Nicholas Kristof: The Power of Mockery

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/opinion/17kristof.html?_r=1

The juiciest story behind the Middle East uprisings doesn’t concern Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s “voluptuous” Ukrainian nurse or C.I.A. bags of cash. Rather, it’s the tale of how a nonviolent revolutionary strategy crafted by Serbian students and an octogenarian American scholar came to challenge dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and many other countries.

This “uprising in a bottle” blueprint was developed by the Serbian youth movement, Otpor, to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. One of Otpor’s insights was that the most effective weapon against dictators isn’t bombs or fiery speeches. It’s mockery. Otpor activists once put Milosevic’s picture on a barrel that they rolled down the street, inviting people to hit it with a bat.

Otpor’s strategy mirrors one promoted by a rumpled Boston academic named Gene Sharp, who is little known in America but inspires tremors among dictators abroad. Sharp’s guide to toppling despots has been translated into 34 languages so far and was widely circulated in Egypt last year in Arabic.

(snip)
Sometimes the most powerful force for social change is a bunch of irreverent and wise-cracking students, working together.

Nicholas Kristof
The Power of Mockery: how youth power overthrew Mubarak and can change the world.
http://twitter.com/#!/NickKristof

[aquart]

1. A desperate young man setting himself on fire was "mockery"?

[Kurovski]

3. Now, what do YOU think?

K&R

Mockery only burns the target of outrage, if done right.

[canoeist52]

2. Humor and satire are also powerful tools.

[applegrove]

4. Why Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are so important.

[roguevalley]

5. in the past if you mocked a leader he lost his moral authority

and the aura that leadership casts. they would inevitably fall. that is why bards were treated so well by kings when they came by. In the old days you could sit in front of someone's house and mock them to anyone who passed by and destroy them. its as old as the world. especially in heroic societies or those like in the Arab world

[applegrove]

6. I was harrassed years ago and mocking me was how the monster separated me from others. It was awful.

In Canada the neocon press tried it hand at humour and mocking our prime minister of the time, Jean Chretien, but since the neocons, who are about dis-informing the public, were/are not punching through to the truth with right wing humour (because it is all about keeping the masses uninformed) it just came across as mean or fell flat. They have not done the humour thing since.

[roguevalley]

7. I was too once. I hug you. There is nothing worse.

[applegrove]

8. Right back at ya.

[applegrove]

9. Mocking me was one way they isolate me. I got the whole toolbox thrown at me.