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I consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation.

Vijay Prashad

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Vijay Prashad
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: August 14
Historian
Writer
Calcutta
Kind
Spontaneity
Promotion
Preparation
Rise
Consider
Left

More quotes by Vijay Prashad

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Where there is a living memory of struggle, they have a living memory of the rebellion. Where there's no struggle afterward the rebellion is forgotten.
Vijay Prashad
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Where there is no history of struggle after an uprising, the living memory dies.
Vijay Prashad
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People who become important activists, they also struggle with the process of discovery.
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There are several studies done of peasant uprisings where the first chapter might be 'conditions in that area' and so the conditions are bad, and then the second chapter is a kind of conjectural event, somebody's shot and then there's an uprising. But there's no consideration, no chapter on preparation.
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However you define territorial ambitions, it need not be a country that's right next to the U.S. for it to exercise its extraterritorial or territorial ambitions.
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I understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity.
Vijay Prashad
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I think a far more important strategic way to deal with the Islamic State would be to bring some of these regional partners and explain to them that Turkey's own contradictory foreign policy has to end. I mean, if United States is serious, it has leverage over Turkey. And apparently it has not been able to move Turkey sufficiently.
Vijay Prashad
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The best intentions (of respect and tolerance) can often be annoying to those whose cultures are not in dominance: we feel that we are often zoological specimens.
Vijay Prashad
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Over the last two or so decades, there's been an increase in thinking among the Left, liberals, intellectuals in the direction of so-called spontaneity. In other words that uprisings happen spontaneously, people are frustrated, angry, then they spontaneously rise up. And what they don't require is preparation, or what we used to call leadership.
Vijay Prashad
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It's plain that the American right wing, the Republicans and some sections of the Democratic Party, don't really care about international norms. They believe in the executive authority of the president. They don't even believe the United Nations or international law should play any role vis-à-vis American policymaking.
Vijay Prashad
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The question of international norms or international resolutions, you know, coming from Mr. Obama is not really about whether there are international norms or resolutions to uphold.
Vijay Prashad
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You see often it's not ideas, it's inertia, it's bureaucratism, it's all the other things that sometimes come in the way of a good idea.
Vijay Prashad
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Interestingly, what the bourgeois women's groups in India wanted to do in the nationalist period is to have the peasant women essentially follow them... They would be the leaders and the peasant women would be the masses.
Vijay Prashad
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It's Israelis who are ready to abandon the hard work of peace.
Vijay Prashad
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There are people who are saying that they voted twice for Mr. Obama and they are now feeling a great sense of regret, not only over Guantanamo, etc., but now perhaps the entry into a new war in West Asia.
Vijay Prashad
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From 1991 till the present, Iraq sovereignty has been trampled by the United States.
Vijay Prashad
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Turkey is using the Islamic State in the same way as Pakistan used the Taliban in Afghanistan. You know, that's perhaps Turkey's strategy.
Vijay Prashad
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There's no UN resolution that allows the United States to carry out operations in Syria. You'll remember that in Libya in 2011 there was a great hoopla made about the importance of getting a UN resolution. Here there was no attempt to get any resolution. They simply bombed in Syria.
Vijay Prashad
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To build a mass movement, nonviolence is indispensable.
Vijay Prashad
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The Chinese did after all decide that the Soviet Union was a greater threat than the United States and decided to come to terms with the United States when Nixon visits China.
Vijay Prashad