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Why Civil Resistance Works the book that 2x figure comes from has some major controversy about cherry picking data as well as playing with the definition of peaceful protest.
If peaceful protests worked (as good as this article suggestions) the BBC wouldn't be writing about them.
Yeah, look at the Iraq war protests, they didn't amount to anything because they were peaceful and easily ignored by the media.
Peaceful protest works great under two conditions:
Just a metric fuckton of participants
The implicit threat of violent protest (e.g. Malcom X behind MLK)
This is actually rewriting history.
The Philippines had multiple militant movements but notably the Reform the Armed Forces which had orchestrated and abandoned a coup that had popular support kicking off the protest movement.
Sudan was a military coup that overthrew bashir and then massacred protestors and was actually backed by American OSI NGOs.
Algiers street protests were illegal and they combined general strikes with police clashes and riots even though they were subjected to mass arrests.
For Ghandi MLK jr and others mentioned there were armed militant groups adding pressure. My take away is you need both approaches.
Without demonstrating the ability to defend your nonviolent protest with devastating results it just gets crushed. If you are militant with no populist public movement backing your ideals you get labeled as terrorists and assinated by the feds.
Okay but who's the one defining a protest as violent? You get enough people together and you're going to have some aseholes that damage property but are the minority. If chocolate can have 5% bugs, then protests should be able to have 5% violence and still be called peaceful.
Or heck, if people react when police instigate, should that be called a violent protest?
Okay but who's the one defining a protest as violent?
I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with cocks
This is an important question. I believe the research in question defined movements by the predominant tactic used, even if there was a small amount of violence.
So protests like the anti-ICE ones in LA would probably count as non-violent in the research.
Edit: Here is a more recent work by the same author that more directly engages with some of the questions and criticisms that emerged from their initial work the BBC article is discussing.
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051421-124128
Is this why the opposition always tries to escalate the peaceful movement into a violent one?
That, and so they have an excuse to incarcerate or kill the leadership, see: Haymarket 7, Joe Hill, &c
YSK, This is blatant propaganda
by a state broadcasting org published by the state that held onto its colonial possessions until it was literally untenable without violence.
Nelson Mandela: "Choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence." (I feel like a boomer posting azquotes but people are going to keep erasing recorded history so I might as well try)
if you're arguing that violence is a poor way by which to shape a society, preach that to the police. it's literally what they do for a living.
I heard a saying once (I cannot remember the provenance) that could be paraphrased like: "The liberal is someone who is for all movements except the current movement; against all wars except the current war."
There are two important points:
For example, the American civil rights movement is today considered by people to have been largely non-violent. However at the time the movement's opponents definitely thought of, and portrayed it as a violent enterprise.
Opponents of a movement will always portray that movement as violent. The status-quo consensus perspective on historical protests is written by the victors. Therefore, the hypothesis that "non-violent" protests are more likely to succeed than "violent" ones is self-fulfilling. When protest movements succeed we are less likely to consider them "violent".
Climate protesters in Britain got years in jail for even planning to peacefully protest on a motorway. Fascism is already here, folks. And fuck The Sun
“There weren’t any campaigns that had failed after they had achieved 3.5% participation during a peak event,” says Chenoweth – a phenomenon she has called the “3.5% rule”.
Me scatching my head thinking,"10% of Hong Kong protested and still got stomped by China's boot." I suppose it could be argued that it's not the same thing.
Maybe Hong Kong counts as a military occupation? I mean, I doubt if 3.5% of Ukrainians protested that Russia would just leave, so external occupations probably don’t count.
Non violent protests only work when there's a threat of violence backing them.
It's also important to remember that non-violence serves the interest of entrenched power. The state is at its core a violence-control structure. When people excersize the power of violence in their own interests, the state must reassert it's dominion or risk collapse.
Non-violent requests can be accommodated without elites feeling like their ill-gotten power is threatened. But it's often the violent demands that scare them into doing so.
My theory is that you need both. You need figures that are non violent, but also the threat of more violent leaders around the corner if the non violent ones get ignored. You need Malcolm X to make MLK look like the compromise.
American Revolution. French Revolution. Iranian Revolution.
Just a few very violent, and successful, revolutions.
Let me know what all the peaceful protests on climate change did leading up to and since the Paris Agreement.
Civil disobedience, including violent action, absolutely has a place in changing the policy of the state.
Well that's total bs, in Greece there's been dozens of non-violent protests far exceeding 3.5% that have failed spectacularly.
There's a book on the subject written by Srdja Popovic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint_for_Revolution
Summary: protests that start (and try to remain) non-violent have a greater chance to succeed, because they can attract more people to their cause.
Critique: with some regimes, it's not possible to non-violently protest. For non-violent protest to work, the environment must respect a minimum amount of human rights.
Case samples:
...etc. In some places, you can't organize. Then your only option is to fight. As long as you can publicly organize, definitely do so - it's vastly preferable. :)
I have never known a North American protest to succeed at anything in my lifetime.
my fucking ass 👅🥾
Bolsheviks, Stonewall riots, suffragettes, all famously peaceful movements that got their rights by staying on their knees and asking nicely.
Liberal three-percenter lore?
I mean, I do think non-violent disobedience can be effective, but the state usually makes it violent. State sanctioned protests where most obey most of the rules isn't disobedience. Is a good start though, and I hope things progress (in a good way).
Didn't BLM 2020 protests have over 3.5%? I don't think they accomplished much except put pressure to prosecute Chauvin. Like literally just that one guy.
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.
General strikes accomplish a fuck of a lot more in a shorter amount of time. When the owners of the administration can't get their poptarts to the stores to be sold, the bank calls their loans and shit gets real.
Right after Covid ended, the nurses in the NYC hospitals decided that after being so heroic for over a year, they deserved raises, and some other benefits. The hospitals flat-out refused anything.
The nurses went on strike. Within 72 hours, every single one of their demands was met, including a fat raise.
Unions and strikes work.
Sounds like bullshit. Just in recent memory: look at Belarus 2021, look at the massive Serbian protests that have been going on for over half a year and the govt is still not relenting.
Bourgeoisie propaganda
600k Australians protested against the Iraq war in 2003.
The population was about 20m so 3.5% of that is 700k. So if another 100k had joined then the protest would have succeeded?
Quoting System of a Down: "Why don't you ask the kids at Tiananmen Square..."
STOP SPREADING THIS FUCKING LIE.
KING JUNIOR WAS DISLIKED DURING HIS NONVIOLENCE PROTEST.
IT IS PRECISELY VIOLENCE THAT THE STATE ENACTS THAT LEAD TO TRUMP’S REELECTION.
IF YOU WANT CHANGE, BE MORE UNGOVERNABLE THAN MAGA.
but YS(also)K: correlation does not equal causation.
a non-violent protest like the ones described in this article can only commerce, if it is not opposed by state sponsored violence. and that's usually indicative of a government that's already falling apart.
'France' has entered the chat
there has to be a big ass asterisk on his post. generally things like the civil rights movement got partially undone and then success can be nebulous since even in a movement there are subset of goals that might not have been achieved