Slides on 'Revolution' for a talk I gave for the 'Bright club' Belfast

1. Revolution
Dr. John Barry
School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy
Queen‟s University Belfast

3. Talkin‟ bout a revolution…
Change, dramatic change ….
“all is changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born”, WB Yeats
Types of revolution – political, cultural, „paradigm-shift‟, violent or non-
violent, economic (the industrial revolution), or technological (internet,
communications)
Causes of political revolution – injustice, repression, inequality, technological
changes, new norms and expectations, unfulfilled expectations, anger,
deliberate manipulation
Threat of revolution (bad cop) and radical change as necessary for reform
(good cop) and more modest change

4. From ancient slave revolts to the Arab
spring…to potential of „anti-austerity‟ revolt
throughout Europe?

5. “Those who make peaceful revolution
impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable”, John F. Kennedy.
Revolution: Progressive or regressive? „Velvet
revolution‟ in Czechoslovakia versus Pol Pot
Revolution in an apolitical age?

6. The revolution is only a t-
shirt away…

7. New sources of revolt?
Triple crunch of
1. Financial /economic crisis
and „politics of austerity‟
2. Climate change
3. Peak oil and energy
insecurity
Anti-capitalist revolt….
Occupy movements – the
West‟s „Arab Spring‟?...

8. Concluding thoughts…
“Periodic revolution, at least once every 20 years, [is]
a medicine necessary for the sound health of
government.’ Thomas Jefferson
“Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet”,
Alice Walker
Revolution as necessary and inevitable for social and
political progress…key issue is ensuring it is as non-
violent as possible….but…

9. “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet
depreciate agitation, are people who want crops
without ploughing the ground; they want rain without
thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without
the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a
moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be
both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand. It never did and it never
will.”
Frederick Douglass