Link - Baratunde Thurston Inteview of Jamila Raqib

Here is a link to another resource that readers can enjoy while waiting for the next installment of my series on strategic nonviolent resistance based on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  The link at the beginning of this post points the reader to an interview which Baratunde Thurston conducted with Jamila Raqib of the Albert Einstein Institution in August of last year.  Although the immediate motivation for that interview seems to have receded into the background, the interview contains some very sharp and penetrating insights.  The interview took place during some of the largest Black Lives Matter protests of last year in response to the police murder of George Floyd.  Like myself, Baratunde is an African-American who understands the necessity and requirements of active citizenship for self-liberation.  Like myself, Baratunde was concerned and alarmed by the increasing violence that accompanied some of the protests of last year.  And like myself, Baratunde was concerned by the words of various white "liberals" who were calling for political violence.  Like myself, he became suspicious that these so-called "liberals" might actually be agents provocateurs.  

He discussed this and other concerns in his interview with Jamila Raqib.  As for Jamila, she is a very sharp and astute scholar of strategic nonviolent resistance, having studied under both Gene Sharp and Marshall Ganz.  In her responses to Baratunde's questions, she explained how strategic nonviolent resistance is much more than mass protest marches, how violence weakens a liberation struggle, and how vital it is for those involved in a liberation struggle to develop an effective strategy for their struggle.  She also touched on Gene Sharp's catalog of 198 methods of nonviolent action, and she described how and why she first became involved in the study of strategic nonviolent resistance.

The Tearing Of The Fig Leaf Dress

I still have a lot of reading to do in order to prepare my next post in the series on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  Today's post will therefore not be part of that series.  And it will be a short post.

But I do want to comment on the significance of some of the geopolitical events which have taken place during the last month or so.  In particular, I want to comment on a particular effect of the massive protests which have taken place in Russia against the regime of Vladimir Putin.  Those who have been paying attention to events during the last decade will appreciate the significance of this effect.  Note this: one thing that narcissists always target in their victims is the victims' memory - for it is the ability to remember that enables the victim to recognize patterns of abusive behavior, and to make connections between those patterns and the narcissists' current behavior.  (See this also.)  If pattern recognition can be sabotaged, the narcissist can prevent the victim from taking the steps needed to permanently remove himself or herself from the narcissist.  This is why remembering history - both personal and communal (including national and international) is such an important faculty.

Those therefore who remember much of the commentary in the blogosphere and on a lot of "alternative media" from 2007 to early 2017 will remember how much of that commentary attempted to paint Russia under Vladimir Putin as a Paradise in the making, a model to which other nations should aspire.  Putin was fond of comparing himself to Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding prime minister.  (See "Lee Kuan Yew and Russia: Role Model For Hire?", "Lee Kuan Yew Conferred Order Of Honour By Russia's Putin" and "How Lee Kuan Yew and Putin Exposed The Democracy Bogey" for instance.)  The comparison was a conveniently self-serving move for Putin, as Lee Kuan Yew had presided over the re-making of Singapore from a dirt-poor Third World ex-colony of Britain into an economic, scientific and technical powerhouse.  Putin sought similarly to paint himself as the re-making savior of Russia.

Putin's portrayal of himself as a savior was also central to his strategy of expanding Russian geopolitical influence during that time.  Other elements of that strategy included positioning Russia as a leader (perhaps the leader) of the white supremacist Global Far Right, and as a defender of traditional moral and religious values which were supposedly under severe threat due to the decadence of the West and the inevitable "excesses" that are supposedly associated with liberal democracy.  Saving the world from such "strong" threats required, of course, a "strong" leader.  And Putin was supposedly the man!  The project of expanding Russian geopolitical influence was also part of a larger narcissistic strategy of global empire which had first been developed by a rather slimy character named Aleksandr Dugin, and which I began to describe in a series of blog posts titled, "The Revanchism of the Third Rome."

For a while the strategy seemed to work.  This was especially true during the oil shock of the first decade of the 21st century, when oil prices briefly climbed above $140 a barrel on the world market and Russia made money hand over fist as a result.  But that oil shock produced economic effects which undermined the ability of the global economy to support such prices, and the cash boom which Russia enjoyed during that period began to dry up.  That boom is not returning.  Putin has been revealed to be a parasite, and his regime has been revealed to be parasitical.  And the nativist, populist leaders whom the Russian government helped to install in Britain, the U.S., Brazil, and other places have been revealed by the crises of the last two years to be parasites as well, parasites who are willfully, malignantly incompetent.  (To the Brexiteers: how does Brexit feel now?  Y'all happy?)

Now just as a smart wolf relies on sheep's clothing in order to optimize his catching of prey, so too do narcissistic beings (whether persons, families, or national governments) rely on the projection of an image of perfection.  But the underlying reality belies the image.  A wolf is not a sheep, no matter what kind of costume he puts on.  Putin is therefore no defender of traditional moral values if it is revealed that he is a divorced serial fornicator - even though his palace contains a church in addition to a pole dancing theater.  Nor has he turned Russia into a Paradise in the making.  Although he was able to recruit a rather large army of spin-doctors to project an image of perfection to the West, that image was like a dress made of fig leaves.  Perhaps the autumn of his regime has come, for it seems that the fig leaves have turned brown and brittle.  The protests during the first two months of this year have ripped that costume to shreds, revealing the raw flesh of life under Putin.  Eight months ago I suspected that something like this might happen - yet I am no prophet.  Rather, I say again now what I said back then: watch the weak signals.

P.S. Note that the most recent protests in Russia have been decentralized and performed in such a way that Putin's ПОЛИЦИЯ can't do a thing to stop them.  Nor can anyone inject violence into them.  The latest protests are an example of what the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance calls "tactics of dispersion."  These protests show strategic sophistication.  You BLM leaders: are you reading this?  Pay attention!  I'm telling you this as a brother.  How I wish we had done something like this after Stephon Clark was murdered by the Sacramento Police!

Further Developments On Strategy

I am in the process of developing the next posts in my commentary and study guide on Chapter 6 of Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy (From D to D).  Chapters 6 and 7 cover the topic of the role of strategy in strategic nonviolent struggle.  As part of this development I find myself faced with the unavoidable task of reading a large amount of rather complicated material from a number of sources, and I am by no means finished with this reading.  Therefore, my next post on the topic of strategy will be delayed until next week at least.  Future posts on strategy will cover the anatomy of strategic development, the people responsible for developing various levels of strategy, various models of command and control of movement strategy, and the role of training in development of strong movements.

For those who want to follow along with me in my research, here is a partial list of sources which I am studying:

• The Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (Chapter 2), Doug McAdam
• Guatemala Woke Up: A Study About The Social Protests In Guatemala City 2015, Isadora Bennett  (Note that these two works expand on the theme of cognitive liberation discussed in my most recent post in the From D to D series.)
• Corruption and Cognitive Liberation in Russian Environmentalism: A Political Process Approach to Social Movement Decline, Kate Pride Brown.  My, how things in Russia have changed between the time Ms. Brown wrote her thesis and today!
• The Strategy of Indirect Approach (Chapter 11), B.H. Liddell Hart
• The community organizing literature developed by Marshall Ganz
• And, of course, From D to D, How Nonviolent Struggle Works (HNVSW), and Part 3 of The Politics of Nonviolent Action.

As can be seen, that's a large amount of reading to do, which is why it can't all be done in a week.  (That is, unless I want my house to get filthy, my laundry to pile up, and the garden to be overrun with weeds instead of veggies.)  Because quality is more important than "fast-food" quantity, I feel the need to take the necessary time to turn out high-quality posts on this subject.  Those who are waiting for these new posts are welcome to check out my extensive back catalog, although I don't always agree with everything I say...