georgephillip
Diamond Member
Chris Hedges argues the time has come for a class of US activists modeled on Plato's philosophers, Calvin's saints, Machiavelli's Republican Conspirators, and Lenin's Vanguard.
A professional class of revolutionists without which Revolution is impossible:
"The revolutionists call on us to ignore the political charades and spectacles orchestrated by our oligarchic masters around electoral politics.
"They tell us to dismiss the liberals who look to a political system that is dead.
"They expose the press as an echo chamber for the elites.
The revolutionist is a curious hybrid of the practical and the impractical.
"He or she is aware of facing nearly impossible odds.
"The revolutionist has at once a lucid understanding of power, along with the vagaries of human nature, and a commitment to overthrowing power.
"Revolutions can be crushed by force—history has amply demonstrated that—or hijacked by movements or individuals, such as Lenin, Trotsky and later Stalin, that betray the populace.
"Through the careful manipulation of counterrevolutionary forces, faux revolutions can demand not reform but the restoration of retrograde power elites.
"The Central Intelligence Agency mastered this technique in Iran when it organized street demonstrations and protests in 1953 to successfully overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and his Cabinet and again in 1973 when it ousted Chile’s President Salvador Allende. We see the same tactic at work today in Venezuela."
Chris Hedges Why We Need Professional Revolutionists - Chris Hedges -Truthdig
A professional class of revolutionists without which Revolution is impossible:
"The revolutionists call on us to ignore the political charades and spectacles orchestrated by our oligarchic masters around electoral politics.
"They tell us to dismiss the liberals who look to a political system that is dead.
"They expose the press as an echo chamber for the elites.
The revolutionist is a curious hybrid of the practical and the impractical.
"He or she is aware of facing nearly impossible odds.
"The revolutionist has at once a lucid understanding of power, along with the vagaries of human nature, and a commitment to overthrowing power.
"Revolutions can be crushed by force—history has amply demonstrated that—or hijacked by movements or individuals, such as Lenin, Trotsky and later Stalin, that betray the populace.
"Through the careful manipulation of counterrevolutionary forces, faux revolutions can demand not reform but the restoration of retrograde power elites.
"The Central Intelligence Agency mastered this technique in Iran when it organized street demonstrations and protests in 1953 to successfully overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and his Cabinet and again in 1973 when it ousted Chile’s President Salvador Allende. We see the same tactic at work today in Venezuela."
Chris Hedges Why We Need Professional Revolutionists - Chris Hedges -Truthdig
