The Seminal Guidebook For Taking Down A Dictator Becomes Relevant In America
Gene Sharp is a Beloved Figure For Resistance Fighters Worldwide; Americans Need To Become Acquainted With His Prescriptions
Bet you’ve never heard of Gene Sharp.
That’s understandable. Sharp was a political scientist and professor who penned a seminal blueprint for nonviolent resistance to oppressive regimes. “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” published in 1994, has been passed along by resistance fighters in Serbia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Vietnam, China, Nepal, the former Soviet Union, and more recently in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, where his work was used as a map for the Arab Spring.
We Americans usually think of oppressive regimes as something “other” countries grapple with. We watch with interest, awe, and sometimes horror from the comfort of our double-wide couches as activists take to the streets day after day demanding democracy and free and fair elections. We read about these upheavals at the breakfast table poring over the newspaper (or our cell phones), rooting for these nonviolent armies to fight for freedom, because after all, we want them to be like us. We can’t even imagine – or at least we couldn’t have imagined until a month ago – what it’s like to live in a country where the press is stifled, the government loses its transparency, the nearly 250-year-old branches of government malfunction, and where an American president, Elon Musk, and his court jester, Donald, start faking it until they’re making, or in their case, unmaking it.
Last week, we were subjected to ““He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” as though it were uttered by a Monty Python character. Donald followed that one with a doozy: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan and all of New York is SAVED.”
We were not aware that we now have a monarchy, but he added: “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
He’s not joking. This addled, demented Cartoon King believes he can move the chess pieces around America’s complex board without regard to the courts, the other branches of government, and of course the humble subjects of his kingdom.
Familiarize yourself with Gene Sharp, because it is becoming increasingly apparent that it’s going to fall to us to dislodge an oppressive dictator in our midst, without any real playbook. Let’s face it, the American Revolution is our origin story but it’s not like we have the manual to topple tyranny. Sure, protesters have turned the tides against unpopular wars or racial oppression, but this tectonic moment hews more toward what you’d see in Communist nations or theocracies or Imperial Empires.
Sharp’s fundamental belief is that a power structure relies on the subjects’ obedience. But if the subjects don’t obey, the rulers have no power. His prescription comes in the shape of a hundred-point listicle of non-violent actions citizens can engage in.
Here’s what he said in a 2012 documentary “How to Start a Revolution:”
“If you can identify the sources of a government’s power, such as legitimacy, popular support, institutional support; and then you know on what that dictatorship depends for its existence…then your job becomes fairly simple. All you have to do is shrink that support and that legitimacy, cooperation and obedience, and the regime will be weakened. If you take sources of power away, the regime will fall.”
It sounds overly simplistic, Politics 101, but it has stood the test of time. Half the nation has been swept into Donald’s and his Christian and TechBro’s paternal fantasy. They’ve conned the most vulnerable into believing that the kingdom will be benevolent while Donald morphs into Henry the Eighth, gorging himself on riches (farewell the Emoluments Clause), plays Monopoly with the world map, and hops into the playpen with genuine strong-arm dictators who toy with him because he’s so woefully uneducated that he lacks context for their self-dealing manipulations. Donald thinks he’s just keeping his eye on the money ball, thinking I’ll build big, beautiful Trusk hotels in Russia, Turkey, Venezuela one day.
While the naïve half of the country agrees to be subjugated and praises the faux king with Facebook memes and compliance, the other half is waiting to see how the armies of lawyers and the tentative judges are going to fare. Good luck with that – watching lawsuits snake through courts is like witnessing cheese age.
So the depressed oppressed take to the cyber battlefield, where in the echo chamber, they post their fears and concerns and re-post very funny slogans and memes to take the edge off. It’s an understandable reflex because social media is our personal bullhorn, but who gives a shit? Who’s listening?
Word on the street is on Feb. 28th Americans are pledging to halt discretionary spending for 24 hours to protest major retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy, who’ve succumbed to Donald’s edict to eradicate diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives. This will be interesting; my guess is it’s a one-day news cycle item, but I doubt it will deliver a dent. Why? Because it’s one time, fleeting, and I’m guessing American consumers are too addicted to gluttony to take a stand, particularly on something that may seem “niche.” I mean, this is no hunger strike.
What would Gene Sharp, who died in 2018, suggest at this critical juncture?
From his writings and his own words in the documentary “How To Start a Revolution,” the renowned philosopher and enemy of dictators would say campaigns need to be organized, sustained, and multi-pronged. A splash of Pink Pussy hats in Donald’s first spin was colorful, but then what? Movements need to be large and visible and peaceful and persistent. Like a swarm of mosquitoes, you can’t swat away. Use an oleo of communication: slogans, caricatures, symbols, posters, leaflets, social media, broadcast media. He recommends skywriting and earth writing. He suggests a symbolic color – like Pink Pussy hats. Think the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
His list includes mock awards, mock elections, flash mobs, group lobbying, picketing. Use symbolic public acts: display flags, wear symbols, display portraits, symbolic sounds. In the documentary, the leader of the Serbian resistance spoke about banging pots and pans every night during the television broadcast of state-owned media.
Incorporate protest into drama, march, hold mock funerals, have teach-ins. Suspend social and sports activities (like Issa Rae and others did when Donald commandeered The Kennedy Center). Sharp goes as far as listing rent withholding, national consumers’ boycotts. I’ll throw in one for the ladies: a sex boycott (for those of child-bearing age) to protest cruel and deadly policies around women’s reproductive health.
Sharp is a hero among resistance leaders worldwide. Here, he’s obscure because we have long taken for granted that we will never have to topple a dictator in America. We didn’t need him. Nixon was the closest we came to deposing an elected criminal, but the system worked. Republicans had enough regard for the rule of law and the integrity of the nation. Now we are flailing. An addled old man really does think he has kingly powers. Hey Donald, read up on the French Revolution. Or watch Les Mis, because we understand reading might be too taxing for you.