Who is your favourite revolutionary?

Dean wrote: GKR wrote: Dean wrote: One bullet = 17 million dead + 20 million casualties. Do you REALLY think that the whole WWI was based in only the first bullet? As a historian I must say: nope, its not that simple. No I REALLY didn't think that and I know full well it's not that simple but the equation is still valid. As an Engineer, I couldn't give a crap what historians think.

As Adam Gopnik noted, the Archduke and his wife “were notably unmourned: Ferdinand, a difficult and unpopular figure, was no J.F.K.  The only important personage who seemed really offended was Kaiser Wilhelm, of Germany, who had a class interest in protecting Germanic royalty from Slavic terrorists.”

My argument is that the assassination provided the Austro-Hungarian empire (egged on by the Germans) the excuse they needed to take on the Serbs. In which case Princip's action totally backfired.

 

Is there a reason that engineers and historians can't be simultaneously right?

GKR wrote: Dean wrote: One bullet = 17 million dead + 20 million casualties. Do you REALLY think that the whole WWI was based in only the first bullet? As a historian I must say: nope, its not that simple.

Dean wrote: One bullet = 17 million dead + 20 million casualties.

Do you REALLY think that the whole WWI was based in only the first bullet? As a historian I must say: nope, its not that simple.

that should be "lest"

I've studied a lot of revolutionary movements... and all, I mean, really, ALL have begin in a pacific way.

When you presented an alternative to a opressing system, he give you back slaughtering and violence. Then, when the survivors get up the ground, holding their dead at one hand and a gun at the other, this guy is blamed as a violent person.

So, I would never condenming armed fight, never.

Oh, Rosa Luxemburg was a not a pacifist "I will never touch a gun" like someone brought up. Nor Nelson Mandela, who was a guerrila fighter who work with the communists - by the way, Angolan Communists helped ended the Appartheid and Mandela thanked them, when president.

Things are a little more complicated than right and wrong, black and white...

dr wu23 wrote: Svetonio wrote: dr wu23 wrote: Politics is not one of my strong suits but it seems to me that half of the ones listed in the poll aren't even true revolutionaries by definition (primarily associated with politics..?)....at least based on what I read and the list at Wiki.....but then maybe I just don't know who they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary   So since we are using loose definitions here I vote for Louis Pasteur because I love what he did for milk and other dairy products...as well as his medical discoveries. Thank you for posting the link but at that wiki page, although it's not a bad article, the list is not really valid because Gavrilo Princip is not on that list.     As I said I'm no expert in politics but I looked him up and he's an assassin  not a 'revolutionary' by anyone's standard. By your criteria John Wilkes Booth would also be a revolutionary since he also assassinated an important leader. But if you need a better explanation , I'm sure someone here will provide it.

Princip is, in fact, a terrorist and assassin and your explanation is spot on. 

Svetonio has already shown how incomprehensible his political beliefs are, he could say he likes Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Netanyahu, Mao Zedong, and Kim Jong-Il and I still wouldn't be surprised.

Nelson Mandela has no votes ? Odd 

Politics is not one of my strong suits but it seems to me that half of the ones listed in the poll aren't even true revolutionaries by definition (primarily associated with politics..?)....at least based on what I read and the list at Wiki.....but then maybe I just don't know who they are.

Edited by dr wu23 - September 16 2015 at 12:13

Can I vote for Galileo?