfeiting example right now in Syria would you go over there and get involved in counterfeiting and then you know quite likely be hunted down and imprisoned or killed for counterfeit in Japan during the rise of fascism the transition because they did they had a parliament at a shaky democracy and things got shaky or at Shaker before you know what it was more or less definitive Oh Joseph Stalin right do you think do you really believe that counterfeiting you say is a defensible method of I don't even know to say this it's not just civil disobedience he's talking about regime change a way to challenge dictatorial or tyrannical regime and replace it with a democratic one Saudi Arabia you in the audience I'm talking about you would you personally risk your life to engage in counterfeiting inside your you believe you know what it's worth it it's worth it to face jail or the death penalty to be counterfeiting in the name of democracy in the name of progress the name of summed up okay let's look at the other the other items on this list reverse strike stay in strike nonviolent land seizure mmm-hmm yeah not only would I say that's a bad suggestion for say First Nations people here in Canada are Native people are indigenous people um where they are they're unlikely to be killed I mean the government can it's not gonna shoot them dead if they invoke me heard of a little country named China how do you think that [ __ ] would go down if you're opposing the Communist Party the current you know non democratic governments are and how do you think that would go down and say Saudi Arabia what if the land you tried to seize had valuable oil assets on it or oh yeah I'm gonna sit here in my armchair and I'm gonna publish a book and put it on the internet and I'm gonna accept donations you know or recommending to people engage in a counterfeiting in nonviolent way and see a non-violent land seizure soon enough tends to get violent and again even in the current Canadian context where the government is relatively sympathetic towards those types of disruptions you know they don't just send in the tanks but but again Canada already is in democracy so it's not really what he's tied with it we'd have to be talking about Libya Syria China Saudi Arabia right um the rest of this list is not worth it's not worth reading out the only things on this list that aren't ridiculous dangerous and self-destructive are the things that aren't worth talking about because they are such well-worn familiar canards from every form of mainstream political activism like you recommends marching on the streets he recommends slogans he recommends spray-painting slogans having a color-coordinated leaflet in campaign crap like this you could have got this out of the Nabisco marketing campaign it's just you know there's just nothing special there's nothing interesting about it and if you wanna claim this is the key to success like you know in a really high-risk situation like Saudi Arabia or something history is actually quite lacking and positive examples of that and you know normally if you go through the history episode by episode even if you look at a case study where that was one part of the the progress that was made like oh yeah there were some leaflets there wasn't spray-painting or so on it's it's normally I can't even call it the icing on the cake I mean it's a minor footnote it's a minor decorative element of major political changes that were that were ongoing and that very often did indeed involve a military intervention and what-have-you okay now there are two claims being made in this video let's spell them out one I'm claiming that gene sharp was a [ __ ] artist that his actual books were [ __ ] that his actual advice was [ __ ] in and of itself and that he was what you would call an ambulance chaser somewhat old-fashioned slang now that he saw this crisis unfolding the Arab Spring and he tried to chase after the story get himself into the headlines get into the newspapers because that would get more donations for his cause first foundation that's not evil but it's dumb and it shouldn't be celebrated and he shouldn't be given career for this this is this is one part of it now when a warning against here has very clear parallels for activism you know as diverse as the vegan movement as feminism and all kinds of things going on in the world this we have to we have to watch off this is a thing okay so that's one part of it the other thing I'm calling into question or really ridiculing is the notion that this [ __ ] career of gene sharp had anything important to do with the progress or history of the Arab Spring itself okay now again in a world where a butterfly flapping its wings is connected to a tornado I can't say there is absolutely zero significance to the peculiar career of gene sharp and his tiny foundation but how significant was the influence of gene sharp compared to the significance of the collapse of the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein if you go through the interviews of any of these guys who stood up an Isetta to risk their lives in Syria or Libya or even in Egypt you'll find that one of the common themes is they were spending a lot of time watching satellite television not the internet satellite television in the Arab world that time was really the crucial medium and they watched what they had thought of as an unassailable strongman regime getting torn down and destroyed including by the way the really x-rated pictures of Saddam himself being humiliated and tortured and killed I mean that the actual footage from the very end of Saddam's life when he's going to drag through the streets and that gave a lot of people the idea in Syria in Libya even in Egypt hey and elsewhere too hey if Saddam Hussein was not as invulnerable as he seemed maybe our local dictatorial strongman government maybe it also isn't involved with maybe you know okay that was a huge influence on the region and let's be honest anyone would step forward don't say oh yeah but in Iraq that was only possible because of the involvement of the American military and the CIA there were a lot of people in Syria who expected that if they started the ball rolling there would be an active intervention from the US military and the CIA and there was I mean on a small scale but it was you'd have to be deaf dumb and blind to think Barack Obama did nothing in Syria Terry Bussieres he did he did a lot but not as much as the outright full-scale invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan still mmm there was a little-known politician named Hillary Clinton who was the number one hawk saying that they should take advantage of the temporary disorder in Libya to really maximize CIA black ops and maybe outright military intervention in Libya so it's not the case that these people were so naive that they looked at the Arab Spring and thought this was a symbol of non-violent activism no I was idiots I can't even say I think gene sharp was completely cynical but idiots who took this story about gene sharp and it's poking around with it those people were trying to manufacture and misrepresent this as an example of non-violent regime change I think the the people within the Arab arabic-speaking world they looked at the reality of this and said okay with or without US military support we can get this started and then very likely as soon as cracks start to show in the regime we will get some US military support we'll get some CIA support and we can keep the ball rolling and have a regime change that is convenient for them in states America it's probably convenient for Israel it's probably convenient for a whole bunch of strange bedfellows across the region you know in some cases Saudi Arabia in some cases Iran other people may want to get involved with watching the cookie crumble so it's it's not the case that people within the Arab world were so soon as the people outside in the predominantly white English being world who want to manufacture this method all right so the final saddening conclusion we have to stress here gene sharp is now dead if you google his name you will get the obituaries all of which I mean understand what someone's just died nobody wants to say anything overly harsh or critical the obituary is written about the man soon after his death all just say that he had this wonderful positive effect on the Arab Spring this wonderful positive effect on Syria and Libya there's no statement that these things were disasters for the people involved or that there's really no evidence at all that they were following a playbook provided by G sharp this is a myth but the most fundamental myth being misrepresenting the Arab Spring as if it was a success rather than a failure and as if it were non-violence instead of violent very strange but I noticed in his obituaries people had more given up the attempt at glorifying the old we are the 99% movement the Occupy Wall Street movement and back in 2011-2012 that was his other claim to fame was that he was somehow he and his books were somehow the crucial catalyst in this dissident movement that was again from my perspective an absolute failure an absolute disaster so end the video by asking the question are there any new ideas in politics in the 21st century extinction rebellion rose to the top of the charts that got on the front page of all the newspapers they briefly disrupted life in London England and they were passionately promising to you they had a fundamentally new way to do politics and if you look at the methods of what they actually did and what they attempted it's someone it's no more new and no more exciting and no more innovative than the list of 198th methods in gene sharps garbage book again within veganism within ecology I've criticized all these things we have I don't know one sort of bright-eyed bushy-tailed foundation after another that pops up and says we're not gonna be like the charities in the best give us your money we're gonna do something new and innovative and profoundly different like never before and therefore we're gonna get results like never before and very often I mean if we could just use Socratic dialogue with these people if any of these people would come on skype and speak to me I would ask and I would ask in a genuinely open-minded way what are these new ideas what are these new methods on what basis should donors giving money to your foundation feel confident that you are going to accomplish something with it fundamentally different from fundamentally better than the foundations that came before the street protest movements that came before all I see is the cynical recycling of the myth of civil disobedience to get your money out of your wallet and into their bank account [Music]
look at this list of revolutionary suggestions from the white english-speaking American man who claimed credit for the success of the Arab Spring who clicked click on credit for the amazing success that we see in Syria today in the year 2020 for the unbelievable transformation of the nonviolent transformation of Libya that you see ongoing today here you go you're a suggestions number 123 through 132 right there in the middle withdrawal from government educational institutions in plain English drop out of the school what what a great suggestion Toby's like I'm not gonna read out this whole list to you there are fully 198 items in the list I'll characterize them describe further but just just looking at this section the list do you think this would have prevented the ascent of fascism in Japan in the years leading up to World War two if all the people of good conscience dropped out of school you think that would have prevented tyranny in Japan how about um how about indigenous peoples in North America you know what let's even take easy examples like the Navajo Indians who weren't completely driven off their land weren't completely driven to extinction through violent means people but a little bit of a chance to negotiate with government authorities far from the most extreme examples in terms of the history of genocide around these parts do you think um do you think dropping out of school would have been good if I sue them do you think that would help their people survive the pressures of genocide and tyranny from the government United States America or British Empire before that no hmm can you think of any conflict in the world past present or future in which this is good advice let alone genius can you think of any conflict whether it be Syria or Libya where you know this list of advice could be could merit calling this man the Machiavelli behind the Arab Spring the brains behind the Occupy Wall Street movement all the other laurels and praise heaped on gene sharp and to some extent appropriated by irrigated by gene sharp in the video I made before this one I was alluding to gene sharp when I said there was a rotating cast of characters in the year 2011 2012 2013 who kept appearing on BBC hard talk and so on I checked my memory gene sharp was indeed on the BBC talk show hard talk he was really precisely and especially the first thing I was alluding to in that book wasn't the only one um why was he so prominent there's money involved guys like gene sharp survived on donations given to his foundation so in the same way that you have a completely cynical self-serving charity in our times like extinction rebellion getting out in front of those headlines and saying we were the ones responsible for this put money into our bank accounts now gene sharp left at the chance to get donation dollars flowing into his bizarre or eccentric organization organization that he called the Albert Einstein foundation no connection to Albert Einstein I think that he you like to think of himself as the Albert Einstein of non-violent regime-change activism okay here are numbers 181 to 182 the obviously this is towards the end of a list of 198 methods hmm politically motivated counterfeiting example right now in Syria would you go over there and get involved in counterfeiting and then you know quite likely be hunted down and imprisoned or killed for counterfeit in Japan during the rise of fascism the transition because they did they had a parliament at a shaky democracy and things got shaky or at Shaker before you know what it was more or less definitive Oh Joseph Stalin right do you think do you really believe that counterfeiting you say is a defensible method of I don't even know to say this it's not just civil disobedience he's talking about regime change a way to challenge dictatorial or tyrannical regime and replace it with a democratic one Saudi Arabia you in the audience I'm talking about you would you personally risk your life to engage in counterfeiting inside your you believe you know what it's worth it it's worth it to face jail or the death penalty to be counterfeiting in the name of democracy in the name of progress the name of summed up okay let's look at the other the other items on this list reverse strike stay in strike nonviolent land seizure mmm-hmm yeah not only would I say that's a bad suggestion for say First Nations people here in Canada are Native people are indigenous people um where they are they're unlikely to be killed I mean the government can it's not gonna shoot them dead if they invoke me heard of a little country named China how do you think that [ __ ] would go down if you're opposing the Communist Party the current you know non democratic governments are and how do you think that would go down and say Saudi Arabia what if the land you tried to seize had valuable oil assets on it or oh yeah I'm gonna sit here in my armchair and I'm gonna publish a book and put it on the internet and I'm gonna accept donations you know or recommending to people engage in a counterfeiting in nonviolent way and see a non-violent land seizure soon enough tends to get violent and again even in the current Canadian context where the government is relatively sympathetic towards those types of disruptions you know they don't just send in the tanks but but again Canada already is in democracy so it's not really what he's tied with it we'd have to be talking about Libya Syria China Saudi Arabia right um the rest of this list is not worth it's not worth reading out the only things on this list that aren't ridiculous dangerous and self-destructive are the things that aren't worth talking about because they are such well-worn familiar canards from every form of mainstream political activism like you recommends marching on the streets he recommends slogans he recommends spray-painting slogans having a color-coordinated leaflet in campaign crap like this you could have got this out of the Nabisco marketing campaign it's just you know there's just nothing special there's nothing interesting about it and if you wanna claim this is the key to success like you know in a really high-risk situation like Saudi Arabia or something history is actually quite lacking and positive examples of that and you know normally if you go through the history episode by episode even if you look at a case study where that was one part of the the progress that was made like oh yeah there were some leaflets there wasn't spray-painting or so on it's it's normally I can't even call it the icing on the cake I mean it's a minor footnote it's a minor decorative element of major political changes that were that were ongoing and that very often did indeed involve a military intervention and what-have-you okay now there are two claims being made in this video let's spell them out one I'm claiming that gene sharp was a [ __ ] artist that his actual books were [ __ ] that his actual advice was [ __ ] in and of itself and that he was what you would call an ambulance chaser somewhat old-fashioned slang now that he saw this crisis unfolding the Arab Spring and he tried to chase after the story get himself into the headlines get into the newspapers because that would get more donations for his cause first foundation that's not evil but it's dumb and it shouldn't be celebrated and he shouldn't be given career for this this is this is one part of it now when a warning against here has very clear parallels for activism you know as diverse as the vegan movement as feminism and all kinds of things going on in the world this we have to we have to watch off this is a thing okay so that's one part of it the other thing I'm calling into question or really ridiculing is the notion that this [ __ ] career of gene sharp had anything important to do with the progress or history of the Arab Spring itself okay now again in a world where a butterfly flapping its wings is connected to a tornado I can't say there is absolutely zero significance to the peculiar career of gene sharp and his tiny foundation but how significant was the influence of gene sharp compared to the significance of the collapse of the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein if you go through the interviews of any of these guys who stood up an Isetta to risk their lives in Syria or Libya or even in Egypt you'll find that one of the common themes is they were spending a lot of time watching satellite television not the internet satellite television in the Arab world that time was really the crucial medium and they watched what they had thought of as an unassailable strongman regime getting torn down and destroyed including by the way the really x-rated pictures of Saddam himself being humiliated and tortured and killed I mean that the actual footage from the very end of Saddam's life when he's going to drag through the streets and that gave a lot of people the idea in Syria in Libya even in Egypt hey and elsewhere too hey if Saddam Hussein was not as invulnerable as he seemed maybe our local dictatorial strongman government maybe it also isn't involved with maybe you know okay that was a huge influence on the region and let's be honest anyone would step forward don't say oh yeah but in Iraq that was only possible because of the involvement of the American military and the CIA there were a lot of people in Syria who expected that if they started the ball rolling there would be an active intervention from the US military and the CIA and there was I mean on a small scale but it was you'd have to be deaf dumb and blind to think Barack Obama did nothing in Syria Terry Bussieres he did he did a lot but not as much as the outright full-scale invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan still mmm there was a little-known politician named Hillary Clinton who was the number one hawk saying that they should take advantage of the temporary disorder in Libya to really maximize CIA black ops and maybe outright military intervention in Libya so it's not the case that these people were so naive that they looked at the Arab Spring and thought this was a symbol of non-violent activism no I was idiots I can't even say I think gene sharp was completely cynical but idiots who took this story about gene sharp and it's poking around with it those people were trying to manufacture and misrepresent this as an example of non-violent regime change I think the the people within the Arab arabic-speaking world they looked at the reality of this and said okay with or without US military support we can get this started and then very likely as soon as cracks start to show in the regime we will get some US military support we'll get some CIA support and we can keep the ball rolling and have a regime change that is convenient for them in states America it's probably convenient for Israel it's probably convenient for a whole bunch of strange bedfellows across the region you know in some cases Saudi Arabia in some cases Iran other people may want to get involved with watching the cookie crumble so it's it's not the case that people within the Arab world were so soon as the people outside in the predominantly white English being world who want to manufacture this method all right so the final saddening conclusion we have to stress here gene sharp is now dead if you google his name you will get the obituaries all of which I mean understand what someone's just died nobody wants to say anything overly harsh or critical the obituary is written about the man soon after his death all just say that he had this wonderful positive effect on the Arab Spring this wonderful positive effect on Syria and Libya there's no statement that these things were disasters for the people involved or that there's really no evidence at all that they were following a playbook provided by G sharp this is a myth but the most fundamental myth being misrepresenting the Arab Spring as if it was a success rather than a failure and as if it were non-violence instead of violent very strange but I noticed in his obituaries people had more given up the attempt at glorifying the old we are the 99% movement the Occupy Wall Street movement and back in 2011-2012 that was his other claim to fame was that he was somehow he and his books were somehow the crucial catalyst in this dissident movement that was again from my perspective an absolute failure an absolute disaster so end the video by asking the question are there any new ideas in politics in the 21st century extinction rebellion rose to the top of the charts that got on the front page of all the newspapers they briefly disrupted life in London England and they were passionately promising to you they had a fundamentally new way to do politics and if you look at the methods of what they actually did and what they attempted it's someone it's no more new and no more exciting and no more innovative than the list of 198th methods in gene sharps garbage book again within veganism within ecology I've criticized all these things we have I don't know one sort of bright-eyed bushy-tailed foundation after another that pops up and says we're not gonna be like the charities in the best give us your money we're gonna do something new and innovative and profoundly different like never before and therefore we're gonna get results like never before and very often I mean if we could just use Socratic dialogue with these people if any of these people would come on skype and speak to me I would ask and I would ask in a genuinely open-minded way what are these new ideas what are these new methods on what basis should donors giving money to your foundation feel confident that you are going to accomplish something with it fundamentally different from fundamentally better than the foundations that came before the street protest movements that came before all I see is the cynical recycling of the myth of civil disobedience to get your money out of your wallet and into their bank account [Music]