The graphic reality Western media never showed you.
While pushing "peaceful students vs brutal regime," they hid these images: rioters burning, mutilating & lynching PLA soldiers - charred bodies hung from buses, disemboweled, set on fire.
Real atrocities both ways. But only one narrative was allowed.
Colour revolution prototype: legitimate grievances hijacked for chaos. China refused to fall.
Stability won.
China rose.
The full truth matters.
#Tiananmen1989
Video
Angelo Giuliano - Tiananmen 1989: Celebrating China's Long Journey - From Setbacks to Strength
Interesting counter-narrative, thx. Very easy to believe shortly after Iran so brutally murdered 30,000 of their own ppl... Also interesting to see Gene Sharp in the mix. The name crops up pretty often in lefty activist circles like XR, Deep Green Resistance etc. They never seem to notice that all these tyrannical regimes that got overthrown by 'the people' just so happened to be sworn enemies of the west, thus the resistance could count on rather extensive external support. Who's going to be our external support in the fight against our own governments? That's why Roger Hallam's magic formula of 3% of the population in active resistance was never going to be enough. I wonder if Sharp was CIA?
I saw still photos (NSFW) of the Chinese squaddies burned alive in a bus, except for one man who got out, the 'protesters' hung him from the bus. Clio the cat, ?July 1997-1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ??2010-3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ???-4 November 2021 Georgina the cat ?2006-4 December 2025 Toni the cat ?2005-25 March 2026
Sharp was CIA. Lots of stuff here about it. Used be a big fan - had lots of his books.
Thanks for that, Der, a good read. Doesn't sound like there's evidence for him working directly for the CIA (that is, the Central Intelligence Agency - he worked for the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, ie: also CIA but later changed to CFIA as a cunning disguise!), but moved in the same circles and received funding from the NED, which is basically the same thing.
It's interesting that a lot of his critique of state power fits in with an anarchist world view, which I would agree with, but his association with arch neocons and free market fundamentalists makes clear the kind of libertarianism he favoured. I don't know if he was deliberately leaving his language vague to allow left-libertarians to feel like they could get involved, eg:
'we must deliberately act in ways which strengthen the non-State institutions of our society, and consciously refrain from increasing the concentration of effective power in the State [...] One way to do this is to develop alternative institutions to meet those desirable and necessary functions now provided by the large centralized institutions. [...] In order to reduce progressively the size of the existing central State apparatus, and thereby its dangers, it will be necessary to create or strengthen smaller-scale institutions (loci of power) with decentralized decision-making to provide [for] genuine needs, and then gradually to shift to them tasks now carried out by the State.” '
But I think the author is correct to flag the likelihood that Sharp could be talking about privatisation and 'entities like businesses, banks, foundations, non-profits, religious organizations—all of which are privately controlled, and none of which are required, as a matter of law, to submit to any internal democracy'. The fact that all of his pet projects were socialist/communist enemies of the west bears this out. This was especially telling:
'According to its own annual reports, AEI did not prioritize fighting dictators and promoting “democratic freedoms and institutions” in US client states like Saudi Arabia, Zaire, Chile, El Salvador, or Guatemala. These countries are either never mentioned, or mentioned only in brief passing, in two decades worth of AEI annual reports. Rather, AEI and its adjuncts consistently focused their efforts in countries where political leadership was resisting NATO’s geostrategic priorities and/or the economic liberalization programs being pushed by the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. Treasury’s “Washington Consensus”: countries like the Soviet Union, Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and post-collapse Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.'
This makes it plain that he's a stooge for neoliberalism and imperialism, using just enough left-populism to sucker in youthful idealists and tie them to the project of subverting their countries to the hegemonic power interests. It even worked on Chomsky & Zinn, remarkably enough:
'In 2008, Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, wrote an open letter defending Sharp, the Albert Einstein Institution, as well as Popovic’s CANVAS and Ackerman’s ICNC.207 One hundred and thirty-eight people signed it, including Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Paul Ortiz, Daniel Ellsberg, and activist trainers like Paul Engler and George Lakey. The signatories “categorically reject” the “false accusations” that Sharp “engaged in activities designed to promote U.S. imperialism.” '
Discusses Marcie Smith at some length. Seems to be suggesting Smith is or may be anti non-violence. But she stresses in that interview with Blumenthal that she is certainly not anti non-violence and advocates the non-violence of Martin Luther King Jr rather than Sharp's.
That's enough for any insane man to be getting on with.
Smith's message seems to be regarding reading Sharp - read but read with care. Read loads once at a time when I didn't have a cautious bone in my body and was very impressed.
Re: "Gene Sharp: More Anarchist than Neoliberal" in Journal of Resistance Studies
Thanks for those links, Der. Had a look at the Brown paper, skim-reading some of it. It mostly comes across as whining about missing 'context' which wasn't relevant to Smith's argument, eg: the make-up of anti-communist struggles in eastern Europe. One salient point, if true, is his claim that Sharp went to Lithuania after the declaration of independence, and his manuals were translated and printed after that event, and therefore couldn't have been causative (though I expect they were influential in the ongoing process). Otherwise it's a lot of strawmen, including the one from the Zunes letter denying the influence of 'just one lonely western analyst' (paraphrasing) and accusing Smith & other critics of being patronising or racist for supposedly not accepting the agency of populations rising up against the various 'dictators' or 'tyrannical regimes'. No: the point is about the effect of western efforts at exercising 'soft power' to undermine rival powers, and Sharp's role in this, which was such that he managed to turn up in person at every single one of these uprisings, hawking his wares.
The supposedly anarchist leanings Brown mentions are pretty weak sauce IMO, and seem more like generalised, waffly hand-waving to cover his neoliberal tracks, eg:
'Expansion of both consumers’ and workers’ ownership and control; establishment of new firms to provide alternatives to existing ones whose size and practices are viewed as undesirable; maintenance of the independence of small privately-owned firms from takeovers by massive corporations; changing specific practices and products of existing firms when they are deemed to be of poor quality or otherwise harmful; and promotion of economic decentralisation to enhance the population’s economic well-being, independence, and ability to withstand crises. To the degree that a society transarms from military means of defence to civilian-based defence, the freeing from military use of resources, production capacity, labour, and expertise for civilian needs could have highly beneficial economic results' - p.19
and:
'People need to have a sense of participation and control in the running of their own economic lives, that they will not be determined by some distant board of directors, government decision, or impersonal forces perceived variously as beneficient or malevolent. This requires explorations of new very different ways to structure and own our economic institutions. We need to bypass both the models of massive investor-owned corporations and of State ownership, and instead explore seriously and experiment with different forms of ownership and management. These include ownership and management by consumers, workers, and technicians, and by small-scale private incorporated groups or individuals' - p.20
Whatever, man. Where's your investigation of the neoliberal hell-holes your strategies resulted in, time after time? Doing the fascist's work for them, indeed. And of course, we have the obligatory mention of Rojava (p.93), albeit noting that they 'should not be romanticised or idealised' and have been accused of 'breaches of international humanitarian law', but no mention of the utility to the US of having a Kurdish separatist group in the north of Syria and poised to cause problems for Turkey - emblematic of Smith's critique of Sharp even if they don't adhere to strict nonviolence.
Depressing how easily people can fall for these kinds of psy-op. I should know, having fallen for a few of them in my time!
"Sharp was motivated by a desire to fight tyranny, which he associated with government “centralization” of all kinds. With the USSR and the New Deal in the background, Sharp argued that nonviolent methods were the most effective way to undermine and collapse regimes marked by dangerous economic “regulation,” “state ownership,” and other “controls” over the economy.
Sharp would not simply theorize from the sidelines—he personally strove to promote his “politics of nonviolent action” globally, and left an indelible mark on geopolitics. In 1983, with the rise of Reagan’s foreign policy of communist “rollback,” Sharp founded the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), whose mission was to promote Sharp’s theories worldwide. Sharp co-led AEI with Peter Ackerman, a passionate neoliberal who would champion the privatization of social security, serve as a Cato Institute board member, and, parallel to his work at AEI, work as right hand man to “junk bond king” Michael Milken at the notorious investment house Drexel Burham Lambert".
Interesting foray into the class structure of quaker-originated org, Movement for a New Society (MNS) in part two of Smith's essay. In particular a working class member's critique of the org has several pertinent observations which modern-day environmentalists and leftists could learn from. Howard Ryan's essay was 'The Nonviolent Movement and The Working Class and A Critique of Movement For a New Society', excerpted here by Smith:
*****
[Howard] Ryan concludes with this: “Any discussion of the working class experience is incomplete if it fails to consider internalized oppression: the guilt and self-hate which are encouraged by society and which permeate our thoughts.” He offers this moving hypothetical to illustrate the average working man’s situation. As it remains so strikingly relevant to our modern political situation, and as it did not get published back in 1980, it deserves quotation at length.
“By the time he’s old enough to walk,” Ryan writes, “little Johnny gets into mischief—he’s a bad and naughty boy. A few years later Johnny’s friends notice that he doesn’t like rough games or fighting—bad little Johnny’s also a sissy. In school Johnny gets restless and can’t pay attention, and so falls behind—bad little Johnny the sissy gets labeled a ‘slow learner.’ On through his teens the bad messages continue to get compiled in Johnny’s head—Johnny’s fat, Johnny’s got pimples, Johnny jacks off, Johnny can’t get girls, Johnny’s a faggot. Later, he’s married, with kids, a blue collar job—Johnny’s a nobody, his family lives in a crummy apartment, his wife has to get a job to make ends meet, Johnny’s not a good provider. Johnny’s not a real man. Being of American working class stock, Johnny has bought into the myth that it’s his fault that he’s poor. It’s his fault that his family doesn’t have a nice home in the suburbs. By American standards, Johnny is a failure…. If he had only tried harder in school, he might have gotten a scholarship and went to college. If only he wasn’t so dumb, or so lazy, if he hadn’t fooled around so much, etc.
“Johnny’s quite a failure, all right. But there is one thing that he can do, and he can do it better than anyone else he knows (with the possible exception of his wife, who feels just as guilty as he does). Johnny can sacrifice. He sacrifices so much; puts in all the overtime he can. He works 55, sometimes 60 hours a week. Johnny’s dream is to save up enough to make a down payment on one of the new tract homes. His wife would love it. But every time he manages to get a little ahead, something always seems to come up. One of the kids breaks an arm or needs braces; his mother gets sick and needs help; the car needs an overhaul; he gets into an accident and his insurance won’t cover it; a temporary layoff at work; the union goes on strike; on and on. Still, he continues to plug away…. Johnny’s life may not be the grandest. Most of it’s spent busting ass on the job…. He may not be the greatest success, but Johnny’s determined to prove to himself and to the world that he can do something good in his life, something important. He’ll work and work, and save and save; and if he’s very lucky maybe he’ll get his family one or two of the good things in life, something they can be proud of. Maybe it’ll be a color TV; maybe a second family car. Or, maybe he’ll be among the fortunate few who lands a promotion to supervisor. Then they might talk about the possibilities of a camper, or a house, or—most importantly—the possibilities of getting his kids into college so that they’ll be educated and not have to go through the same crap that he’s been through.
“Can we expect Johnny to be open to our telling him that he shouldn’t demand higher wages? That he and his family could live comfortably on his present income—and their life would be much more fulfilling—if they turned to a simple lifestyle? That the things Johnny wants for his family and for which he slaves—the new car, the color TV, the tract home—are artificially induced needs which will bring them no happiness and which will spoil the environment, besides? My guess is that he will not be open to hearing us, but he will respond angrily and defensively, and that he will be justified in doing so. In a sense we have colluded with the capitalist by denying Johnny his humanity. The capitalist denies his humanity by refusing to allow him to be anything other than a piece of production machinery; we deny his humanity by telling him that the things that he wants are not legitimate wants.
“Before we decide unequivocally that the material things which the working class family strives for are artificially induced needs, I think we should look beyond the commodities themselves and toward the actual social functions that they serve. We might then find that capitalism has not so much created artificial needs as it has touched upon peoples real, gut-level, human needs and then developed various perverted, inefficient, ecologically unsound, and highly profitable ways of filling them.”
But, Ryan says, MNS has instead “placed themselves on a political pedestal, established an impeccably pure, revolutionary code of conduct, and announced that they will refuse to support the struggles of American workers until they begin living up to MNS’s standards of politically correct living. They have attacked workers’ values as regressive, illegitimated their needs, and offered no validation of the real concerns and truly human aspirations toward which working people strive. At the same time, they have asked of workers to sacrifice those precious material prizes which represent to the worker their sense of well-being; the sense of their human individuality which their working lives otherwise deny them.”Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Using non-violent strategy and tactics as the most effective way to bring about change.
Non-violence keeps our movement alive. We use non-violence to reveal the true perpetrators of systemic violence that people suffer from daily all over this world. It is our strategy to bring light to the injustice that too many suffer each day. We feel pain from the abuses of the police and others, and we will keep exposing their violence through our discipline. Non-violence has unequivocally been demonstrated to be an effective tool in mass mobilisations (see the work of Gene Sharp and Erica Chenoweth) and so we base a cornerstone of our movement on this.
At the same time we also recognise that many people and movements in the world face death, displacement and abuse in defending what is theirs. We will not condemn those who justly defend their families and communities through the use of force, especially as we must also recognise that it is often our privilege which keeps us safe. We stand in solidarity with those whom have no such privilege to protect them and therefore must protect themselves through violent means; this does not mean we condone all violence, just that we understand in some cases it may be justified. Also we do not condemn other social and environmental movements that choose to damage property in order to protect themselves and nature, for example disabling a fracking rig or putting a detention centre out of action. Our network, however, will not undertake significant property damage because of risks to other participants by association.
'Gene Sharp is the foremost scholar on nonviolent action. His three volume The Politics of Nonviolent Action should be required reading for all activists as a basic primer on the nature of political struggle. [...] Nonviolent direct action is a form of struggle which uses political, economic, or social leverage in an attempt to coerce the structures of power to change, up to and including complete abdication' (DGR book, p.104)
*****
Going further, with a distinction made between nonviolence and pacifism:
*****
'A personal commitment to the rejection of violence can be an honorable and thoughtful act. But if this commitment leads to an inability to face the realities of systems of power--their inherent violence, their intransigence, their sociopathic destruction of anyone and anything in their way--and what is involved in changing those systems, then the wholesale embrace of such pacifism will only impede our ability to win justice and save what's left of our planet.
Systems of power are not swayed by moral exhortation. They don' care how well-behaved you are, how much you believe in the power of healing, or how much you want the inner child of perpetrators and CEOs to feel the love they supposedly never got. Their inner children are sociopathic. And out in the real world, they will turn fire hoes and German shepherds on your actual children. Nonviolent actionists have been gunned down in cold blood, tortured, thrown in jail to rot. Any quick perusal of the history of political struggle will yield the harsh truth, the lesson learned from Bloody Sunday to Tiananmen Square: nonviolence does not work by persuasion, nor does it offer protection, and the left needs to give up its maudlin belief in both. Those are not the reasons to employ it.
Nonviolence works be facing the ruthless reality of oppression, identifying its linchpins, and using direct action to interrupt the flow of power and hopefully dislodge some portion of its foundation.' (p.106)
*****
No mention of the utility to empire of stoking nonviolent movements in other countries in order to destabilise and exploit the subsequent chaos to serve their own ends. Presumably this is why the author of these words, Lierre Keith (yes, I'm banging on about her again) was perfectly comfortable supporting an astro-turfed, Mossad-adjacent 'women's movement' in Iran shortly before that country was targeted by a merciless bombing campaign and regime-change operation, killing, maiming and otherwise ruining the lives of thousands of men, women & children. About which she said nothing: https://nitter.net/lierrekeith/search?f=tweets&q=iran&since=&until=&min_faves=
on June 4, 2026, 1:33 pm