Quote

I understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity.

Vijay Prashad

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Vijay Prashad
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: August 14
Historian
Writer
Calcutta
Politically
Preparation
Combination
Understand
Place
Take
Uprisings
Important
Uprising
Spontaneity

More quotes by Vijay Prashad

Image
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
Image
From 1991 till the present, Iraq sovereignty has been trampled by the United States.
Vijay Prashad
Image
You see all kinds of anarchic forms of rebellion, but the moment of preparation is when the Communists and other kinds of political forces play a roll.
Vijay Prashad
Image
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
Image
I don't recall an American president basically coming out and criticizing the Israeli public.
Vijay Prashad
Image
To be a Communist or to be somebody who believes in the future is a curious thing. So you have to live with people around you, you have to be with the people.
Vijay Prashad
Image
The United States is facing serious pushback from Turkey, which is not comfortable with the view that the Islamic State is a terrorist organization.
Vijay Prashad
Image
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
Image
Where there is no history of struggle after an uprising, the living memory dies.
Vijay Prashad
Image
In times when the tempo for struggle is not very high, you prepare populations by conducting acts of courage-building, confidence-building, respect for each other. That's what the preparation is about and it requires leadership.
Vijay Prashad
Image
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
Image
I consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation.
Vijay Prashad
Image
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
Image
It is convenient for Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair to say the rise of the Islamic State has nothing to do with the Iraq War because that takes the culpability off their shoulders. The Islamic State is a product of the Iraq War. It took about a 100 years to build the Iraqi state, and the Americans and the British destroyed it in an afternoon.
Vijay Prashad
Image
There's a different use for different strategies.
Vijay Prashad
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Leadership is another word for preparation.
Vijay Prashad
Image
Mr. Obama needs to make a phone call to Ankara and have a serious conversation about why the current government in Turkey isn't going to seal its border, why it doesn't take a stronger position against the Islamic State.
Vijay Prashad