Struggle Makes Us Human Quotes

“We don’t want a left that is angry and always protesting; we want a left that has the full range of human feeling. Tenderness, empathy, joy, humor, love, sexuality—they all need to be there. Nobody will come and join the left because the left is always red-faced and angry about the world. Why would you want to join a bunch of angry people that look like the far-right neofascists, always angry and screaming? No, we must be people of tenderness, we must be people of patience and love. I believe that fundamentally.”
― Vjay Prashad, Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism

“We don’t want a left that is angry and always protesting; we want a left that has the full range of human feeling. Tenderness, empathy, joy, humor, love, sexuality—they all need to be there.”
― Vjay Prashad, Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism

“In the nineteenth century, Britain was one of the world’s most important drug dealers. But the drug dealing was not restricted to the British, since US traders were also involved in this trade—traders such as the Forbeses and the Astors.”
― Vjay Prashad, Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism

“As Fanon pointed out, the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth, will act like this because they are mirroring the structure of violence in which they survive. Their violence is a symptom of a violent society.”
― Vjay Prashad, Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism

“Loss of faith in democratic institutions, the turn of these institutions toward a technocracy, creates the opposite of democracy. A key example of this is the European Union, whose bureaucrats seem so totally cut off from the rough world of the people of Europe. The faith of these Brussels politicians and bureaucrats in techniques of management, often techniques of the banking world rather than the world of social development, has created a great deal of anger inside Europe that gave an advantage to the extreme right. The focus on immigration comes alongside the anger at the detachment of the European Union, as well as the racism of Brussels toward the Southern European countries. Racism shapes the heart of the European extreme right. In these circles, the hesitation demanded by Hayek is not followed. The extreme right is quite happy to try to change the world, to socially engineer the world in its own image, which includes a society without immigrants. This is a seam of neofascism that demands a kind of social welfare for certain kinds of people and not for others, based often on ideas of race and belonging, of blood and passports. Democratic institutions are set aside, liberal norms are not honored. The horse of the extreme right gallops right into anger and then stampedes through society.”
― Vjay Prashad, Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism