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To build a mass movement, nonviolence is indispensable.

Vijay Prashad

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Vijay Prashad
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: August 14
Historian
Writer
Calcutta
Indispensable
Build
Mass
Movement

More quotes by Vijay Prashad

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Mr. Obama at the UN said that the large nations should not trample small ones in pursuit of what he called territorial ambition. These are curious statements coming from the American president at this time.
Vijay Prashad
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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
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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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I consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation.
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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Organizing is always a relationship between the person who arrives and says 'Let's meet together' and the person who comes to the meeting.
Vijay Prashad
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We would like to participate in manifestations, in Occupies and things like that. We would like to be involved in a march. But we don't actually see the very hard work that goes to build confidence towards those events. And we don't have a shared discussion.
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 a different use for different strategies.
Vijay Prashad
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People were, in good faith perhaps, writing history books about the Indian working class, Indian peasantry, et cetera, and at no point did Communists make an entry, not even to be criticized. They were essentially being whitewashed from history.
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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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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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
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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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I don't recall an American president basically coming out and criticizing the Israeli public.
Vijay Prashad
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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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From 1991 till the present, Iraq sovereignty has been trampled by the United States.
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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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 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