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Radio War Nerd EP #181 — Gene Sharp, Color Revolutions & American Empire (Patreon)

Published:
2019-05-20 16:59:21
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Marcie Smith 

Recorded: May 14, 2019

Gene Sharp is the brain bug theorist behind countless "color revolutions" across the world, from Yugoslavia to Ukraine, Iran to Hong Kong, Venezuela to Burma, the "Arab Spring" and beyond. Neocon Max Boot praises Sharp for being "indirectly responsible for more revolutions than anyone since Lenin or Mao"—revolutions that usually usher in pro-western liberal regimes. And yet Gene Sharp, a leading theorist of nonviolence, has been a hero to the western Left, beyond criticism or reproach. Enter Marcie Smith, who has just published the first part in a deep investigation into Sharp's very deep and well-documented ties to the US national security state. 

Read Marcie Smith's article "Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One)" published in NonSite.org.

Total time: 2:40:28

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here.

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Comments

JD

Holy moly this episode was already great and then they pulled Milken into it. Incredible!

Kevin Walsh

Very interesting and important.

Sunil

Gonna copy my comment from fb... The article and the interview are fantastic. Otpor are creepy as hell. I also very much appreciated Marcies critique of Gene Sharps work from what appears to be a marxist (or at least marxist influenced) perspective. However, I disagree with something she brought up in the interview. It's a bit of a sidetrack, but War Nerd followers might be interested for reasons that will be obvious shortly... Marcie characterises Deep Ecology as being ignorant of questions around Production. This isn't really true. Derrick Jensen in particular looks at production across many of his works. His analysis appears to be influenced by marxist thought on production: he looks at production as a socially organising principle, a means of mediating social relationships and the effects of socialisation into the ethic of production. Derrick is also a co-author of the book Deep Green Resistance. The second half of this book is basically a military doctrine, expounding an approach called Decisive Ecological Warfare. The desired outcome of which is the deliberate acceleration of civilisational collapse. https://deepgreenresistance.org/en/who-we-are/deep-green-resistance-book

Jared Marnin

This was the best episode on contemporary history. This has to be one of the longest episodes (without either World of Wars or life updates from John or Mark) yet it feels likes there’s still a lot to be had on the subject. Hopefully Marcie’s article deals with how his views changed (or didn’t) after 9/11 and War on Terrorism (especially Iraq)

zaabittimov

Good episode over all, especially the first part outlining the murky background of Gene Sharp. Very interesting and important stuff. I do have some comments on Otpor and some general thoughts. Marcie brought up Otpor as being seen as a kind of “gold standard” in certain activist communities as an example of a successful peaceful protest movement. But its “success” (I will explain the scare quotes later) was a result of very specific circumstances. Mark noted a couple times that there was a considerable amount of public support for getting rid of Milosevic (as opposed to other future color revolutions). It’s important to contextualize this: Serbia in 2000 was at a breaking point. It had just gone through nearly a decade with 3 lost wars, UN sanctions, some of the worst hyperinflation in history, privatization, mass protests (’92, ’96-7), organized crime and a massive influx of refugees and internally displaced people. In other words, the writing was on the wall and many elements of society had turned against him, including within the state itself, which brings me to……the “success” of Otpor. Otpor did not take down the Milosevic regime. It was incredibly important for propaganda reasons and the symbolism worked great and the brutal repression of their activists definitely helped galvanize certain elements of the opposition. But there were also striking trade unionists and the like who had nothing to do with Otpor but were also very effective. By this point, the opposition had also started to covertly arm themselves. There are interviews after the 5th of October where opposition guys talk openly about receiving arms from members of the military and police. Ultimately, nothing could’ve happened without the agreements made by opposition politicians with deep state elements such as the infamous Special Operations Unit, the same guys who would go on to assassinate Djindjic 3 years later. The journalist Misa Vasic later wrote about how the Serbian secret police (DB) deliberately decided to target the Otpor activists because they were seen as harmless in order direct the public’s attention away from the subversive elements within the military and police. But of course, the “peaceful protest” narrative looks way better than the “good guys” from the opposition making deals with the war criminals from the JSO (special operations unit). A good friend of mine was doing his mandatory military service at the time of the overthrow, and a few days before the protests began, they were suddenly sent on emergency maneuvers deep in the forest and were cut off from any communication with the outside world and put on high alert. At one point a junior officer asked a bunch of the recruits in the unit how they would react if they were sent in to the Belgrade to fire on protestors, and nearly all of them said openly that they would disobey orders or desert.

zaabittimov

I also have a big issue about how Marcie characterized Milosevic as being some sort of anti-IMF figure when he was instrumental in pushing through the biggest IMF reforms in the late 80s (the Milosevic commission), that disassembled Yugoslav worker's self management. There's a lot more that can be said about that and I feel like I've written too much already

zaabittimov

A quick little anecdote about CANVAS (the successor org to Otpor). In 2012/3 I met a bunch of CANVAS people through some international students here in Belgrade. I went out with them for drinks and to parties a few times, mostly because I was curious about what kind of people they recruit. All of the ones I met were young American women, recent college graduates, well-meaning college liberal types, but pretty clueless. One of them was an incredibly snobby rich girl from Colorado who ended up getting sent to Lebanon and came back complaining about how none of the men there would take her seriously. After seeing the kind of people they recruit, it’s no wonder the the organization is as ineffective as it is. It seems like a paper tiger if there ever was one and I’m pretty sure that it’s just a big money hustle for Popovic and Djinovic.

peter c donahue

I was a footsoldier in the Non Violent activist movement of the late 80s early 90s, working with Pledge of Resistance, Nevada Test Site resistance, Sane Freeze, ect. While the actions I engaged in were youthful antics fraught with naive hope and earnest effort, the organizational effort put into these campaigns were the work of talented and dedicated activists with years of experience.

mark

Mark, you have a lot of stories to tell from the eastern block and Russia. Why not dedicate an episode for that. Personally I'd really like to know more about 90s Russia.

radiowarnerd

Mark knows it as well as any non-Russian could. I'll tell him!

mark

Exactly. Plus not much out there about that period. Also a colour revolutions episode would be nice. Mark seems to know the intricacies of some of them pretty well. I've lived through one so would be interesting to see the similarities.