theyre organic like the 2020 floyd protests were organic, take that as you will

The thing is these were all different people.

Edo period aristocrats can be ranked in order of power:
1. The fudai lords who dominated the shogunate
2. The shinpan lords who had some influence but way less than fudai
3. The tozama lords who were completely excluded from power
4. The imperial court, purely figureheads, but they had the legitimizing power of the Emperor

All of whom were losing power to the merchants and relying on them for financing

By the 30s all the lords wanted more autonomy, especially as the shogun failed to deal with peasant revolts, famine, banditry, and the threat of colonization. When the country was forced to open up neither the lords or the shogun were against reform. The shogun thought he could delay annihilation by conceding opening up now and reforming his army, but the lords thought if the shogun let them reform individually they wouldnt need to open up the country in the first place. The lords got really close to the imperial court in a coalition against the Shogun. The shinpan lords couldve been satisfied with a bigger share of power within the shogunate, but that was both unattractive and impossible for the tozama lords (I'll explain shortly).

The samurai were increasingly alienated by the current hierarchy as their economic situation worsened in comparison to the merchants. They hated the shogunate, merchants, and looked to the other figure of authority which was the Emperor.

The merchants were being forced to give loans to an impoverished shogunate, his isolationist policy was restricting their growth, and their lower position on the caste system meant they faced a lot of discrimination.

The interesting thing that starts to happen is the lower class samurai, broke and disolusioned with the status quo, start merging with the merchants through marriage and purchase of samurai title. Its a good arrangement because the broke samurai can get money and the rich merchants can get some aristocratic privileges.

So that solves the problem of the resentful samurai partnering with the merchants, but why did they reject feudalism and embrace foreign ideas? The answer is many samurai in regions where lords couldn't merge with the merchants as easily simply started squeezing all their subjects more, including their samurai. A lot of these samurai deserted and became ronin, and removed from their caste privileges they were just as receptive to western liberal ideas as the merchants.

The ultra conservative samurais going around assassiating people were never the majority, and a lot of them accepted the inevitability of reform as Western gunships retaliated to their assassinations by razing their domains with Artillery.

So this lower class samurai/ronin/merchants alliance, with no interest in preserving the feudal structure, eventually comes to dominate tozama politics in the powerful southwest.

The shinpan eventually succeed in taking the reins of the shogunate, and the more moderate Tozama get them to agree to diminish some of the shogun's powers. The more radical tozama of the Sacho said f*** that and went to war.

So at this point everybody has agreed to reform but the fudai/shinpan want to preserve the feudal structure. The Satcho Alliance easily wins because they have more money just from being half samurai half merchant but also because the rich Osaka merchants throw all their money behind them. They also have more men, because they aren't as aristocratic and recruit from the towns and villages.

Nobody actually thought the Emperor should get back in power except maybe the insane fringe sonno jio movement, it was just a way to legitimize making the shogun f*** off

Idk what that means

you already know too much

Baltics so dookie bro

Fr a pathetic bunch

They were all organic, but people can protest the same thing for different reasons and outside powers always try to elevate a faction they think will be beneficial to them

Western NGOs and intelligence don't have the same foothold in Iran as in Hong Kong or Cuba. Of course there always some organic discontent, but that doesn't mean the movement as a whole is organic or hasn't been coopted, in Hong Kong especially that was really obvious and blatant when all those protest leaders came up in NED think tanks lol

started out organic and with a good reason in mind but hijacked/influenced by external actors with their separate agendas . not saying iran protests are already there but its def starting

met a couple of people who were from the Tudeh party in little Tehran (?) in toronto

good read

I met some half iranian half dutch guy at pre drinks before going to the club friday he rly hates the govt, wasn't a shah cuck either tho and hates the US so that's cool

He was talking abt the protests he was so surprised i knew who mossadegh was .. if only he knew...

Cool guy tho

Asian tiger man

Goon - value man

I'm Castro man

Krishna Ba'athism man

Who were the external hijackers of 2020

Need one

Mostly from Japan's Emergence as a Modern State by E Norman

Khalqi man

it depends how you wanna define hijacked. if you meant hijack by like "fake people came in from outside forces who shouldn't have been there", yeah that obv didn't happen (in fact id say that very rarely happens). its more like organizations with specific agendas got involved to promote certain outcomes or twist goals

Valuable Man

Hard as shyt

!dream Khalqi man

!dream Ba'athism man