Quiet Boston scholar Gene Sharp is, in fact, an American Revolutionary:
In his writings, Mr. Sharp teased out common principles that make nonviolent resistance successful, creating a broad road map for activists looking to destabilize authoritarian regimes. Mr. Sharp’s magnum opus, the 902-page “Politics of Nonviolent Action,” was published in 1973. But the main source of his success is his 90-page “From Dictatorship to Democracy.”This slim volume offers concise advice on how to plan a successful opposition campaign, along with a list of historically tested tactics for rattling a dictatorial regime. Aimed at no particular country, and easily downloadable from the Internet, the booklet has found universal appeal among opposition activists around the globe.
Though he warns readers that resistance may provoke violent crackdowns and will take careful planning to succeed, Mr. Sharp writes that any dictatorship will eventually collapse if its subjects refuse to obey.
He offers a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action, like the staging of mock elections to poke fun at problems like vote-rigging, using funerals to make political statements and adopting symbolic colors, a la Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Less conventional tactics include skywriting political messages and “protest disrobings.”
In Zimbabwe, opposition activist Magodonga Mahlangu has organized the tract’s translation into two main local languages. In Russia, opposition activist Oleg Kozlovsky estimates he and his colleagues have used about 30 of 198 protest methods listed in Mr. Sharp’s booklet. Venezuelan student leader Yon Goicoechea says Mr. Sharp’s work inspired him to think creatively of ways to carry out antigovernment protests: Activists once tied themselves to the stairs of a government building and have staged street theater to mock constitutional changes.
He’s not the only academic promoting revolution. MIT’s OpenCourseWare includes course 21H.001 How to Stage a Revolution, taught by Professors William Broadhead, Meg Jacobs, Peter Perdue, and Jeffrey Ravel.
