The colonial power tended to be France or Britain, and the Soviets were proclaimed as anti-imperialists. So, if you align yourself with the Soviets, it fits nicely with that kind of rhetorical division, but in reality it does not get you anywhere.

The military defeat of an oppressive regime is important, but it does not answer our problems. It is where our problems begin, since social change cannot be reduced to a military solution.

There is an arc of spontaneous revolts, beautiful in their creative beginnings, which traverses boundaries and borders and creates new solidarities and imaginations but which under the whip of the forces of order and strategies to buy-off sectors of the revolt becomes fragmented.

The Syrian people do not recognize themselves in the elite politics of the Muslim Brotherhood or the left, each of which is looking for an external power rather than the people's own self-activity.

Many of the democratization projects are a real threat to real democracy.

Organization has to come from an agreement about principles, rather than just the need to coordinate: so as much as we must all act today in a concerted manner, that should not be the ground of an organization.

Spaces of liberation are, in a certain way, some kind of social spaces where people can not only get together and think about something else, but also act together. If you are thinking about an elemental solidarity, you are thinking about people acting together and taking decisions together, and thereby beginning to think about what sort of society they want to create. So, there is a need for liberated spaces; that is really difficult.