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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

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Vijay Prashad
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: August 14
Historian
Writer
Calcutta
Future
Around
Live
Thing
Believe
Communist
People
Believes
Curious
Somebody

More quotes by Vijay Prashad

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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 consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation.
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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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.
Vijay Prashad
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It's important to reflect about what's happening inside Israel.
Vijay Prashad
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The Islamic State is able to raise finances through taxation, through theft of banks, and certainly through oil sales from the Omar oilfields in eastern Syria. So right now the question of funding isn't of the essence.
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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Interestingly, if you write preparation out of history, leadership and preparation, the building of confidence among people who are exploited, you've actually methodologically written out the Communists because, when an uprising takes place, you don't necessarily see red flags everywhere.
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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It's Israelis who are ready to abandon the hard work of peace.
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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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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People who become important activists, they also struggle with the process of discovery.
Vijay Prashad
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Leadership is another word for preparation.
Vijay Prashad
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I don't recall an American president basically coming out and criticizing the Israeli public.
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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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
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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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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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When anarchists are having a debate, they're having a debate about tactics, 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?' The question isn't 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?', the primary question is how do you build confidence among the masses of people who experience hierarchies, who experience exploitation, who experience oppression.
Vijay Prashad