Interviewer: We’ve got a guy with a lamb. Did you come here for a reason?
Dude: Yeah … Well, this is a revolution … A revolution of a lot of people who refuse to have anything to do with killing. And here there is vegetarian food. The Festival that Rocked the World, dude with lamb, Sky Arts 2019
The confusion over the Spaghetti House siege proved to be a turning point exposing the messy realities of revolutionary politics. Black Power: A British Story of Resistance, BBC 2021
[Jean-Paul] Sartre believed … only through revolutionary violence that individuals in the west could free themselves from the controls of bourgeois society. Adam Curtis: The Trap III: We Will Force You to be Free, BBC 2007
The chaos caused by these revolutions also began to destabilise the balance of power in the world. And this would inexorably bring them face to face with America and its global battle against communism. But what this clash was going to lead to was the rise in America of a new militant idea of freedom, and the belief that it was the United States’ duty to spread this freedom around the world by force if necessary ibid.
And then in 1979 the Iranian revolution showed dramatically America’s policy of backing dictators did not work. The Iranian people rose up and toppled the Shah of Iran. The Shah had one of the largest military forces in the world given to him by the Americans. But it proved helpless in the face of the new Islamist ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini. Many in the West saw Khomeini as the resurgence of a dark almost medieval force. But this was wrong. The Iranian revolution was yet again driven by Western ideas of political freedom. ibid.
The other part of Project Democracy was to use military force in secret operations to overthrow foreign regimes that stood in the way of freedom. The main target was the government of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas were Marxist revolutionaries who had seized power in 1979; but since then they had held elections and had been democratically elected. The Reagan administration dismissed this though as a sham. And an operation was set up to enforce the right kind of democracy by overthrowing the Sandinistas if necessary. The man in charge was a leading Neo-Conservative, Elliott Abrams. ibid.
The Americans started funding and training a counter-revolutionary army called the Contras. But there was enormous political opposition in the United States. And to get round it the leaders of Project Democracy set out to frighten the American public. An agency called The Office of Public Diplomacy was set up that disseminated what was called White Propaganda. It produced dossiers and fed stories to journalists that proved that Soviet fighter planes had arrived in Nicaragua to attack America. Another story from ‘intelligence sources’ said that the Soviets had given stockpiles of chemical weapons to the Sandinistas. President Reagan appeared on television with maps to show how quickly such a chemical attack could be launched on America itself. It was only a matter of time. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were beginning to believe that their ideal of freedom was an absolute. And that this then justified lying and exaggerating in order to enforce that vision. The end justified the means. Although they portrayed the Contras as freedom fighters, it was well known that they used murder, assassination and torture. And also were allegedly using CIA-supplied planes to smuggle cocaine back into the United States. And to finance the Contras, the Neo-Conservatives were even prepared to deal with America’s enemy – the leaders of the Iranian revolution. In 1985 those running the Nicaragua operation held a series of secret meetings with Iranian leaders in Europe. They arranged to sell the Iranians American weapons; in return the Iranians would release American hostages held in Lebanon. Then the money from these sales would be used by those running Project Democracy to fund the Contras. The only problem was that this was completely illegal. And the President knew it. ibid.
What was beginning to emerge was the problem of spreading freedom around the world. To do it those leading Project Democracy had turned not just to manipulation and violence but were beginning to undermine the ideals of democracy in America. The very thing they were trying to create abroad. It was the corruption of freedom that Isaiah Berlin had warned of. ibid.
In 1989 across eastern Europe the people rose up to overthrow their communist leaders. It was a remarkable series of revolutions. All driven by the desire for freedom and the ending of tyranny. ibid.
Berlin: All attempts at revolution however seductive and romantic would always lead to disaster, and that power always had to be restrained. ibid.
The confusion over the Spaghetti House siege proved to be a turned point exposing the messy realities of revolutionary politics. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones ***** BBCiplayer 2021
On the surface Tupac Shakur was part of the age of the individual. He believed deeply in the idea of self-expression. But he was also one of the few in the 1980s who still believed in the power of grand stories to move people and to inspire them to change the world. His mother Afeni had been a Black Panther and she still believed in the idea of revolution in America. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? *****
‘She always raised me to think I was the black prince of the revolution.’ ibid. Tupac
‘We’re not being taught to deal with the world as it is. We’re being to taught to deal with this fairyland which we’re not even living in any more.’ ibid. Tupac’s school interview 1988
‘More kids are being handed Crack than are handed diplomas.’ ibid.
By the 1980s it was clear that the promises of the civil rights’ movement had not been kept in America. And the idealism of black politics fell away. And the communities divided into gangs then turned on each other. Then Crack swept through the black communities in America. And a fading Shakur finally gave up: she became addicted to Crack, and Tupac found himself alone. ibid.
Tupac Shakur set out to awaken the radicalism of the Panthers. And to do it he was going to use himself as the central character. ibid.
Part of something that had started 200 years before with the French Revolution: it was the idea that through revolution you could break through to a new kind of world. Something beyond the corrupt reality of this one. ibid.
But when the scientists did this, the computers began to reveal something they hadn’t expected. One tiny change in their equations could have massive catastrophic consequences which they could never have predicted: it was called Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory had a very powerful influence in the West because it rose up at the very moment the Soviet Union was collapsing. And it seemed to explain why all attempts at revolution had led to disaster: the world was just too complex for human beings to change in a predictable way. ibid.
Maybe many people didn’t want to change. They were happy living in their own fairytale world of gangs and violence. ibid.
Bolivia, South America, three weeks after the public death of Che Guevara, the man who wants to lead a Latin American revolution … Was his death the end of a revolution? World in Action: End of a Revolution ITV 1967
Saturday, July 31st 1971: A person or persons unknown travelled to south-west London carrying a bomb. The target was the home of Mr John Davies, then the minister for Trade & Industry. The bomb was wrapped like a present in gold and blue paper and done up with a rosette and ribbon. It was to be the second to last in a series of 25 political bombings by the revolutionary group which called itself the Angry Brigade. World in Action: The Angry Brigade, ITV 1972
England’s first home-grown guerrilla movement. ibid.
1968 was the revolutionary year which forged the politics of the Angry Brigade. ibid.