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Hume's Paradox: where alterglobalisation meets color revolutions
Authors
IMC Research collective
Abstract
The fact that "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe/Central Asia of
the past few years have strong memetic (and other) links with US
federally funded agencies aiming at implementing US foreign policy
objectives makes many progressive activists concerned about whether or
not to support these movements. The rediscovery of Hume's Paradox by
the color revolutions' intellectual guru, Gene Sharp, and the feedback
that the indymedia network has got from what are now IMC Ukraine and
IMC Belarus, suggest that supporting those groups and networks
that are non-hierarchical, self-organising, local collectives is in the
interests of human rights, global peace and justice, despite the fact
that Hume's Paradox is also being publicised by "the CIA".
These also suggest that
a good Indymedia research project would be to explore the extent that
the color revolution memes can be (or are already being) combined with
memes on self-organisation, local autonomy, the full range of human
rights including food, shelter and role-in-society (work) rights, and the
need for all organisations in society to have participatory
decision-making methods and be non-authoritarian.
Introduction
One of the big controversies in the indymedia network was a Ford Foundation
funding proposal in 200x
add links!!! i've even forgotten which year, especially
due to Latin American IMCs with bad memories about CIA trained death squads.
It is a well-documented fact that since the creation of NED by Ronald Reagan,
the complex of NED/IRI/NDI/USAID
links and other "CIA front groups" has provided
a "soft" way of obtaining US foreign policy goals of subverting governments of
"official enemy" states, while simultaneously diverting activists' energy and
enthusiasm into "safe" directions which are compatible with US corporate interests.
In the last few years, these efforts have had at least temporary
success in causing changes of government with an appearance (real or
not) of popular legitimacy in states in Eastern Europe/Central Asia
including Yugoslavia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and
Kyrgyzstan (2005). These have been called the "color revolutions" and
their
memetic links with the US
government funded agencies involved in implementing US foreign policy
goals are well documented.
Simultaneously, changes of government (and/or head of state) following
mass popular uprisings have happened in Latin America over the past
few years, in a systematic shift
against the interests of US corporations.
People and groups struggling for human rights, peace and social
justice are generally well informed about and supportive of the
movements in Latin America, but concerned that the "color revolutions"
are "controlled by the CIA" in order to implement US foreign policy
objectives.
These concerns are valid concerns - the US involvement in the color
revolutions is well documented.
On the other hand, when the Orange Revolution in Ukraine happened in
2004 (
look for link on www-features archive? ), Ukrainian indymedia
activists (IMC Russian-language, at the time) informed the network
that independently of any US influence, the mass non-violent
resistance was genuine. The following year, newly active groups in
Ukraine joined people with previous indymedia experience and together
created a genuinely non-hierarchical, open publishing independent
media collective, IMC Ukraine. (
links to new-imc archive emails )
Simultaneously, Belarus activists, including those involved in the
Belarus Social Forum in 2004,
organised IMC Belarus, and during March 2006, protests against the
authoritarian president's likely election fraud occurred on an
unprecedented scale, with hints that the "revolution" is getting out
of control hoped for by one of the opposition leaders, Milinkievich,
who seems to have US/EU official support.
So how do we resolve the apparent contradiction required by what seems
to be a convergence between the interests of progressive activists and
"the CIA"?
Noam Chomsky's expression "Hume's Paradox" probably gives the answer.
The color revolutions' inspiration and sources of training are credited
by many to
Gene Sharp.
Gene Sharp's ideas appear to be a restatement of Hume's Paradox, which
can be generalised to the present situation as follows:
Authoritarian governments and corporations cannot control their citizens/consumers without obedience - as people lose their fear self-organise and organise their own non-hierarchical, radically transparent, participative media, authoritarian governments in the former client states of the USA and the ex-USSR, and also corporations, lose their control.
Gene Sharp's version of the paradox (presumably) says nothing about
the authoritarian nature of corporations, and (presumably) it does not
encourage "youth activists" to fully participate in decision-making
processes of "opposition political parties" - their role is limited
to "non-violent foot soldiers of regime change".
These suggest a corollary:
A good Indymedia research project would be to explore the extent that the color revolution memes can be (or are already being) combined with memes on self-organisation, local autonomy, the full range of human rights including food, shelter and role-in-society (work) rights, the need for all organisations in society to have participatory decision-making methods and be non-authoritarian.
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