HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you organize a revolution?

14 points by dimovich ↗ HN
Hello, We are trying to organize a protest and a resistance movement against dictatorship and censorship that is happening in our country Moldova.

What tools and methods would you recommend for better distributed organization, coordination and self-governance?

#OccupyGuguta

Thank you!

8 comments

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[dead] TeddyRuxpin
One way to organize a revolution is to fix the object at a central axis and apply a force along the edge of the object. You could try that.
bmforbes
I think that is the way to effect a revolution, not organize one...
mattmanser
This was apparantly the book that the Arab Spring relied on heavily as a "how-to" for non-violent protest:

Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential - Gene Spring

One of the people behind overthrowing Slobodan Milosevic also wrote a book, reviewed here:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

It says he's trained people in the past in non-violent protest so he might even help you.

dimovich
Thanks for the book references.
xMAF
I had a friend who was in Egypt during the Arab Spring 2011 and he told me they have been organizing for the revolution since October 2010 using Facebook via groups to spread the idea to everyone also using events to organise the marches.

Note that the government to deal with this had all communications cut including landlines and started to pay attention to these groups and pages since then so it's safe to say that your government maybe on to you if you use public tools like Facebook.

meiraleal
If you want to become the new Ukraine or Libya, follow their recipe (it is what you will find online, that "non-violent" Gene Sharp stuff).

By historical records, the successful revolutions happened during or after a war (as cause or effect), when the national army is vulnerable and it is possible to create a revolutionary army based of defections and rebels, and this army will usually be supplied by the foreign enemies the national army is fighting.

eaenki
There's only one book you need to read. The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James (the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian revolution)
mabynogy
You need to defeat the police forces. Here, the police is a part of what we call "les forces de l'ordre" (the forces of the order). The real goal of the police isn't to struggle against crime. The real goal is the protect the current order like it is (whatever this order is).

That's why the revolution happens in the street in front of the police. A smart police should be less violent as possible. Each violent act feeds the revolution.

Here we have the best riot police because we are also one of the best revolutionary country.