Robert Kuttner says the mainstream media don't know what to make of Gene Sharp, the American political thinker who helped inspire the Egyptian revolution.
There is something truly wonderful about the fact than an obscure, 83-year-old American disciple of Gandhi helped inspire and facilitate the Egyptian revolution. When one sentence, buried well down in a New York Times story on Monday quoted a protester recounting that Egyptian activists had studied the work of an American, Gene Sharp, editors everywhere drew blanks and turned to Google. Even most progressives didn't recognize the name.
Sharp turns out to be an Oxford Ph.D, who has spent his life working on the theory and practical strategy of nonviolent resistance. You might think of him as a cross between Gandhi, pacifist A.J. Muste, and the legendary organizer Saul Alinsky.
Though most Americans have never heard of him, opponents of dictatorship the world over know him well. Sharp's works, including "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action," have been translated into 24 languages, have been the subject of organizing workshops, and have inspired activists from Albania to Zimbabwe. His master work, "From Dictatorship to Democracies," is familiar to democracy organizers the world over.
