John Ehrlichman: You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5500
Robespierre: Man is born to be happy and free, and everywhere he is enslaved and unhappy! Society exists for the purpose of conserving his rights and perfecting his being, and everywhere society degrades and oppresses him! The time has come to remind him of his true destiny. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5501
Robespierre: Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? What is this spirit of persecution that has come to revise, so to speak, the one that broke our chains? But what sure judgement can one make of the effects that can follow these great commotions? Who can mark, after the event, the exact point at which the waves of popular insurrection should break? At that price, what people could ever have shaken off the yoke of despotism? For while it is true that a great nation cannot rise in a simultaneous movement, and that tyranny can only be hit by the portion of citizens that is closest to it, how would these ever dare to attack it if, after the victory, delegates from remote parts could hold them responsible for the duration or violence of the political torment that had saved the homeland? They ought to be regarded as justified by tacit proxy for the whole of society. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5506
Robespierre: The policy of the London Cabinet largely contributed to the first movement of our Revolution …Taking advantage of political tempests (the cabinet) aimed to effect in an exhausted and dismembered France a change of dynasty and to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5507
Robespierre: To defend the oppressed against their oppressors, to plead the cause of the weak against the strong who exploit and crush them, this is the duty of all hearts that have not been spoiled by egoism and corruption. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5508
Robespierre: To be armed for personal defence is the right of every man, to be armed to defend freedom and the existence of the common fatherland is the right of every citizen. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5509
Michael Parenti: The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5512
Augusto Pinochet: I am clear in my mind that the return to Chile of true democracy, and from that the true freedom to which all individual people are entitled, could not have been achieved without the removal of the Marxist government. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5513
Noam Chomsky: Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5522
Noam Chomsky: If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5524
Noam Chomsky: If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5525
Noam Chomsky: What is called 'capitalism' is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5526
Noam Chomsky: In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5527
James Gilligan: Poverty kills far more people than all the wars in history, more people than all the murderers in history, more than all the suicides in history, not only does structural violence kill more people than all the behavioral violence put together, structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote5531
