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To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Announcer - 00:00:03:
Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism. Living at this time in history, we're challenged with the convergence of crises that is affecting our daily lives. Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy, and the worsening climate emergency have left many Americans feeling more despair than ever. To respond to the challenging times we're living through, physician, humanitarian, and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified Revolutionary Optimism as a new Cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Once you commit yourself as a revolutionary optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, hashtag unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace. On this podcast, Dr. Zeitz is working to provide you with perspectives from leaders fighting for equity, justice, and peace on their strategies, insights, and tools for overcoming adversity and driving forward revolutionary transformation with unbridled optimism and real-world pragmatism. In this episode, Dr. Zeitz is talking with Srdja Popovich. Srdja is a prominent Serbian activist, strategist, and co-founder of the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, an organization that trains activists in nonviolent methods of resistance and civil disobedience. Srdja is best known for his role in the 2000 overthrow of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic through the Optor movement, which used nonviolent tactics to mobilize the public and pressure the government. He has written extensively on the use of nonviolent resistance, including the book Blueprint for Revolution, which outlines strategies and principles for successful activism. Srdja's work has influenced numerous political movements around the world, with his emphasis on strategic planning, mass mobilization, and nonviolent direct action. Srdja is considered an expert in the field of civil resistance and has worked globally training activists in regions dealing with authoritarianism and oppression. Here's your host, Dr. Paul Zeitz.
Paul - 00:02:00:
Hey, Serge, great to have you on the program today. It's an honor to have you here. I'm- Truly excited to learn from you and hear your stories and your wisdom. So I'd love to hear your personal story of how you became involved with the Uptour movement. And can you tell U.S. About how that evolved and what happened with all that for those that don't know about it?
Srdja - 00:02:23:
Hello, Paul. Great to be with you. Pleasure being on Revolutionary Optimism. And yes, when I was in my late teens, early 20s in Serbia, as many activists I work with, I never thought I would be an activist. Actually, I was playing a bass guitar in a rock band, the Serbian version of Cure. And thinking that activism is for boring old ladies interested in cat's rights. But then Milosevic came to power and completely screwed the life of the country. Starting two or three civil wars, making one of the world's largest hyperinflation. Making basically arresting a third of my generation that there will be no future. And faced with such a harsh environment in your late teens, when you don't have a lot to lose, you have two choices. You either fight or flee. I bet. I was among the more stubborn ones, so I ended up fighting and forming two different students' movements, one of them, Otpor, then growing into the place where we effectively kicked Milošević out of the power. In 2000. But long story short, I never thought I will be an activist. It is a situation. Which makes the revolutionary leader.
Paul - 00:03:33:
Thank you so much. That is an extraordinary experience you had. Tell us a little bit more details about how did Optor form when you were at the university? There were other students who were like-minded, like-hearted like you that were stubborn, I'm sure. And you used some amazing tactics. In my book, Revolutionary Optimism, I have a whole description about how you were able to win over the police force as allies. And you used some very innovative approaches so that by the time the million people mobilized on the streets and Milosevic said, shoot the people, the police said no. And I don't know if I got that story right, but I do tell that story here. So I'd like to hear more about your experiences with that movement. And how did you get a million people to mobilize on the street? How did that all happen?
Srdja - 00:04:28:
More or less like in a story of, do you know you can eat an elephant? And the answer is one bite at a time. So basically, we tried and failed. Serbian movement started in 1992 when the war started. And then we locked down universities. This was very romantic, very much like anti-Vietnam movement in the U.S.. And we were singing songs and being cool. But Milošić at the same time was organizing in the provinces. The portion of the society was very small. Later in the process, we figured out that we want some institutions involved. And in 1996-1997, opposition ran united on the local elections against Milošić. And they won. And then Milošić decided that he's not going to give up one single municipality, not to please the city of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, which he also lost in these elections. So he tried to annul the election results. And this was a large wave of mobilization. But predominantly by the students. Hit the streets of 30 Serbian cities. And for three months, Serbs were patiently demonstrating, demanding their election victory, very similar to what is happening as we speak in a small Caucasian country called Georgia. People were persistent. The protests were the great school for us. This is where we learned how to outrun the police. This is where we also learned the value of dispersion, doing things in a lot of the places at the same time instead of picking up one big rally. This is where we learned about the creativity. This is where we learned about the nonviolence. This is where we learned this combination of being witty but being cocky at the same time, like this combination where you really show your attitude but at the same time you're not aggressive, you're not diminishing. And this is where we figured out the quality of numbers that later helped us In the process. The police recognized local elections. In early 97. And this is when we also learned that we can win. And that was a very important experience because two or three years later, when there were presidential elections, Our movement, Thoughtful, was based on this experience. And not only that we were literally young in years. I was 25 now at the time, but I was already six or seven years into activism. We were also very experienced, very well networked. We knew each other. We trusted each other. And then we decided that we want something else. We don't want just a student movement. We want people's movement. We don't want to be tied to universities. We want to be everywhere in the provinces. We don't want only young, witty, and cool people. We also want older, less educated, and rural people. And most importantly, we want this movement, which is individually owned by the people. And there's something that is really interesting for people in Western cultures. Serbs are very, very prone to diminish their leaders. Serbs are very, very prone to not to identify with individuals. We are very, very selfish when it comes to ownership of the things. So having a movement where everybody could be the leader under the banner of the movement symbol, Clench Twist, was actually a very clever idea. And that idea was not only very inclusive to the different type of people which make successful movement, it was also communicating very powerfully and visually with the groups that we want to identify. And it was also a big headache for the regime because there was not one, two, three visible people that they can use state media to satanize, police to arrest, or money to corrupt. It was everybody is the resistance. Otpor means resistance in Serbia. So people were living the resistance wherever they are. And this, like Hydra, multi-headed movement was a very difficult, tough record for regime. Regime to crack. And it was growing like a wildfire. We grew from 11 people to maybe 20, 25,000 active members. In 2000, And we were able to pull out the large election turnout in 2000. We were able to pull out the opposition unity in 2000. And when Milosevic lost elections and small elections, which was a repetition of the history, we were able to use the public anger and mobilization to turn the country into a general strike and eventually make him concede at the October 5, 2000.
Paul - 00:08:44:
Amazing. So during all those years of activism. I'm sure that you had moments where it felt overwhelming and it felt like insurmountable. Or were you optimistic and persistent every single day? I'm just curious as to how you coped with all the pressure and all the power that you were trying to overthrow.
Srdja - 00:09:08:
You know, we are human beings. We have good days and bad days. What gives you optimism in these kind of things is that you are surrounded by like-minded people. I was lucky that my friends and my parents and my family, everybody really strongly supported what I was doing. And this support gives you hope. At some point in the movement, however, you gain a lot of responsibility. There are moments in time where you're leading thousands. And at that moment in time, of course, the responsibility for these thousands give you optimism when you don't have one. But then it comes with a burnout. And it comes with a moment where you feel alone. And especially during the time of the NATO bombing, which was the most bizarre moment of my life, I was... From my government because I was in the opposition, but in the same time my country was under bombs of the United States of America. And I was in double hiding, hiding from the bombs and hiding from the secret police while my parents were exposed. So there are moments in time where you really feel bad. But then in the same time, you know, it's like you're young, you're committed. I'm coming from a rock and roll environment. And one of the things that was a big advantage at that time was that there was no plan B. You literally couldn't, you know, pick something else. This is like when people have choices, it's between the choices. But if the choices between, you know, surrendering your future and giving up your friends and giving up everything you fight for. Just to be safe and safety, then you take a little bit of risk and risk your safety. And these are the choices you make. I'm not saying they're revolutionary or they're optimistic, but they are just choices. So it's like, yes, people get desperate. Yes, people get burnout. In my, worked after Otpor, I worked with activists for 20 plus years now. We even developed a component of my organization, CANVAS, which deals with activist burnout. Activist burnout is one of the biggest obstacles to success in the struggle. And a lot of activists are going through tough trauma. I was beaten. I got a pistol in my mouth in a police station. I mean, there are moments where you really get exposed to the tremendous level of pressure. And sometimes it's your bright nature. Sometimes it's your philosophy. Sometimes it's just the good luck that you survive through these things. But yet it comes with a price tag. The trick is it also comes with incentive. Being an activist can be very highly addictive. Because if you, at a young age, learn that you can change the world, that's a powerful drug.
Paul - 00:11:46:
That's beautiful and inspiring. So I assumed because you were a leader in this movement that you were targeted and you were sought out. By the secret police and the police forces, the army, the Milosevic government. So you described one example of a gun in your throat. That sounds horrible.
Srdja - 00:12:04:
Not tasty.
Paul - 00:12:08:
I love your sense of humor. So you've also used humor in the movement. How did you go about using humor as part of your activism?
Srdja - 00:12:17:
Humor is, first of all, it's a very powerful part of the Serbian culture. We are not really the most serious nation in the world when it comes to the everyday communication. We started using humor pretty early, 1992, 1996, 1997. It was a big deal. These funny transparence and paroles, the street theaters mocking your opponent. When you're fighting these square-headed bureaucrats, if you mock them, they very often do something stupid. Not all of the people are sensible to humor. Some are very, very tiny-skinned. And when they're tiny-skinned, then sometimes it's their reaction which makes things even worse. And at the time, we developed the whole understanding that the power of humor lies in trifecta. The first thing, humor breaks fear. And the most powerful mechanism of status quo in autocracy is fear. People are afraid of change. The most powerful... Engine of status quo in democracy is apathy. Fear brings down apathy. Imagine being on a boring party, and now immediately the prankster comes in, and you want to stay and have drinks with that person. So, second thing, humor makes your movement look cool. And people want to join things that they are cool. And a lot of people actually joined the Serbian movement because it was such a cool thing, and there were such cool people there, and were using such cool tactics to deal with such a... Very fearful and uncool entity as the government of Milosevic. And everywhere across the globe, you see movements that are using humor and wit being cool. There is also a very most important part of this. It's not only humor, it's a dilemma. We did a lot of research in previous years. We were really intrigued to discover that dilemma and humor work everywhere throughout the history. So my organization, CANVAS, performed the research from one of the world's largest experts in political satire, Sophia MacLennan, the professor of Penn State University. And we listed maybe a real scientific thing, like 450 cases, the whole data set. And now your listeners can go to the website, which is called https://tactics4change.org Change, four being number four instead of just four. So https://tactics4change.org Change where you find 450 cases of humorous dilemma actions throughout the history. And you figure out the case and what was tied to and how it was used in the environment and how it was used in human rights and how it was used in LGBTQ+ rights struggle, all of the struggles. And percentage of the movements that are successful. Is growing if they're using this type of tactics. So not only that you can anecdotally read and laugh out loud on some of the coolest things that movements are doing. But you can also take a look at this scientifically and figure out this thing works. And it works better the more authoritarian is your opponent. And very often there is a second layer of it. So this is not when you do the thing, it is how your opponent reacts to the thing. I'll give up. Very non-political. Very non-political example there's a group of pranksters in U.S. That i'm proud to know whose name is the yes man and they do a lot of anti-corporate uh propaganda and and tactics they also teach they have their lab at NYU and one of the things they amazingly did was that several years ago there was this big scandal around the volkswagen faking their emissions and then the company was under the big scrutiny and there was a pull out of the coin and there was a lot of press so what yes when did they came out with a fake press release they mimicked the volkswagen language they mimicked the volkswagen number or email they mimicked the volkswagen letterhead and they publicly said we the volkswagen are deeply sad that we made this shit and this is like blah blah blah blah and it sounded very much like volkswagen very corporate language and now this is the dilemma for volkswagen what the heck they will do If they've apologized, they do exactly what yes-men want them to do. They should have apologized. If maybe they say, this thing is fake and we don't want to apologize. Then they look even worse. So the beauty of https://tactics4change.org change, beauty of these dilemma actions is that you very often, by being creative and being strategic, put your opponent between two bad choices, between the rock and hard place. It's either they look stupid or they look weak.
Paul - 00:16:49:
Brilliant. Yeah, that's a great example. Can you share an example from your revolution that you had in Serbia, where somehow you used dilemma and humor that led to some breakthrough? Or what was the biggest example of that that you were part of in your younger days?
Srdja - 00:17:08:
You know, it's like when you're doing a lot of these things, starting from, you know, you made a big cardboard cake for Milosevic's birthday. And then the parts of the cake symbolize the part of the country which was falling apart. And then you congratulate the person's birthday. And it's like, once again, it's a dilemma for police where they will step in and arrest you, but then you're carrying a cake for the president. So it doesn't look really good. We put his place on a petrol barrel and put the petrol barrel in a main pedestrian district. So when you put a coin in, you get the right to take the bat and hit the face of the beloved president. And then the lovely thing, there's like 100 people queuing to really hit the president's face on a petrol barrel. And we just pulled to the nearby location to have a coffee. And then police arrives. It's like, what the heck they will do? So if they arrest the downtown shoppers and take them to police station, what they will be exactly charged for. And then at the same time, if they let downtown shoppers kicking the president's head on a barrel, there'll be 15 barrels popping up across the city or across the other cities. That's the dilemma. So eventually they arrested the barrel. So now you have the beheaded Milosevic police, which should be a symbol of fear, behaving as a part of a comedy play. And now they're a punchline and they're pulling around this barrel where Milosevic's face out of kicks is pretty mutilated and looks funny straight to their car. And then the barrel is too big for the car and that they can load, cannot load it in the car. Of course, there's like 15 people around that are taping. So it's like taking a look into this. You're turning your opponent with a punchline with just a good idea. And very often it comes as additional things than they take the barrel to the police station. And you go in front of a police station, demand your barrel back because the barrel is full of coins. These are your coins. And you can press charges because the police confiscated your property without a proper warrant. So it's like all of these things are putting your opponents like, what the hell shall I do dealing with it? And we came out with a little booklet. On it, it's called Pranksters Presence Autocrats. So if unlike the people who like to read the case studies, you really like to read anecdotes, you will take this thing. And it's free on Amazon. Sophia McLennan and I, we publish it for free.
Paul - 00:19:26:
Fantastic. I love those examples. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think, I don't know, you're living in the United States now, and we're in an auspicious time. There is a sense of some people that we may be approaching an authoritarian era. I don't know if that's true or not. But I'd love to get your take on what do you think is happening in the United States right now? Do you think our democracy is at stake? Do you think fascism and authoritarianism can take hold in the United States? I think we're too serious. We don't have enough pranksters. Or maybe the goal of this podcast could be to invite people to become pranksters in this era that we're entering here. So what's your take on where we're at right now in the United States?
Srdja - 00:20:15:
It's really interesting. This is my second electoral cycle in the United States. I moved partially in 2020. I live on on in Colorado for like 10 months or a year, and then I come back to Serbia for a summer break so kids stay bilingual. So I live in two worlds. Serbia has become recently very autocratic and looks like the evil Hungary on steroids. And the U.S.. Is still pretty much a democracy. We just had the smooth transition of power, something which is unimaginable in places like Serbia, for example. If the president of Serbia loses the election, he will not congratulate the winner. This is not going to happen. So it's like the thing you look into this, I think, realistically, and now I'm off my class. The reason I was late for this podcast, I'm teaching a class on Colorado College at University of Virginia, which is called Defending Democracy. And we are at a place which is called U.S.. So really interesting battlefield, really interesting arena. On one hand. There is no lack of language of hatred and divisions and extremism, not only from the right side, also from the other side. And this exclusion and polarization is, I think, something that we should be very aware of. And it also comes with the technology and social media and the way we are consuming news. Looking and claiming the political middle is where we should be looking if we want to stabilize democracy. Democracy, looking and listening to what the other side has to say, is the beat of the democratic dialogue. The middle doesn't exist in places like Russia. You are either an enemy or a servant. The societies like that, function like that. The more shades of gray you have, the more democracy is vivid. But we will see. American democracy actually functions very well. And I've seen these type of fears. When Donald Trump was elected president the first time. If you take a look at his first term, that was no lack of social movements and mass mobilization. Some of the historical gains of the issue of, for example, racial freedoms was gained through the Black Lives Matter movement. So when you take a look at the health of democracy, you want to take a look at the two different things. One, how institutions react. Any autocratic attempt. And as you and I speak, we have the live case study in South Korea. We have a president of South Korea who a few days ago, I don't know when the podcast will go online, but we are talking in December. A few days ago, the president of South Korea was not happy with losing his support. And he was not happy with how parliament will handle his budget. So he came to this revolutionary idea that he will call in the state of emergency. He called the defense minister, he called the military to the parliament. Oh my God, that's the assault of democracy. But because the institutions in South Korea are healthy, He was, this stupid idea was dismantled within now 48 hours since this happened. The people are on the street. The main opposition party is holding the rallies everywhere. The ruling party distanced themselves from the president. The minister of defense has submitted the recognition. And the debate about impeaching the president is in the parliament. And I bet this will not end with police and military taking over democratic pillars in South Korea. And very likely it's going to end with president being impeached or resigned or sent to trial. So this is deepened. Like, you know, there's no lack of authoritarian intentions in the world. The question is whether the institutions and the people are strong enough. To defend it. And once again, as... As a good friend of mine used to say. You cannot take democracy for granted. You need to participate in democracy. And yes, you had this episode with constitutional court pushing back against one of the most important achievements of reproductive rights in this country. But in the same time, you go back and you take a look at how the movement was able to organize grassroots and put the issue of abortion on a ballot. And then this wins in a place like Kansas. Where Democrats will never win. So taking a look into if people organize and use existing pillars of democracy and possibility of putting on a ballot is certainly a pillar of democracy, then you can change things. And that tells me that regardless of what people may say and regardless of intention, there is a big space for Defending Democracy in the United States. And at least at this moment, and we are talking at December 2024, these institutions look healthy and pretty resistant to attempts to being abused. Whether they will stay like that, it's yet to be seen. But institutions itself will not defend democracy. People are the guarantees of democracy. It's like I'm a big fan of Lord of the Rings. There's a moment in time where the forces of evil are to attack. The big fortress, and there's a wizard and king are talking, and Gandalf the wizard. Is looking in a big gate, and the king says, oh, this gate is strong, it hasn't been breached in a year, and then the wizard says, but no gate. Will stand if the people abandon it. So that works for democracy as well. So you need to keep, in order to keep your democracy alive, you need to take a look at democracy like it is a love or a marriage. And you need to do love every day. This is not something that, you know, it's problem solved. You elect me and then, you know, the flowers will be blossoming. People need to participate. People will need to stay vigilant. People need to understand that politicians, whether coming from left or right, are more or less like underwear. And if you don't change them often enough, they tend to become smelly.
Paul - 00:26:29:
That's great. Yeah. So I think that's a really important insight that you just shared, which is that in response to the Trump presidency 1.0, the first term, there was several big movements that accelerated their impact, including the Black Lives Matter movement on racial justice. There were some significant reforms made, not as much as what people wanted, but something significant moved forward. The women's movement also, the Women's March that happened on Inauguration Day in 2017, actually unleashed the whole Me Too movement, which is a global movement about gender equality and gender rights. And that's still unfolding in our times, the ripple of that, both here in the United States and globally. Also, I was telling friends of mine about the climate response. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, like day one or something. And within weeks or days, cities... And counties and states across the country, and then the world adopted the Paris Climate Accord agreement with unprecedented momentum. And I was like, if Hillary would have won, that never would have happened. Everyone would have been apathetic, like you said. They would have been waiting for Hillary to figure it out. And she never would have. This is a moment of opportunity, maybe. And the resistance is growing here. So I would love to ask you about, as you know, these... Uh... Oligarchs or authoritarians also are learning to counter the movements. And so the backlash that could be expected. And we know already that Congress and the government is going to try to limit nonprofit organizations. They are going to be taking aggressive action to limit the voice of the people, which will be expected to rise significantly during these times. So what is that trend here in the United States and globally that you're seeing on? Quote unquote, the oligarchs pushing back against... Social movements.
Srdja - 00:28:43:
First of all, There is a great book about it. I want to address something you mentioned in a previous question, which is the fears of diminishing democracy are actually sparkling the social movements. And say how little Americans know about the importance of the social movements in their history. And if you take a look at some of the most amazing achievements, or at least the most amazing for me, I came to live in the U.S.. Because it's a country of free. It wasn't done by institutions, it wasn't done by presidents, it wasn't very often done even by the congressional majorities, it was done by social movements. The women got ready to vote. In this country through social movements, a very interesting combination of liberal suffragettes and conservative women, which wanted to co-contain. Their husband's drinking. In 20s. The very interesting thing is that we very often forget that the only reason we have desegregated bathrooms is that we have a movement for civil rights in this country. We very often forget to watch Harvey Milk as something that made the first LGBTQ person elected to the shop through the social movement. So there is no lack of achievements in this country done through the social movements. And yes, institutions are important, but social movements... Mother. As well. But you're back to your second question, how to curse learn populist learn and they are on the offense democracies on the defense globally. There are several reasons for this one is the learning curve. There's a great book called dictators learning curve. By my friend Will Dobson. Second, unfortunately, we are living in a post-truth world. The poison of propaganda coming mostly from non-free countries spreading like a wildfire through mostly American-owned companies like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and one Chinese company, TikTok. Was creating a havoc and actually making democratic struggle very difficult. Because if you don't know what the truth is, and if you cannot congregate about the values, that's a big problem. The second problem is that theory of change that the social movements need to adopt in order to win is moving from the extreme to the mainstream. You mentioned environmental movement. Environmental movement started as a bunch of pretty radical people on the left tying themselves for the fences of nuclear power plants and nuclear rocket bases. And now ended as, you know, Environmental Protection Agency and, you know, Ministries of Environment everywhere in the world. So the movements win when they become the mainstream. And one of the biggest obstacles to this is the lack of mainstream. So what is the mainstream? Dean Hannity or Rachel Meadows? Where is the mainstream? The fact that we are living in the echo chambers, we get our posts fed by only the people who think like U.S.. Social movements win when they win over the people who don't think like themselves. In order to do this, they need to listen to these people and talk to these people. So once again, take a look at the historic examples of Polish Solidarity Movement, one of the most amazing milestones in the fight against the Soviet Union. Consisted of workers in shipyards in Poland, led by Lekwalenca, who wanted to exercise their labor rights and get paid, and not being part of the party-organized economy. Was consisting of urban intelligentsia in Poland, so white-collar people. Who understood that the communist model is goodbye and didn't like the autocracy needed, and the Roman Catholic Church. Who wanted to have more influence over Polish society, which is a traditionally very Catholic society. So imagine the church guy, the urban intelligentsia guy, and the blue-collar worker from shipyard in Dunes. Not really the three people you will envision over the coffee. If you want to succeed in social change, you need to listen to the people who are not alike you. And this is one of the largest threats in the struggle for democracy, for human rights, for environment, for all these things. That we keep dear to our wallet is living in echo chambers, lack of communication, divisions and polarization and instantly reading only people who think like us, On places like Twitter or Instagram.
Paul - 00:33:34:
Thank you for that very clear wisdom. And building on that, you've talked about social media. And I wanted to ask you to elaborate a bit on that in terms of what you've called the two bladed sword of technology in which there are some value, valuable things that we use in social movements like viral videos or, you know, some of the demonstrations to get viralized on social media. And it can be an amplification method. But then it's also being used to counter social movements by the authorities using, like you were saying, the war on truth, all these different perspectives being flooded. And then we're all like left unclear about what the truth is and then surveillance and other things like that. Can you talk more about the pros and cons or the risks and benefits of this era that we're in, this technology, AI and Bitcoin and all these things that are sweeping our societies?
Srdja - 00:34:37:
Well, there is a... Technology is very much like... Throughout the history, technology has been the two-bladed sword or a coin with two faces, depending on how militaristic or economic you want to appear. Uh, As you all know, nuclear energy can solve a lot of environmental problems and you know heat the heat the hospitals but in the same time it comes with the price of having the you know nuclear waste thrown in the oceans and a little nuclear bomb thrown on Hiroshima So it's like a lot of the things, it's the technology itself. It's not good or bad. It depends on how, for which purpose you use it. So as the social media technology can be used for fast mobilizing, organizing, and exposing human rights abuse, it can also be used for spreading lies and character assassination and trolling and surveillance. So it's like all of these things are neither good or right. And it is a question how much we invest in understanding, learning from it, and putting it to the good. And it was. In the world of technology, there are amazing achievements of bad guys. And one of these achievements is, of course, understanding how technology can be used for surveillance and face recognition. Another one is how to kill the truth and make everything into whataboutism. Because people who listen to your podcast love books, I will point them to the Peter Pomerantsev book, Nothing's Real and Everything is Possible. It's how this model of whataboutism and making policy into reality show, which was invested, invented actually in Russia, ended up with, you know, everywhere in the globe and ended up in war on Prut. And ending up with America electing twice reality star. So it's like this idea that everything is very relative and truth doesn't really matter is something which is very present in our everyday life. On the other hand, there are technologies which are amazing. Spend last two days exploring how artificial intelligence. Can be the tool for documenting election fraud. And probably the next big thing for my organization is pushing hard into making this as a weapon of keeping groups and organizations. Uh-uh. Ready for election fraud. Election fraud is one of the main and most important reasons why democracy decay across the globe. And it is also a very powerful trigger for public mobilization. If you catch your government stealing elections, then you have an uprising like in Georgia. If your government is capable of getting away with stealing elections, then you have somebody who lost elections, like President Paduro of Venezuela, lost elections two to one in July. But there was no public mobilization to counter this fraud. And that means Venezuela will slide completely towards the dictatorship. It will be Nicaragua 2.0 in just a few months. And the guy who won elections, who is actually the president of Venezuela, He's kicked out of the country and lives in Spain. And taking a look into the importance of this, and how you can use technology for these types of things. When Bitcoin is yet another freedom. Boom. I spent a lot of time with Bitcoin people, and I figured out it's one of the best tools for making dictators pissed off. Because the first thing dictators want when they want to be challenged is to provide their opponents access to money. And because they can abuse the state in a place like Russia. They can run investigations. They can close your bank accounts. Like your money is never safe. You cannot get money from the abroad. If you get money from the abroad, you need to register as a foreign agent. So there's like the whole playbook of how dictators show money lines. This is completely impossible with Bitcoin. So now you can use the Bitcoin as the money of freedom, and there are amazing, very inspiring stories that people are building and sharing, and amazing and very useful technology available to the activists across the globe to even get or receive digital money, which is, for their government, unstoppable. So I think it's like taking a look into these kind of things. You find a very good use of the new technology, but you also find a very, very powerful abuse of the new technology because needless to say... Authoritarian governments who have endless access to electricity and they can scrap and electricity build are enriching the members of their inner circle by abusing state resources to mine Bitcoin.
Paul - 00:39:15:
Right.
Srdja - 00:39:15:
Once again, I start the beginning of the story neither technology is good or bad.
Paul - 00:39:21:
Right.
Srdja - 00:39:21:
But we need to figure out how to how to put it in a good use and educate people about that whenever we can
Paul - 00:39:29:
Exactly. Harnessing these technologies for our social movements is the key. Well, thank you so much, Srdja, for your time today. And we could go on and on, but I want to honor your busy schedule. And I appreciate you and your humor and your wisdom. And you've given me and my listeners lots of perspectives on how to move forward in this new era that we're beginning in the United States, Trump 2.0 and the MAGA government. So I hope that you left us with inspiration. So thank you for that. And I look forward to connecting with you.
Srdja - 00:40:03:
Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure. Keep a trust in democracy. Democracy is alive as long as people's trust can defend it.
Paul - 00:40:18:
Wow, that was an extraordinary experience connecting with Srdja Popovich, the leader of the Aptor movement, who many years later now is running an organization called CANVAS, which is training activists around the country and around the world in nonviolent resistance. He has brilliant insights and humor. I never laughed so much on the podcast before. This guy is extraordinary and undoubtedly a world-class revolutionary optimist. He talked about his own experience as a young activist and being threatened by the police and having a gun inserted in his mouth and the fear and the burnout that activists can experience when they're in the front lines of revolutionary transformation. He actually shared stories of how you can overthrow a dictator and you can respond to fascism. He gave us a lot of hope and inspiration about the social movements that we're on the cusp of seeing launched and expanded here in the United States in response to our new political government that's starting in January. So thank you, Srdja, for all you do and for sharing your wisdom with us here on Revolutionary Optimism.
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