Parenting & Family Quote by Robert Bourassa

A chilling bit of political arithmetic: power, Bourassa implies, doesn’t always require mass support. It can be seized by a handful of determined actors who understand leverage better than legitimacy. The line’s bluntness is the point. By stripping kidnapping down to a staffing requirement, Bourassa highlights how fragile public order can be when violence is strategic, not spontaneous.

In Quebec, Bourassa’s name is inseparable from the October Crisis of 1970, when the FLQ kidnapped James Cross and murdered Pierre Laporte, triggering a national panic and the invocation of the War Measures Act. Read against that backdrop, the quote works like a warning and a rebuke. A warning because it underlines asymmetry: a small cell can hijack the attention of an entire society. A rebuke because it needles the temptation to treat such crises as evidence of broad popular revolt. You don’t need “the people” to create the appearance of political upheaval; you need a plan, a target, and nerves.

The subtext is governance under siege. Bourassa is asserting the state’s obligation to resist romanticizing political violence while also hinting at the cruel incentives modern media and politics create: a spectacular act, executed by a few, can force leaders into overreaction that reshapes civil liberties for everyone. The phrase “only need” carries the cold logic of contingency planning. It’s less a slogan than a grim reminder that democracy’s weak point isn’t debate; it’s the small number of people required to make fear feel inevitable.