howtostartarevolution

[howtostartarevolution]

Well usually it also involves people in power doing widely unjust things so people wake up saying "uhm why exactly let we have them all that power?"

And then, when a critical mass comes to the conclusion "we shouldn't let them have all that power"

Boom. Revolution.

(Of course that doesn't include all the ones that are painstakingly people raising awareness for certain injustices in todays society. Until a critical mass is reached who agree that this is an injustice and should be changed. Like end segregation. Letting woman vote. Stop making homosexuality illegal.)

a common misconception is that a revolution is built by years of painstakingly raising class consciousness among the masses while at the same time building up a party capable of taking leadership during a revolutionary crisis. nothing could be further from the truth. a revolution is built by making social media posts calling for a general strike over and over until one day it just happens

[howtostartarevolution]

At a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth, Senate Republicans just passed the largest redistribution of income upward in the history of this nation. It's an absolute travesty.

[howtostartarevolution]

Germany got rid of their monarchy by revolution (aka lots of people going to the streets protesting) and there didn't die lots of people. (Cause government wasn't inclined to shoot at their own people)

And the GDR got basically upended by a peaceful revolution (aka lots of people going to the streets demanding stuff) and there didn't die lots of people. (Cause government wasn't inclined to shoot at their own people.)

The concept of revolution is bigger than violent revolutions. Every achievement of major social change can be called a revolution.

Honestly leftists need to internalize that having a revolution is the failure mode, revolution means chaos and a lot of people die both “deserving” and not and pretty much inevitably some asshole takes all the power, what you want to do is reform things before it get bad enough to need a revolution!

Less glorious, fewer statues, but a whole lot fewer people dead.

[howtostartarevolution]

[howtostartarevolution]

[howtostartarevolution]

To add to this...

One of the worst things you can do to people in power (from their point of view) is ridicule them. It's even in Srdja Popovic's "Blueprint for Revolution" book, who used it to topple dictator Milosevic.

Because if people laugh about people in power. They aren't afraid of people in power. So they find more courage and more ways to resist.

Just think about how often (upcoming) dictators usually restrict what can be said about them. Why making fun of them gets banned. Or persecuted. Or artists doing so get imprisoned.

If they are trying so hard to get rid of something, you can just assume that it is having effect. And not so little.

[howtostartarevolution]

"With Donald Trump set to take office after a fear-mongering campaign that reignited concerns about his desire to become a dictator, a reasonable question comes up: Can nonviolent struggle defeat a tyrant?

There are many great resources that answer this question, but the one that’s been on my mind lately is the Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers.  

At quick glance, the database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases — which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America — contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. What’s more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldn’t overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle.  

In a number of countries, the dictator had been embedded for years at the time they were pushed out. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, for example, had ruled for over 29 years. In the 1990s, citizens usually whispered his name for fear of reprisal. Mubarak legalized a “state of emergency,” which meant censorship, expanded police powers and limits on the news media. Later, he “loosened” his rule, putting only 10 times as many police as the number of protesters at each demonstration.  

The GNAD case study describes how Egyptians grew their democracy movement despite repression, and finally won in 2011. However, gaining a measure of freedom doesn’t guarantee keeping it. As Egypt has shown in the years since, continued vigilance is needed, as is pro-active campaigning to deepen the degree of freedom won.  

Some countries repeated the feat of nonviolently deposing a ruler: In Chile, the people nonviolently threw out a dictator in 1931 and then deposed a new dictator in 1988. South Koreans also did it twice, once in 1960 and again in 1987. (They also just stopped their current president from seizing dictatorial powers, but that’s not yet in the database.)  

In each case people had to act without knowing what the reprisals would be...

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign...

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025. Article continues below.

East Germany’s peaceful revolution

When East Germans began their revolt against the German Democratic Republic in 1988, they knew that their dictatorship of 43 years was backed by the Soviet Union, which might stage a deadly invasion. They nevertheless acted for freedom, which they gained and kept.

Researcher Hanna King tells us that East Germans began their successful campaign in January 1988 by taking a traditional annual memorial march and turning it into a full-scale demonstration for human rights and democracy. They followed up by taking advantage of a weekly prayer for peace at a church in Leipzig to organize rallies and protests. Lutheran pastors helped protect the organizers from retaliation and groups in other cities began to stage their own “Monday night demonstrations.”  

The few hundred initial protesters quickly became 70,000, then 120,000, then 320,000, all participating in the weekly demonstrations. Organizers published a pamphlet outlining their vision for a unified German democracy and turned it into a petition. Prisoners of conscience began hunger strikes in solidarity.

By November 1988, a million people gathered in East Berlin, chanting, singing and waving banners calling for the dictatorship’s end. The government, hoping to ease the pressure, announced the opening of the border to West Germany. Citizens took sledgehammers to the hated Berlin Wall and broke it down. Political officials resigned to protest the continued rigidity of the ruling party and the party itself disintegrated. By March 1990 — a bit over two years after the campaign was launched — the first multi-party, democratic elections were held.

Students lead the way in Pakistan

In Pakistan, it was university students (rather than religious clerics) who launched the 1968-69 uprising that forced Ayub Khan out of office after his decade as a dictator. Case researcher Aileen Eisenberg tells us that the campaign later required multiple sectors of society to join together to achieve critical mass, especially workers. 

It was the students, though, who took the initiative — and the initial risks. In 1968, they declared that the government’s declaration of a “decade of development” was a fraud, protesting nonviolently in major cities. They sang and marched to their own song called “The Decade of Sadness.” 

Police opened fire on one of the demonstrations, killing several students. In reaction the movement expanded, in numbers and demands. Boycotts grew, with masses of people refusing to pay the bus and railway fares on the government-run transportation system. Industrial workers joined the movement and practiced encirclement of factories and mills. An escalation of government repression followed, including more killings. 

As the campaign expanded from urban to rural parts of Pakistan, the movement’s songs and political theater thrived. Khan responded with more violence, which intensified the determination among a critical mass of Pakistanis that it was time for him to go.

After months of growing direct action met by repressive violence, the army decided its own reputation was being degraded by their orders from the president, and they demanded his resignation. He complied and an election was scheduled for 1970 — the first since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

Why use nonviolent struggle?

The campaigns in East Germany and Pakistan are typical of all 40 cases in their lack of a pacifist ideology, although some individuals active in the movements had that foundation. What the cases do seem to have in common is that the organizers saw the strategic value of nonviolent action, since they were up against an opponent likely to use violent repression. Their commitment to nonviolence would then rally the masses to their side. 

That encourages me. There’s hardly time in the U.S. during Trump’s regime to convert enough people to an ideological commitment to nonviolence, but there is time to persuade people of the strategic value of a nonviolent discipline. 

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign — the importance of which is also outlined in my book “How We Win.”  

As research seminar students at Swarthmore continue to wade through history finding new cases, they are digging up details on struggles that go beyond democracy. The 1,400 already-published cases include campaigns for furthering environmental justice, racial and economic justice, and more. They are a resource for tactical ideas and strategy considerations, encouraging us to remember that even long-established dictators have been stopped by the power of nonviolent campaigns.

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025.

[howtostartarevolution]

holy shit y’all should watch this one, what an admirable person

[howtostartarevolution]

I genuinely believe that some people could encounter a button that says “if you push this button everyone in the world has the opportunity to live a better life and your life remains exactly the same” and they would not push it.

They’d be like “well that button’s not fair to me, though,” even though there’s literally no other buttons around and nothing newly bad would happen to them if the button was pushed.

[howtostartarevolution]

The most meaningful words

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

All men are created equal.

Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar.

There are surely more statements that summarize this thought that all people are in the end equal in worth. That they are humans and should be treated as humans. All the same. With some undeniable human rights. 

It has been more than 200 years some of these ideas have been put to paper. Some of them are only as young as the end of WWII. But they show that this idea has manifested in peoples minds and hearts.

And yes in it you can also find the true spirit of some christian teachings of viewing your fellow humans as your neighbors, someone you have an undeniable connection and a responsibility to treat as you want to be treated yourself.

It is if you want as old as humanity itself. Stuck in our minds and hearts from a time when indeed we were all neighbors in our little or further communities.

Because we are at our core in biology and evolution a communal species. That thrives and suffers together. 

Yet over thousands of years there has been the competing ideology that „Some people are better than others.“

I do not want to delve into the question why or where its origin lies. But the fact remains that todays world is shaped by the competing ideas of „Everyone same in worth“ and „Some people better than others.“

At the time of Enlightenment 200 years ago when Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and All men are created equal. were written down, it very much was a world of „Some people are better than others“. It permeated societies resulting in things like the feudal system, people neatly ordered into „good, better, best“ with the monarch at the top as the ultimate „best“. And yet it was also a time where the order of things were questioned. Where it became more than apparent that the monarch is surely not „the best“ and „the worst“ was at least worth as much as everyone else.

So the idea of everyone being equal found its way into peoples hearts and minds again and took root anew and bore fruit, and so these declarations were written.

It does not matter who people at the time saw as included in the „All“ or for whom to give „Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“, because it is not specified in the words finding their way to the paper.

It is an idea written down. An ideal. 

It does not need to reflect the true state of things.

Except that it does.

Ever since.

It is the purest of ideals as ideals should be, not as something that is, but as something that is meant to be achieved. The blueprint reality has to be held up to, compared to and evaluated to.

Are we already in a world where this ideal has been achieved? No? Then keep working.

And this, this single ideal, idea, concept has shaped our world the past 200 years. The past 200 years this idea has battled against the prevailing concept of „Some people are better than others“. The past 200 years fights have been won. Fights have been lost. But bit by bit, decade by decade we have inched closer and closer to fit our world to the ideal.

More people have freedom. More people have rights. Less people killed. More people saved. More humane punishments. More diplomatic agreements. A mindset that is more peaceful than it has been in the past.

For 200 years there has been social change to fit our world to that ideal of „All humans are equal in worth.“ Slowly, step by step but always progressing.

200 years is just a blip in human evolution. Even social evolution. There are ups and downs, steps forwards and steps back, but it’s undeniable progress. Progress away from putting humans into categories of „better and worse“ and towards filling just one category „human“. 

And such the feather, the word, has indeed become mightier than any sword. You can not kill ideas.

200 years is just a blip in human time. So do not expect the world to match the ideal yet. It won’t. It will disappoint you. It will make you miss the progress that has been achieved. 

We are still battling the idea of „some people better“, maybe we always will. But we are making progress. We are succeeding. We are winning step by step. Even when the world looks dark and progress seems to revert, it is just a slowing and not a halt.

For the ideal of „everyone being the same in worth“ is humanity itself. It is rooted in the very core of our biology and evolution. It is planted in our hearts and our minds. And even if it withers down and falls dormant for a time. It will sprout again and again like the most loathsome, most awesome weed.

That is the true meaning and true legacy of the words

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

All men are created equal.

Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar.

[howtostartarevolution]

Well yes… with the little addition that psychologically most of all people want to be „good people“ and shaming in that sense is based on negotiating all the time what makes a person „a good person“. In that sense stopping bad behavior can also lead to good behavior.

Owning slaves? Shame on you! No, no, very bad person, we do not do that.

Segregating white and black people? No, bad, bad shame one you! Stop doing that!

Excluding women from education, positions of power other stuff? No, bad, shame on you. (Well, we are still in the process of changing what the norm of that is and how bad we find that as society. Same with Queer and Trans rights.)

Burning fossil fuel and ruining the world for everyone? No! Bad stop ruining the planet. Stop burning fossil fuels! (Guess if you stop doing that you have to look for better options, that’s what we want.)

I think that is why the universal declaration of human rights but also just the declaration of independence or other constitutional writings are really important. We have outlined agreements (that a very big portion of population) agree upon is Right and Good. So you can shame people when their action does not agree with this idea of how good people should be.

And yeah if you are like „Fuck human rights“ then you won’t be shamed. But it gives other people the right to say „You are not a good human“ and then everyone gets angry because they want to view themselves as good people. And some might actually think about their action and decide behaving differently might be actually the proper thing to do.

And well it all boils down to:

We have the widespread agreement that: „All people are created equal in worth.“

And then we have the competing idea of: „Some people are created better than other people.“

And *waves to human rights and constitutions* yes we have societal frameworks to shame people in treating people more equal. Most of social change (guess in the western world) the past 200 years has worked exactly because of that.

And yes… even the powerful and mighty usually want to think of themselves as good people. That’s why they frame their horrible politics and actions in terms that seem to make them good people. Even the villains want to be the heroes of their own story.

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[howtostartarevolution]

[howtostartarevolution]

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

[howtostartarevolution]

I hope every goddamn billionaire in this fucked up world is plagued with constant fear of assassination. It's the only justice we have to cling onto.

[howtostartarevolution]

shout out to everyone in south korea who went to bed early last night

[howtostartarevolution]

[howtostartarevolution]

this post is probably very doomerist, skip if you're having a nice day

but I was just taking a walk along the local mid-size river in my town, the river bed there is fairly deep, i am bad at estimating that kind of stuff, but probably five or six meters in height, fairly steep. And up to the very top, there was still debris caught in the trees, from the flood two months ago. So the water was at least up that high, maybe more, but the path was cleared now so I can't tell. I just know that is was a scary, devastating amount of water but we all know that.

and i know some people just say, floods happen, floods have always happened, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, hundreds of years ago. that is true of course, but i think it would be ridicuous to pretend that this big flood has nothing to do with climate change. maybe it would have happened regardless, but from what I know, climate scientists agree that the severity was due to factors that are due to the climate crisis.

It has been over two months. The dehumidifyer in my apartment building is still running, non-stop, 24/7, day and night. I don't even want to know how much electricity that thing eats up. Which might seem petty, considering my ground floor neighbors had to move out and it will still be months until they can move back in. but i am not worried so much about the electricity bill. i am worried because electricity does not just appear from thin air.

The damage is economically devastating for many people, but I can't stop thinking about how many resources all the rebuilding takes. Electricity from the dehumidifyers. New furniture means a lot of wood and plastics. Not too long ago I walked past a gigantic pile of fridges that broke in the flood. So much electronic waste, so many resources required to replace broken things. How many houses were damaged bad enough that they need to be completely rebuilt? Even concrete is a finite resource.

When we talk about feedback loops regarding the climate crisis, we're usually thinking about the polar icecaps melting, which causes the earth to warm up even more. but I've been thinking about how natural catastrophes like floods and the rebuilding afterwards is also kind of a feedback loop, isn't it? It takes a ton of electricity for example to have dehumidifyers running for weeks nonstop, electricity that still comes, at least partially, from burning fossile fuels, which will in turn cause more carbon emissions. more climate change, more devastation, more rebuilding, and on and on and on.

I also think that we are now at a point in the climate crisis where we need to be realistic and need to expect disasters like the flood to happen more often. It's scary. And the worst is, as an individual, there is not much you can do about it.

Don't build a house near a river, yeah, sure. My apartment complex is nowhere near a risk zone. No one, absolutely no one, would have ever expected this here. Because we weren't hit by rising groundwater. It was the surface water running down the nearby hills and pooling around the houses. There are no measures that the muncipality or anyone could have taken to prevent that. You'd have to build a giant wall around the entire town or something, but that would obviously be ridiculous. It's a new apartment complex, the first half was finished only two years ago, the second half barely more than six months before the flooding. I saw the new groundfloor neighbors build garden beds and plant flowers over the summer and now they had to move out again because the entire ground floor is just ruined. They tore out the walls and the flooring and it will still be months until these apartments can be lived in again.

I know people living in the area where the groundwater rose dramatically and took a long time to go down again. At least one couple still had pools of water in their basement six weeks after the flood. You can't do anything about that. You can't pump the water out before the groundwater sinks, it will just come back and possibly destabilize your entire house.

Is that not insane? Is it not absolutely nuts that we are all just supposed to go on with our lives, knowing that we can expect events like this to happen several more times over our livetimes? A flood like this is supposed to be something anyone living only ever sees once in their live, and their children never experience like it, probably not their grandchildren, either.

My aunt and uncle, who admittedly live in a high-risk zone were hit with a similarily devastating flood only 15 years ago.

Makes you wonder when the next time will be.

It's terrifying, especially since there are still so many people in power, in austria and all over the world, who COULD do something, who could have started doing something 50 years ago but didn't.

But people in power will just move to their second or third home if their first home should ever be affected by a natural disaster. And the 100.000 or more Euros it takes to repair and rebuild may be devastating to the average household but for them it is pocket change.

And at this point, we can only scramble to try and fight the symptoms, because keeping the disease in check seems pretty much impossible. Airconditioning in the summer (again more electricity consumption), build flood protection (more resources needed), but also you now need irrigation systems for agriculture because instead of a flood, a drought could hit you just as likely. None of these things are bad, we need to find ways to live with the climate crisis, because at this point it can't be prevented, it is happening and has been happening for decades. But so many things we have to do because of the climate crisis feed right back into it and will make it even worse.