Welcome to the Rebellion Quotes

“We face a planet-destroying empire – ideologically-driven, deceptive and dangerous. Our most likely path is toward the dark side: violent, exploitative, racist and authoritarian. Unless we change course, unless we rebel against the system that’s leading us there.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“The left happens to have in its hands a rebellion story that is political but also personal, democratic, collectivist rather than individualist, emotional and hopeful – a wildly popular saga, arguably the most successful fictional story of our time.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Yes, it’s a space fantasy, but even so, go with it and the Star Wars saga can be used to illuminate the dark times in which we live. It also suggests that if we tell the right stories, we can welcome many more people to the rebellion and the fight for a better world.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“This book is about how a real empire of authoritarianism and corporate domination has now come for us. It rose to power within weakened and corrupted republics. It promised order and security, but relies on domination and fear, and now threatens our existence on a planetary scale.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Rather than allowing more young people to slip into the waiting arms of the First Order, we need to provide them with a different grand narrative, one that gives their lives meaning and purpose. We need to persuade them that, given everything that protesting and campaigning and struggle has achieved in history, a thousand generations live in you now, but this is your fight.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“It means something that our most popular modern myth is a radical left story about fighting fascism. Contrary to postmodern cultural pessimism, the continuing popularity of stories such as Star Wars suggests the potential for a popular radical politics which is anti-authoritarian, pluralist, participatory, democratic and humane.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“The previous forms of solidarity on the left, most obviously trade unions, have been significantly eroded, deliberately so by the forces of the right. In the era of globalization, the absence of structures of solidarity leaves those left out susceptible to the exclusionary identities and false solidarity of right-wing populist appeals, or even worse. We need to build a better, more appealing common identity for change. We need a rebel alliance.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Our Death Star, a technology-driven nuclear concentration of economic and political power, has already been built. It was built 40 years ago in the new right revolution: a turbo-charged, no limits, corporate-dominated global capitalism.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“We face many crises, but really it is just one crisis. At root it is not economic or political but philosophical and psychological. It is empirism: the compulsion to dominate people, nature and thought. It’s the Sith’s individualistic “morality” of acquisition.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Star Wars is about many things: freedom, democracy, oppression, exploitation, hope and rebellion. But the first thing Star Wars is about is stories and their power to shape politics.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Star Wars was always political, and the saga will always be with us as long as there is oppression to be overturned and rebels who dream of doing it. As a fantasy, it connects with what is arguably the most real thing of all, even if we try to ignore it: the need to stand against domination and to fight for a better world.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“To live a life of fantasy today is not to escape into our favorite sci-fi films, so much as it is to believe that we can somehow escape from what empire is and what it is doing to our fellow human beings, to our planet and to ourselves. But there is still time, just about. Together, we can fulfill our destiny and become the guardians of peace and justice in our galaxy. Looking inside ourselves, we know we have already made our choice. Welcome to the rebellion.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Empires have been defeated before, and they always fall eventually. We can choose to remain subjects of an empire in crisis and collapse, or to live and act as citizens of a new republic, one we create through our actions big and small, starting here and now.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“Star Wars doesn’t just depict a dystopian future but focuses on fighting it. It says that another galaxy is possible.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics

“The rebellion is all around us, and it is spreading. It is a struggle for freedom and democracy, and for peace and justice. In the face of multiplying crises, it is a rebellion that can no longer wait, and which will force us to take sides.”
― Michael Harris, Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics