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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChris Hedges: The Rules of Revolt
from truthdig:
The Rules of Revolt
Posted on Jun 9, 2014
By Chris Hedges
There are some essential lessons we can learn from the student occupation of Beijings Tiananmen Square, which took place 25 years ago. The 1989 protests began as a demonstration by university students to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, the reformist Communist Party chief who had been forced out by Deng Xiaoping. The protests swiftly expanded to include demands for an end to corruption, for press freedom and for democracy. At their height, perhaps a million people were in the square. The protests were crushed on the night of June 3-4 when some 200,000 soldiers, backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers, attacked. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed demonstrators were killed.
Lesson No. 1. A nonviolent movement that disrupts the machinery of state and speaks a truth a state hopes to suppress has the force to terrify authority and create deep fissures within the power structure. The ruling elites in China, we now know from leaked internal documents and the work of a handful of historians, believed the protests had the potential to dislodge them from power. Monolithic power, as we saw in China, is often a mirage. Some of the internal documents that exposed the fears and deep divisions within the ruling elite have been collected by the Princeton University Library.
Lesson No. 2. An uprising or a revolution usually follows a period of relative prosperity and liberalization. It is ignited not by the poor but by middle-class and elite families sons and daughters, often college-educated, whom Mikhail Bakunin called déclassé intellectuals, and who are being denied opportunities to advance socially and economically.
This is what happened in China. Chairman Mao Zedongs death in 1976 saw Deng Xiaoping assume leadership. Deng instituted political and free market reforms. The reforms created a new oligarchy. It led to widespread corruption, especially among the party elites. For workers there was a loss of job security and social benefits, including medical care and subsidized housing. University graduates were no longer guaranteed jobs, and many could not find employment. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_rules_of_revolt_20140608
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Chris Hedges: The Rules of Revolt (Original Post)
marmar
Jun 2014
OP
frazzled
(18,402 posts)1. Who wrote this? /nt
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)3. Right?
Uncle Joe
(58,282 posts)2. Kicked and recommended, I believe those are good lessons.
Thanks for the thread, marmar.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)4. K&R