Rebellions

"They sey that owre sovereyn lorde is above his lawys to his pleysewr, and he may make it and breke it as hym lyst, withe owt eny distinction. The contrary is trew, and elles he shuld not have sworn to kepe it."

"The thing that would have best suited the circus side of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the Jack Cade or the who tries such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the “deal” which had been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the Cade-Tyler sort."

"Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny. The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king, as king I will be,—"

"We wyll that all men knowe we blame not all the lordys, ne all tho that is about the kyngs person, ne all jentyllmen ne yowmen, ne all men of lawe, ne all bysshopes, ne all prestys, but all suche as may be fownde gylty by just and trew enquery and by the law."

"The law servyth of nowght ellys in thes days but for to do wrong, for nothyng is sped almost but false maters by coulour of the law for mede, drede, and favor, and so no remedy is had in the cowrt of conscience in eny wyse."

"Organizers fear that Trump is prepping the ground for a de facto coup. But they also hope that he can be headed off by a massive wave of aroused and empowered opposition. There is, after all, a growing public awareness of the existential threat to the country’s democracy, with a drumbeat of warnings"

"The persistence into the twentieth century of a specific institutional pattern inimical to growth in Mexico and Latin America is well illustrated by the fact that, just as in the nineteenth century, the pattern generated economic stagnation and political instability, civil wars and coups, as groups struggled for the benefits of power. Díaz finally lost power to revolutionary forces in 1910. The Mexican Revolution was followed by others in Bolivia in 1952, Cuba in 1959, and Nicaragua in 1979. Meanwhile, sustained civil wars raged in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. Expropriation or the threat of expropriation of assets continued apace, with mass agrarian reforms (or attempted reforms) in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Revolutions, expropriations, and political instability came along with military governments and various types of dictatorships. Though there was also a gradual drift toward greater political rights, it was only in the 1990s that most Latin American countries became democracies, and even then they remain mired in instability."

"Bolivia has descended into a nightmare of political repression and racist state violence since the democratically elected government of Evo Morales was overthrown by the military on 10 November last year. That month was the second-deadliest in terms of civilian deaths caused by state forces since Bolivia became a democracy nearly 40 years ago... Morales' government was able to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%... The November coup was led by a white and mestizo elite with a history of racism, seeking to revert state power to the people who had monopolised it before Morales’ election in 2005. The racist nature of the state violence... all of the victims of the two biggest massacres committed by state forces after the coup were indigenous."

"What has received even less attention is the role of the Organization of American States (OAS) (with headquarters in Washington, D.C.) in the destruction of Bolivia’s democracy last November. The wheels of justice grind much too slowly in the aftermath of US-backed coups. And the Trump administration’s support has been overt: the White House promoted the “fraud” narrative, and its Orwellian statement following the coup praised it: “Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.” According to the Los Angeles Times: “Carlos Trujillo, the US ambassador to the OAS, had steered the group’s election-monitoring team to report widespread fraud and pushed the Trump administration to support the ouster of Morales.”"

"...These guidelines are drawn from the wide body of experience and evidence from the many countries that have experienced a coup since World War II..."

"The coups, wars and slaughters to instill and maintain pro-corporate regimes have never been treated as capitalist crimes but have instead been written off as the excess of overzealous dictators, as hot fronts in the Cold War, and now of the War on Terror. If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the seventies or in Iraq today, that suppression is explained... almost never as the fight for the advancement of pure capitalism."

"The death of Ginsburg and quick replacement of another ultra conservative to SCOTUS has big implications for November’s election: it strengthens Trump’s strategy... create the public impression mail in voting is fraudulent and the basis for stopping the counting of mail ballots... he’ll raise the ‘fraudulent’ voting claim, get Attorney General Barr to file injunctions to stop the vote count of mail in ballots, and push to the Supreme Court the approval to stop the vote count. Since the Republican and Democratic Party conventions in August I have been following and commenting on the unfolding of Trump’s strategy to engineer a legal de facto coup d’etat surrounding the November 3 elections... as he has publicly declared in his campaign speeches, he’s planning not only to win in November but is considering, as he put, “four more years after that, and maybe even four more, we’ll see”. In lock-step, his Attorney General, Bill Barr, has also publicly declared that protestors (including those protesting a future coup no doubt) should be considered “treasonous” and prosecuted under the sedition acts. For Trump too, protestors are “insurrectionists”, which means terrorists and ‘enemy combatants’ under the Patriot Act... So much for the Bill of Rights in a post November USA world!"

"is manifesting itself in Africa as a chronic symptom of the underdevelopment of political life within the imperialist context. Military coups have followed one after the other, usually meaning nothing to the mass of the people, and sometimes representing a reactionary reversal of the efforts at national liberation. This trend was well exemplified in Latin American history, so that its appearance in neo-colonial South Vietnam or in neo-colonial Africa is not at all surprising. If economic power is centered outside national African boundaries, then political and military power in any real sense is also centered outside until, and unless, the masses of peasants and workers are mobilized to offer an alternative to the system of sham political independence."

"The United States presidential campaign is being transformed into a coup d’état by Donald Trump, who has declared that he will not accept the results of any vote that goes against him. At a White House press conference Wednesday evening, Trump was asked whether he would “commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election.” He replied: “We’re going to have to see what happens. You know, I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster.” When his questioner persisted, Trump said, “You’ll have a very peaceful trans—there won’t be a transfer frankly. There will be a continuation.” Trump’s determination to rapidly appoint a new Supreme Court justice to fill the seat left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is a critical element of the unfolding criminal conspiracy. Trump intends to stack the Supreme Court with lackeys who will rubber stamp his repudiation of the election results. “I think this [the election] will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,” Trump said at the news conference. That the preparations for an overthrow of the Constitution are well advanced is now widely acknowledged."

"President Trump's Wednesday refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose the election has exacerbated all the worries raised by his trolling about serving an unconstitutional third term... I understand fears about dissolution of democratic norms and the apparently nonexistent floor in the cravenness of Republican officials in Trump's thrall. But Trump lacks two necessary things for the coup attempt some of his critics anticipate, and those deficiencies reassure me greatly... The first is competence. As my colleague Damon Linker has ably argued, the president is very good at exercising rhetorical power, but he is very bad at actually doing things, because he is deeply incompetent. He cannot plan. He certainly cannot keep a secret or keep his story straight... The second is the absolute loyalty of the military Trump would need to retain the physical seat of power. If he had strong support among active-duty service members, it would still be quite a leap to say they'd help make him a dictator. But Trump doesn't even net a positive approval rating from U.S. forces anymore."

"A coup d 'état, is the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group (usually military or paramilitary). According to Oxford University, a coup differs from a revolution, in which large numbers of people work for basic social, economic and political change... many scholars consider a coup to succeed when the usurpers seize and hold power for at least seven days... Patrick McGowan, an accomplished researcher on coups in Africa, proffers that political leaders ejection from power, through unmistakably unconstitutional means, are mainly assisted by the army either on their own or in conjunction with civilian elites such as civil servants and politicians. Researchers add that an essential element of a successful coup is the process of infiltration and subversion. This ensures that a small but critical part of the security forces is totally subverted, while much of the rest is temporarily neutralised. While a variety of mechanisms exist through which coups might pave the way for democratisation, there are still widespread views against it. For starters, coups in democratic societies aren't particularly welcomed because of the stain it places on democracy. Barbara Geddes refer to this as "democratic backsliding," indicative of a democratic breakdown."

"Here’s what we know: Congress was not prepared on January 6th. We weren’t prepared because we never imagined this could happen: an attack, by our own people, fostered and encouraged by those granted power through the very system they sought to overturn. That is a lesson, not a conspiracy theory or counter-narrative. Some have concocted a counternarrative to discredit this process on the grounds we didn’t launch a similar investigation into the urban riots and looting last summer. Mr. Chairman, I was called on to serve during the summer riots as an Air National Guardsman. I condemned those riots and the destruction of property that resulted. But not once did I ever feel that the future of self-government was threatened like I did on January 6th. There is a difference between breaking the law and rejecting the rule of law, between a crime—even grave crimes—and a coup."

"It is also surprising that people should aid and put into power those very Mussulmans who, on invading India, destroyed all our Hindoo temples, forcibly converted the natives to Mahomedanism, massacred whole cities, seized upon Hindoo females and made them concubines, prevented Brahmins from saying prayers, burnt their religious books, and levied taxes upon every Hindoo. They are those very Mussulmans who prided themselves on calling us infidels, and in subjecting us to all sorts of humiliation. If any person will reflect on their former deeds, it will make his hair stand on end, cause such disgust that the very sight even of a Mahomedan will be abhorrent. What is more surprising still, is that the people should consider it a religious deed to kill and destroy those very persons who permitted the re-establishment of the. decayed religion, and allowed all temples and places of worship to be rebuilt, and all religious ceremonies to be performed without any hindrance whatever. We should consider how much we suffered in the time of the Mahomedan kings in Oude. A short time ago, Moulvie Gholain Hoosein and Ameer Aly did their best to destroy the Hunnooman Gurhee, but it was owing to General Outram that they did not succeed ; otherwise all of us would either have lost our lives or our religion, from the oppression of tyrants. The people are forgetting those days, and now not only strive to destroy those who saved our religion, but make their destruction out to he a religious act."

"What the whole episode never remotely resembled was a national struggle for independence."

"The Sikhs, the most conscious Hindus of the time, saw it for what it was: an attempt to restore the Moghul empire. ‘The Mutiny was a culmination of the Faraizi and Wahhabi jihads which Muslims had been waging earlier, and wherever Hindus were in a minority, it led to forced conversions and killings of Hindus, ostentative cow-slaughter and other classics of Islamic politics."

"And just as there are instances of the Muslims in India resorting to Hijrat, there are instances showing that they have not hesitated to proclaim Jihad. The curious may examine the history of the Mutiny of 1857; and if he does, he will find that, in part, at any rate, it was really a Jihad proclaimed by the Muslims against the British, and that the Mutiny so far as the Muslims were concerned was a recrudescence of revolt which had been fostered by Sayyed Ahmad who preached to the Musalmans for several decades that owing to the occupation of India by the British the country had become a Dar-ul-Harb. The Mutiny was an attempt by the Muslims to reconvert India into a Dar-ul-lslam."

"In the course of this address, I have dwelt, long and frequently, upon those circumstances which appear to demonstrate that to Mussulman intrigue and Mahomrnedan conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of the year 1857. I have endeavoured to point out how intimately the prisoner, as the head of the Mahomrnedan faith in India, has been connected with the organisation of that conspiracy either as its leader or its unscrupulous accomplice."

"I have alluded to the part taken by the native press and Mahommedans, in general, as preparing the Hindus for insurrection, and the native army, in particular, for revolt; and perhaps, in further corroboration of such facts, it may be as well to advert to the share that may be assigned to the Mahomrnedan in getting the cartridges refused on the parade ground of the 3d Light Cavalry. Out of these 85 troopers the far larger majority was Mahomrnedan, These men had no caste, and to them it could not possibly have mattered whether pig’s and cow’s fat was smeared on the cartridges or not. Captain Mariineau tells us that at the Ambala depot, as far as the cartridge question was concerned the Mahomrnedan sepoys laughed at it, and we thus perceive that these men initiated open mutiny without one pretext for so doing, or the shadow of an excuse. They had not even the extenuation of a pretended grievance; yet they, at once leagued themselves in rebellion against us, and induced the Hindus to join them, by speciously exciting them on that most vulnerable of points, the fear of being forcibly deprived of their caste. I say, induced the Hindus to join them, for such is the evidence before us, and this too on a pretext in which the Mahommedans could have had no possible sympathy with them. Nor indeed were the Hindus long in discovering this, for as a witness, who has been frequently quoted, informs us : “Immediately after the battle of the Hindan, they spoke with much regret of the turn that affairs had taken, reproached the Mahommedans for having an intention of interfering with their caste. Great numbers of the Hindu sepoys at this time declared that, if they could be sure their lives would be spared, they would gladly go back to the service of Government; but the Mahommedans, on the contrary, used to assert that the King’s service was much better than that of the English; that the Nawabs and Rajahs would supply the King with large forces, and that they must eventually conquer.”"

"If we now take a retrospective view of the various circumstances which we have been able to elicit during our extended inquiries, we shall perceive how exclusively Mahommedan are all the prominent points that attach to it. A Mahommedan priest, with pretended visions, and assumed miraculous powers—a Mahommedan King, his dupe and his accomplice—a Mahommedan clandestine embassy to the Mahommedan powers of Persia and Turkey resulting— Mahommedan prophecies as to the downfall of our power— Mahommedan rule as the successor of our own—the most cold blooded murders by Mahommedan assasins—a religious war for Mahommedan ascendancy—a Mahommedan press unscrupulously abetting—and Mahommedan sepoys initiating the mutiny. Hinduism, I may say, is nowhere either reflected or represented; if it be brought forward at all, it is only in subservience to its ever-aggressive neighbour."

"The 1857 Mutiny, regarded as the most spectacular event in 19th-century India, also illustrated the most spectacular illustration of Muslim militancy, couched in terms of jihad, against the British... the British were aware of the great debate that was raging within the Indian Muslim community as to the status of India. The question of whether British-held India was to be considered Dar-ul-Harb, now that Islamic rule had vanished, and the ensuing duty of Muslims to revolt, became the concern not only of Muslim Indian doctors of law, but was referred to scholars as far away as Mecca itself."

"When the army has slain its fill, When they bid the hangman cease; They will beckon us down from the desert hill To go to our homes in peace.To plough with a heavy heart, And, of half our fields bereft, 'Gainst the usurer's oath, and the lawyer's art To battle that some be left.At the sight of an English face Loyally bow the head, And cringe like slaves to the surly race For pay and a morsel of bread;Toil like an ox or a mule To earn the stranger his fee — Our sons may brook the Feringhee's rule, There is no more life for me!"

"[Muslim militants who] “almost universally were regarded as the fomentors of the revolt and its chief beneficiaries. The first sparks of disaffection, it was generally agreed, were kindled among the Hindu sepoys who feared an attack on their caste. But the Muslims then fanned the flames of discontent, and placed themselves at the head of the movement, for they saw in these religious grievances the stepping-stone to political power. In the British view it was Muslim intrigue and Muslim leadership, that converted the sepoy mutiny into a political conspiracy aimed at the extinction of the British Raj. The British were also concerned that the Muslim community, though few in numbers, was far more hostile throughout the uprising."

"It is absurd to call this a military rebellion — that it could not have occurred had the Sepoys remained faithful, is of course indisputable. But the revolt itself is the fruit of Mussulman intrigue, in the hopes of gaining empire at the expiration of the century during which it had been held by the conquerors from the west. With this object they persuaded the wretched Sepoys, the most credulous and childish class of the credulous and childish race of Hindus, that we were about to ruin their caste prior to the forcible introduction of the Christian faith."

"For, in any discussion of the question whether the revolt of 1857 was the first national war of independence or not, the real character of the outbreaks of the civil population must be the decisive factor. A detailed statement of actual facts, based on authentic sources, is calculated to give a more accurate and definite idea on the subject than any amount of abstract theory or argument. The officially Sponsored Centenary Volume of the Mutiny does not contain sufficient details of this nature, and hence I thought it necessary to add them to counteract the current view that the outbreak of 1857 was the first national war of independence. I have tried, to show, with the help of the details given, that it was neither 'first', nor 'national,' nor 'a war of independence."

"Today is the 10th of May! It was on this day that, in the ever memorable year of 1857, the first campaign of the War of Independence was opened by you, Oh Martyrs, on the battlefield of India ... all honour be to you, Oh Martyrs; for it was for the preservation of the honour of the race that you performed the fiery ordeal of a revolution ... this day ... we dedicate, Oh Martyrs, to your inspiring memory! It was on this day that you raised a new flag to be upheld, you uttered a mission to be fulfilled, you saw a mission to be realized ... We take up your cry, we revere your flag, we are determined to continue that fiery mission of ‘away with the foreigner’, which you uttered, amidst the prophetic thunderings of the Revolutionary war. Revolutionary, yes, it was a Revolutionary war ... No, a revolutionary war knows no truce, save liberty or death! Indians, these words must be fulfilled! Your blood, oh Martyrs, shall be avenged! ... For the War of 1857 shall not cease till the revolution arrives, striking slavery into dust, elevating liberty to the throne. Whenever a people arises for its freedom, whenever that seed of liberty gets germinated in the blood of its fathers, whenever there remains at least one true son to avenge that blood of his fathers, there never can be an end to such a war as this."

"The last public levy was 297 lbs. (of tobacco) per poll, and the great levy the year before has given occasion for malignant spirits to mutter, and may cause some to mutiny, "for the common people will never be brought to understand the just reason of a public charge, or will they ever believe that the expense is for their own preservation." Since General Davis and Pate were hanged the rabble have been much appalled. Now enjoy peace among themselves, though never body was more replete with malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body. The greatest revolution has occurred in Virginia affairs, for as their rebellion was grounded upon madness and folly, so the wheel has turned again as wonderfully and swiftly in the submission of all the chief rebels…"

"As Bacon's Rebellion entered its radical phase, Bacon tried to spread the revolutionary movement to the neighboring colonies, each of which had severe and often similar grievances against its government and the Crown. At the height of Bacon's Rebellion, in September 1676, sixty persons, led by William Davyes and John Pate, assembled in Calvert County, Maryland, to declare their opposition to crushing taxation and to Lord Baltimore's disfranchisement of the freemen. They also declared their refusal to swear to a new loyalty oath proposed by the proprietor. They refused to obey the governor's order to disband on promise to consider their grievances in the next Assembly, pointing out that the manipulated Assembly no longer represented the people. But the death of Bacon caused the quick collapse of the embryo Davyes-Pate rebellion, and Davyes and Pate were hanged after being denounced as traitors. The governor observed with satisfaction that the people were now suitably "terrified." The threat was over, but the governor wrote in warning to Lord Baltimore that never had a people been "more replete with malignancy and frenzy." Apparently, the Maryland regime had had a close call. The result increased the bitterness in the colony against the proprietor."

"The information of Timothy Biggs threw the Lords Proprietors into apprehensive confusion. These were dangerous times for everyone engaged in colonization. Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia had almost seemed to set a pattern for revolts. The Davyes-Pate Rebellion in Maryland, although little more than a Sunday afternoon affair, had been considered so serious that its leaders suffered death by hanging. And in London there were whispers that the King's Government were mentioning proprietary colonies in the same breath with Quo Warranto, the legal writ sometimes employed to revoke charters."

"The domestic upheavals of the 1960’s and 70’s taught empire some valuable lessons on just how dangerous an informed and discontent population can be. As a result, and through a steady application of misinformation, carrots, and sticks, empire has worked steadily to drain the focus, resolve, and militancy of the informed and discontented. From that point to this, empire has manufactured a discontinuity in popular struggle, while maintaining continuity in its own growth and consolidation. One of the empire’s principal tools and weapons has been its prisons."

"Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."

"The greatest expression of rebellion is joy."

"Anarchism is the purity of rebellion. A pig who struggles wildly and rends the air with his cries while he is held to be slaughtered, and a baby who kicks and screams when, wanting warmth and his mother's breast, he is made to wait in the cold—these are two samples of natural rebellion. Natural rebellion always inspires either deep sympathy and identification with the rebelling creature, or a stiffening of the heart and an activation of aggressive-defensive mechanisms to silence an accusing truth."

"Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against."

"Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, Meeting the check of such another day."

"Unthread the rude eye of rebellion."

"The worst of rebels never arm To do their king or country harm, But draw their swords to do them good, As doctors cure by letting blood."

"Rebellion presupposes the existence of oppression and, on the psychological plane, deification of rebellion creates an affective compact with oppression."

"The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion is always either a cloak to hide a prince, or the swaddling wrapper of a new rule."

"A large part of the problem of understanding how modern rebellions come about is the reporting of them. Euphoric moments are condensed to slogans on one hand and on the other into vivid narratives of the crimes of the fallen regime. What falls through the cracks is the process by which the actions of an often small dissident circle are translated into a mass movement involving a sufficient cross-section of society to sweep away a tyrant. If that clouds our understanding, so too does the tendency to limit our examination of rebellions to the facts of the revolutionary moment itself. Instead, what we should be doing is examining why populations ever accept dictatorships. In doing so, we may comprehend more about why they are then rejected, often so suddenly."

"The success of a rebellion depends on the crossing of a fear barrier by enough people, not simply the small group of dedicated dissidents. A judgment that the risk is worth it and the rebellion might actually succeed. [...] It is at this point, when fear is gone, that whole nations say no. And it is when tyrants fall."

"REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it."

"We insistently reaffirm that the use of organized violence against exploiters, even if it takes the form of minoritarian and limited action, is an indispensable instrument in the anarchist struggle against exploitation."

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

"They have been told that their dissent from violent measures is an encouragement to rebellion. Men of great presumption and little knowledge will hold a language which is contradicted by the whole course of history. General rebellions and revolts of an whole people never were encouraged, now or at any time. They are always provoked."