UNFORTUNATELY, THE FAILURE TO USE VIOLENCE...:

Hardly a revolutionary, Gene Sharp will be remembered as an inspiration for countless revolutions. A lifelong advocate of non-violent resistance, Sharp believed that the road towards freedom cannot be paved with violence. His strategy, outlined in "From Dictatorship to Democracy", has been adopted by insurgents everywhere. From the resistance in the Burmese jungles to protestors in Ukraine; from dissidents in Cairo to activists in the outskirts of Luanda. All of them have benefited from Gene´s Sharp ability to explore dictators' worst nightmares.

Sharp reasoned that autocracies are vulnerable because dictators are never as strong as they think. And people are never as weak as they think they are. Standing on the shoulders of Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, he suggested that non-violent action is a viable alternative to violent conflict. Not for any moral reasons, but because when we choose violence we fight with our enemy´s best weapons; violence generates violence. Far from being a pacifist, he recognized that limited violence against dictatorial forces may sometimes be unavoidable. However, we should never rely on it deliberately.  

The central point of his philosophy is that non-violent resistance draws its strength from human nature. From our capacity to fight for what we believe in and be stubborn. But he was quick to point out that there´s no such thing as a universal formula to challenge oppression. Strategies vary from region to region and from case to case.

The tactics adopted in the Burmese jungles differed substantially from the ones used during the pro-democracy uprising in Egypt.

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