Based on the article “no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of a population has ever failed” has the caveat of “we only look at 3 of them, and those 3 worked”.
So their overall sample size is small, and the 3.5% sample size is just 3. Further, those 3 had no idea someone in the vague future would retroactively measure their participation to declare it a rock solid threshold.
I think the broader takeaway is that number of people seems to matter more than degree of violence, and violence seems to alienate people that might have otherwise participated.
Also, the “no violence” thing has a LOT to do with what the mobilizing group is trying to accomplish.
Changing policies and ousting leadership that isn’t performing? Hell yeah, peaceful marches and protests all the way.
Want to remove a hostile and oppressive militarized regime? That shit is NEVER pretty, and turns even the best of people into monsters by necessity.
feels awfully close second one… especially now that i found out they’re deputizing bounty hunters to impersonate federal officers, with masks on… and paying them >$1,000 per brown person they kidnap…
i mean i knew it something extra odd was happening but a lot of these guys are contractors… and ofc white supremacists…
George Floyd protests had more than that (closer to 8%) and they didn’t really change anything.
Most of that I put on our ineffectual Democratic leadership who are supposed to represent the people. We had a mandate of millions and I don’t remember a single, actual dramatic effort to reshape policy by our elected leaders.
At that time, many people still believed Democrats were actually the opposition group to conservative fascism, and not the checked-out wine-mom getting alimony checks every month from the right.
This refers to Chenoweth’s research, and I’m somewhat familiar with their work. I think it’s good to clarify what non-violent means to them, as it’s non-obvious. For example, are economic boycotts violence? They harm businesses and keep food of the tables of workers. I don’t think that’s violence, but some people do, and what really matters here is what Chenoweth thinks violence is, and what they mean when they say “nonviolent tactics are more effective”.
At the end of “civil resistance: what everyone needs to know”, Chenoweth lists a number of campaigns which they’ve marked as violent/nonviolent and successful/unsuccessful. Let’s look at them and the tactics employed tonfigure out what exactly Chenoweth is advocating for. Please do not read this as a condemnation of their work, or of the protests that follow. This is just an investigation into what “nonviolence” means to Chenoweth.
Euromaidan: successful, nonviolent. In these protests, protestors threw molotov cocktails and bricks and at the police. I remember seeing a video of an apc getting absolutely melted by 10 or so molotovs cocktails.
The anti-Pinochet campaign: successful, nonviolent. This involved at least one attempt on Pinochet’s life.
Gwangju uprising in South Korea: unsuccessful, nonviolent. Car plowed into police officers, 4 dead.
Anti-Duvalier campaign in Haiti: successful, nonviolent. Destruction of government offices.
To summarize, here’s some means that are included in Chenoweth’s research:
- throwing bricks at the police
- throwing molotov cocktails at the police
- assassination attempts
- driving a car into police officers
- destroying government offices
The point here is not that these protests were wrong, they weren’t. The point is that they employed violent tactics in the face of state violence. Self-defense is not violence, and this article completely ignores this context, and heavily and knowingly implies that sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya is the way to beat oppression. It isn’t.
What about the arab spring?
They consider it non-violent.
Well… ok… then let’s do the “NONVIOLENT” protests and stop doing these sit ins.
I mean do they consider it a success?
Looks like it. So cherry picking from both ends on this one.
Is there a list available?
At this point I’m curious what they consider violent. Straight up military uprising and civil war?
What does Chenoweth consider is violent?
Where’s the line where she would classify your movement as violent (and therefore likely to fail)?
If I have to be completely honest with you, and this is an indictment of their research, it seems heavily dependent on what the protest is for or against.
Yeah that seems to check out, the whole study seems to have been an exercise of trying to prove their believed concept instead of testing it.
thanks. that was great.
Idk, that French deal seemed to work out pretty well.
Because they were trying to topple the entire system, not voice disapproval or change policies.
There’s no peaceful way to do that without a level of coordinated effort that we will NEVER get from groups of humans. To say nothing of the fact that even after the revolution, you have to share space with the people and sympathizers of those ousted, so sending a message of severe, popular consequence for regression is almost a necessity for lasting change.
That’s horseshit made up statistics.
Way more than 6% want single payer, but it’s not happening.I think it’s not “3.5% of people want an outcome” but “protests of significant magnitude to have 3.5% actively on the streets pushing” correlate with a very very large population that agrees, but not enough to be out on the streets.
So even if 40 million people want single payer, there are not 12 million in the streets.
But again, this is based on a scant handful of “movements”, so it’s pretty useless on specifics. Most I can see as a takeaway is perhaps that a violent movement may be too high stakes for people and a largely non-violent movement can attract more people and more people usually matter more than more violence.
And that pushing apparently includes activities the report defines as “nonviolent”
Well I meant the more rhetorical “pushing”, but yes, some of the activity of the claimed non-violence seems a bit violent.
I would say that I doubt you can have millions of people protest and manage to be completely non-violent. Some folks will take it to violence in the name of the cause, some will opportunisticly do it under the cover of the movement, and finally some might “false flag” to try to discredit the movement.
I would say that worrying that the protest appears non violent is a waste of time. If the protestors refuse to get violent to lend sympathy for the boot, then violence can be manufactured. It happens alot in protesting, and the whole shtick of the non violent protest is it REQUIRES media buy in. If the media is captured by oligarchs for example then the message will be drowned out or perverted. Even a neutral reading of “this protest happened, it has 1 billion people in it, now to John for the weather” the protest will fail.
If a protest of a billion people happens, then it cannot be ignored by the media.
I know, it was hyperbole, but the point is that if 12 million people are on the street, it’s not that the 12 million people need to get people’s attention, they are indicative that the people already have that perspective and are showing it in the streets.
A small protest has a goal of getting attention on a problem that people may lack awareness. A multi-million person protest isn’t about a need to raise awareness anymore, it’s about showing the awareness and commitment that is already there. For whatever volume of people actively protest, you can be sure there’s a singnificant multiple of that number of people who agree with the protestors but didn’t take it to the streets for one reason or another.
And i don’t think that The no kings protest succeeded in that goal. I went and was a part of it, and i am very frustrated with its reporting. And those who did not go, it was just another protest. And people are talking more about two lawmakers in Minnesota killed by a no king protestor.
Yes i know that’s spin, but that’s what was talked about. And trumps parade was given more time over all. Its just frustrating as fuck
Bogus unsupported stats
A lot of violent protests have succeeded too. Such as the suffragettes gaining the right to vote for women or unions gaining the right to exist, and the 8 hour work day.
Data presented to you by BBC the same network that lied to you about WMS in Iraq, genocide of the Palestinians people, and most likely more.
Yes, they leave out that the protests work because they are displays of very large amounts of people who, while peaceful now, they have reason to believe can become violent. Without being backed by the threat of violence, or seen as a diplomatic out to a movement that is, otherwise, violent, they don’t really work.
Also all their examples of non-violent successes had violent factions demonstrating the alternative.
correct, and in those cases they saw that there was an important group within the movement they could have a diplomatic out with, and they decided to take it before it was all violence
The problem when it comes to the current situation in the US, is that these protests already came baked in to the Project 2025 plan from the start.
They’re not going to change their minds on anything as a result of the protests because they already knew there’d be mass protests before Trump signed a single order.
Non-violent protests still need to come with a credible threat of becoming violent if the protesters’ safety is being attacked or if their human rights are compromised.
It’s a social contract basically: we will be peaceful as long as you allow us to remain peaceful.
Yes, basically the individual gives up their sovereign monopoly of violence to the state in exchange for protection and representation through the constitution. Break that contract and people have the moral right to oppose “legal” violence carried out through a dictatorship.
Tell that to Hong Kong demonstrators on June 16, 2019, estimated by organizers at 2 million people marching. Hong Kong had a population of 7.5 million at the time.
Sure there was violence both before and after that protest, but mostly caused by violent crackdown by police.
But did it fail because there was violence or was violence a sign of stronger opposition? Causation vs correlation and all that.
Maybe they needed 3.5% of China? Since the repression was imposed from outside of the city its happening in a larger context than just the local demographics.
Yeah it seems to be the case as China didn’t respect the deal it made with UK to leave Hong Kong autonomous. If 3.5% of China did that it would most likely be a blood bath, be it a violent or non-violent protest.
Hong Kong wasn’t at or above 3.5% of Chinese population
I think we’re all aware. And Hong Kong isn’t (wasn’t) China in terms of governance(“one country, two systems”). China broke the deal it made with UK, which said Hong Kong would be autonomous until 2048, after which it would be incorporated into China.
But you’re right, not much to do when China claims authority and no one defends its right to free speech, democracy and autonomy.
Edit: added some need nuance on the “one country, two systems”.
China is as always a big Israel full of submissive but cunning cucks
American Revolution. French Revolution. Iranian Revolution.
Just a few very violent, and successful, revolutions.
Who’s going to fight in your violent revolution? You? We couldn’t even get all the people who voted for Biden to Vote for Kamala. Right now a large portion of African Americans are refusing to join the protest movement against encroaching fascism because Trump is somehow a “white people problem.” How do you think a revolutionary army or even an insurrection of sufficient strength to challenge the United States Government would ever take hold when there is zero solidarity among the left? We can’t even get people to vote in their own interest, let alone support a violent revolution. This is pure fantasy.
Considering the UK’s biggest export is independence days, it’s kind of hard to think that all of those were solved through non violent means.
So how do you keep the police from making it violent?
Armed protestors
Numbers.
The simplest answer is usually not one that works, you can disperse crowds with water cannons alone and eliminate stragglers with arrests and rubber bullets
The real answer would probably end up being violence in the end, planned action to sabotage police movements, forming communes to act in unison and to act against the state and their tools
High participation raises the likelihood that the people in the police, military, national guard, have friends and family on the other side. This makes them less likely to use force and more likely to defect.
They are already outnumbered.
Police like to be more violent the more they’re outnumbered!
[CITATION NEEDED.]
Police, like all bullies, are ultimately cowards. They have no problem abusing people when they can do so with impunity. But if their own lives are on the line, suddenly they’re on their best behavior.
That’s why they get more violent. Less standing in lines, more gas. Less gas more flashbangs. Less flashbangs, more rubber coated bullets…
