How we see revolutions

[Toph]

I find it interesting how the world, or nations, see rebels.

Rebels in the...
American Revolution - good!
France Revolution - good!
Syria Revolution - good!

American Civil War - holy hell those evil bastards

Currently most think the revolutions in the Middle East are great - standing up for citizens rights, all that jazz. But many are backed by terrorist groups. It seems to me this significantly blurs the line. Egypt is already seeing the consequences of this shade of grey.

Are any sides "right"? How the heck can a side be picked in these situations? Is "no one's side" a tenable position?

Just some thoughts, not really trying to argue a point beyond that we should think of our perspectives and how we form our opinions on such conflicts.

[Mr. Matt]

History is written by the victors. Or in the eye of the beholder. I'm not sure what the best way to describe it would be.

The American Civil War was won by the Unionists. The Confederates are invariably described in a negative light these days. You can probably be sure that they wouldn't be if they had won instead. At least not in the territories they represented (in fact I do believe that even today there are people in those Southern states that lament the Confederacy's defeat).

In a world of subjective morality and personal agendas, your idea of 'right' is always going to differ from the ideas of others. Nobody today thinks that the Aztecs' propensity for drinking the blood of their vanquished foes was a particularly moral tradition, and I imagine that their victims had similar feelings on the matter. But the Aztecs probably felt perfectly justified in doing so.

[MrFancypants]

Difficult to say how the Arab revolutions will turn out. It is a good thing that they got rid of a bunch of dictators. Whether they will be able to come up with something better is not guaranteed.

Generally speaking there are no "good" or "bad" revolutions. The French revolution was based on some advanced ideas and led to times of incredible brutality and an even more oppressive dictators in the end. The American revolution was also based on enlightenment, in theory, but then it was really more about not paying taxes to the guys who invested into the colonies in the first place. From the perspective of the investor that is not exactly fair.

And the American Civil War - that one is just convenient due to the role of slavery which helps overlook the point that in principle people have the right to determine their own government.

[Toph]

That always irked me about the US civil war. "Oooh, but slaver is bad!" Yeah, but it would have been abolished anyway, just a bit later. Not a good reason to pummel the south.

I think the "written by the victors" is becoming somewhat less true with the advent of near instant communication. People have lost fights, and their revolution was still viewed as "good". Several places in Africa experience this. Certainly for the victors themselves it still applies.

[Mr. Matt]

It's true. From now on, history will be written by the Internet.

[Adrian Ţepeş]

Honestly, I've thrown out the view that the Civil War was something bigger and that slavery was just one of the key issues. I've gotten a LOT of shit for that. Even some reputable news sources say, "Nope, it was all slavery."

[Rikupsoni]

I certainly don't think the Syrian rebel side that includes jihadists is a 'good' side. If you look at the leaders, it's mostly Sunni Muslims butchering Shias and other minorities (Assad is not a Sunni nor is pretty much most of his leadership is either). That can turn really nasty if Shias are just sitting ducks like in Iraq now getting their weddings bombed.

I suppose the same can be asked for the Eastern Front of World War II. Why is Nazism worse than Stalinist bolshevism? Sure, the Holocaust was a massive crime but so were several Soviet crimes. The hypocrisy in this is that Ribbentrop was sentenced to death in Nuremberg, but his pact partner Molotov was not – he rather enjoyed a successful career after WWII. Both were totalitarian states with aggressive foreign policies.

But there is never complete evil. Every side has atleast some reasonable objectives that they justify their actions. In some cases they can be pretty equal especially in revolutions and thus picking a side means you have to be ignorant about certain aspects. Just like claiming that the Palestinians are mere victims; or that Israel is always only doing defence.

[Octovon]

Originally Posted by Toph

That always irked me about the US civil war. "Oooh, but slaver is bad!" Yeah, but it would have been abolished anyway, just a bit later. Not a good reason to pummel the south.

Slavery might have been abolished a little later, but from the slaves' perspective that still kinda sucks. The cotton industry was rather dependent on slave labour and the south was heavily dependent on the success of the cotton industry.

Slavery may not have been a cause of the American Civil War, but it was a big f-ing deal at the time. Just sayin, slavery may have been pretty baller for the rich Southern Whites, but it was pretty f-ing bad from a moral standpoint by the mid-19th century.

History is written by the victor, but what about the Bolshevik Revolution? There's a revolution that gets a bad rap outside Russia because it led to creation of the USSR, which Ronald Reagan taught us, was f-ing evil.

[Nemmerle]

Originally Posted by Toph

I think the "written by the victors" is becoming somewhat less true with the advent of near instant communication. People have lost fights, and their revolution was still viewed as "good". Several places in Africa experience this. Certainly for the victors themselves it still applies.

Well, that's one perspective. I can see the opposite might be the case too though:

That, history won't be written on the internet. It's too fragile a medium, and too easily policed. Even today people barely dare speak their minds on any truly controversial issue - and we're all aware that we are watched, we've come even to expect it.

The Arab spring was an early blow with the internet as a new weapon, and in the manner of all new technologies the internet was seized first by the revolutionaries, those without a lot of sunk costs. But there's nothing innate about the infrastructure of the internet that favours freedom of expression. Every entrance is guarded, and even to encrypt your transmissions does little more than attract attention to the fact you've something to hide.

We're going to live in an age where the government has access to telecommunications of unparalleled power, and the keys to control it all. The companies and governments are becoming so powerful they can reach into your computer, into your very home, and take books they don't want you reading out of your possession. Censorship won't require burning books, mass roundups and so on. It'll just be a delete key. And finding insurgents just a matter of rounding up everyone whose mail you can't read and putting them all to the question.

Once governments get their acts together, there'll be no documents of orders for historians to pour over, no real records. Nothing to distinguish the truth from the lies. At the end of iffy operations a delete key will be pressed and all account of what actually went on erased.

No-one shall trust anything anymore. Anymore than the trust the people Israel hires to do their online PR, or the photographs coming out of Gaza.

[Adrian Ţepeş]

Originally Posted by Octovon

Slavery might have been abolished a little later, but from the slaves' perspective that still kinda sucks. The cotton industry was rather dependent on slave labour and the south was heavily dependent on the success of the cotton industry.

Oh certainly. My perspective is just, don't get so wrapped up in one area that you completely ignore the rest of it.

Which apparently some people seem to do. Though, I sometimes wonder what might have happened had the south won the war.