YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x more likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of a population has ever failed
The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world
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.
And you need backing of the mass public. Keyboard warriors who sit on their ass and don't get out there won't work.
are 2x more likely
Meaning, there can be instances where it's true or not true.
66% of the time it works every time.
This is a really common misunderstanding of how nonviolent movements actually work, and frankly gets the causality backwards.
You're right that successful movements often have both violent and nonviolent wings - but the nonviolent components don't succeed because of the violent ones. They succeed despite them. The research is pretty clear on this: nonviolent campaigns are actually more likely to achieve their goals than violent ones, and they're more likely to lead to stable democratic outcomes.
Nonviolent movements get labeled as extremist precisely when they're associated with violence, not when they're separate from it. The Civil Rights Movement's greatest victories came when they maintained strict nonviolent discipline - Birmingham, Selma, the March on Washington. Every time violence entered the picture, it gave opponents ammunition to dismiss the entire movement.
The "good cop/bad cop" theory sounds intuitive but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. What actually makes nonviolent resistance effective is mass participation, strategic planning, and moral leverage - not the threat of violence lurking in the background.
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?
Cops are great at making any protest violent.
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
History is written by the victors.
Okay but who’s the one defining a protest as violent?
From the article
Perhaps most obviously, violent protests necessarily exclude people who abhor and fear bloodshed, whereas peaceful protesters maintain the moral high ground.
Chenoweth points out that nonviolent protests also have fewer physical barriers to participation. You do not need to be fit and healthy to engage in a strike, whereas violent campaigns tend to lean on the support of physically fit young men. And while many forms of nonviolent protests also carry serious risks – just think of China’s response in Tiananmen Square in 1989 – Chenoweth argues that nonviolent campaigns are generally easier to discuss openly, which means that news of their occurrence can reach a wider audience. Violent movements, on the other hand, require a supply of weapons, and tend to rely on more secretive underground operations that might struggle to reach the general population.
Violent protests seems to mean a violent campaign of armed, planned attacks.
I doubt that would include unplanned outbreaks of violence from people not organized for that purpose.
We can have a little violence. As a treat!
Okay but who's the one defining a protest as violent?
The same people who write the history books. History is written by the winners, and when they write those books the protests that led to them winning are written up as being non-violent. It's like "terrorists" vs. "freedom fighters". If they succeed, they get to write the history books and they're freedom fighters. If they lose, the other side writes the history books and they're terrorists.
I don't want to ask about the chocolate
Are you arguing "it's just a few bad apples" in defense of protests?
This is awkward.
YES, protesters are freely associating members of the general public, whereas the police are vetted and trained professionals, payed by taxes to "uphold the law".
They should be held to a higher standard!
I assume you’re comparing this to rhetoric around cops. Cops are ideologically and organizationally unified with top down command structure and they protect one another even in cases of wrongdoing or violence.
Most modern protests are just random people who chose to show up. These are totally different situations.
You're right. We should fire the bad protestors.
What is awkward is how you failed to realize how insanely dumb and context-free your logic is to come to such an assinine conclusion...
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
No, it's because the opposition is the establishment, and violence is a tool the establishment uses to... well, stay established.
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)
Also to note, that potential violence is still violence. "peaceful" protests with over 3.5% of the total people generally do as well on the implied potential violence. Movements that will never go hot have no power.
100% agreed, this line of arguing is how they're trying to keep us docile.
This book completely changed my view on non-violent resistance movements a few years ago. Highly recommended.
"How Non-Violence Protects the State" (Peter Gelderloos)
Ebook: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
Audiobook: https://youtu.be/CSo1PGWojxE
What do you mean ! Women got the right to vote by asking nicely, so did workers when they got the 40h work week. Same for black people and civil rights, all was achieved by gently kissing the ruling class boots.
And now in June, we celebrate the queer community's liberation, which totally happened by walking up to a politician and asking "hey can we please not get assaulted and thrown into prison or a mental ward for existing? 🥺", to which the politician responded "oh, I've spent my entire life thinking you guys were perverted mentally ill sinners that should be drawn and quartered, but sure! ☺️"
bingo.
Winner winner chicken dinner!
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 wish I could super upvote this.
Oh, but it's use of force and not violence when we do it!
Also what these articles always fail to consider: Usually protests become violent when peaceful protests have failed. So violent protests often face something that is much harder to change/politicians are more unwilling to change. So of course they are less often successful. Not because they are less effective, but because the nature of their demands is different.
American Revolution. French Revolution. Iranian Revolution.
Just a few very violent, and successful, revolutions.
I don't really know if I'd consider the French revolution very succesful, considering the fact that the Bourbon dynasty was restored after only 16 years.
For how long? Irrelevant answer. The French Revolution was about shifting the ruling from nobility to bourgeoise and it's exactly what happened. Valid to this very day.
I'd argue the French revolution is probably one of the most successful.
If we allow them to make us violent, they will crush us with police/military force. It's already happening. Do NOT get baited into killing your own insurgency.
The guy who shot Hortman had "no kings" posters in his car. He was trying to incite violence so the police would have an excuse to shoot protestors. Don't let these people bait you.
Have you seen the videos of the No Kings demonstrations around the country? They were enormous! Not only were they far larger than I expected, they were MANY times larger than I expected.
The MAGA Nazis can try to suppress those crowds, but no matter what the outcome, they will lose. This isn't pre-Internet Tiananmen Square, where the government can simply deny it happened. The entire planet will know.
If they fire on American protesters, no matter the justification, the MAGA Nazis government will make enemies of every Democratic nation in the world.
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.
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.
3.5% of the people work all the time if you cherry pick your data.
I think the research was done prior to that event. It's a bit dated at this point.
Also, it's a bit ambiguous how to count Hong Kong as a semi-autonomous region in China. Should you measure by percentage of Hong Kongers or percentage of Chinese? I might think the latter, since they're subject to the force of that nation.
Hong Kong was supposed to be free to control itself until 2048, democracy and free speech etc. China the decided that Hong Kong was starting to getting a little too free and started to tell the sitting president to shut the protests down.
China eventually took back control and instituted a national security law that could be used for pretty much anything after the crackdown didn’t quell the unrest.
I was actively following it live as it unfolded. It was very sad to see how much young people fought for basic freedoms and still lost it.
I remember being torn between my general non-violence stance and also understanding the protestors reciprocating the police violence.
I don't think we can accept your argument, because in point in fact Hong Kong was an independent country. Certainly trying to disagree but now we're getting into a definition question, but if that's going to stop us from applying the proposed principle, then we can do that in every situation.
So how do you keep the police from making it violent?
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
They are already outnumbered.
Police like to be more violent the more they're outnumbered!
What does that have to do with non-violent protesters?
Did the violent attacks by police & police dogs make the Birmingham campaign a violent protest?
Armed protestors
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.
Sure, a poor uneducated place.
Anyone who makes peaceful revolution impossible makes violent revolution inevitable.
Lmao I love that people still reply to you when your name is trollception.
Well done.
List all the regimes that weren't brought down by peaceful protests and singing kumbaya. No worries we will wait.
Ah, so you agree there IS a place though.
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.
I think you are equating those with disruptive. Peaceful doesn't necessarily mean non-disruptive. Peaceful and disruptive protests can certainly still make people in power sweat
Strikes are peaceful and disruptive
Shutting down freeways can be peaceful and disruptive
Boycotts are peaceful and can be disruptive
Sit-ins are peaceful and can be disruptive
etc.
Not that 3.5% is necessarily an iron-clad guarantee
Absolutely. We are seeing some great civil resistance tactics in the anti-ICE protests right now. These are quite different from rallies where people just stand around, they are actually interfering with ICE and slowing down their abducitons. If enough people participated, they could shut them down altogether.
That said, it's risky too. The police will retaliate with violence, which sucks if you are the recipient. But the imagery of peaceful protesters being attacked is great propaganda.
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”.
my fucking ass 👅🥾
Bolsheviks, Stonewall riots, suffragettes, all famously peaceful movements that got their rights by staying on their knees and asking nicely.
Those are successful, yes. But then you have Arbenz's Guatamala and the FARC in Columbia and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and democratic revolts in Hong Kong and Kashmir and the French Revolution and the Polish Resistance and the failures of socialist revolts across Africa and the Middle East.
I think part of the problem is how we define "successful". Because it's easy to see how the Spanish Anarchists failed to defeat Franco. Meanwhile, we largely consider the Civil Rights Era in the United States a success, despite many of its leaders being assassinated and its efforts quashed and undo under the Nixon/Reagan Era.
Militant insurgencies end when they are crushed by police/military. Peaceful protests don't "fail" nearly so dramatically, they just fade away.
Y'all are out in full force today, huh
EDIT: since it seems like it needs clarification, the person I replied to was being sarcastic, the Bolsheviks obviously didn't win without violence...
Well that's total bs, in Greece there's been dozens of non-violent protests far exceeding 3.5% that have failed spectacularly.
Clue: peaceful protests in the entire western world achieved nothing for the past half a century. You had the massive Greece protests, the Gilets Jeunes in France, the 15-M in Spain, the Occupy Movement in the US, the BLM protests in the US too, the anti Iraq war protests all over Europe... None of them achieved anything meaningful. The EU and US are NOT democratic.
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.
Cool, you organize one of those, then. Ill wait.
Israel under Netanyahu: probably yes
When Palestinians protest peacefully they get shot at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_protests
When foreigners peacefully protest in solidarity they get shot or run over.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/30/1241231447/rachel-corrie-gaza-palestinians-aid-israel-hamas-war
Your point is so important that I don't think it can be stressed enough.
Nonviolent protests are more popular in public opinion. Public opinion gets you more people on your side. More people on your side is more power, and when the regime starts cracking down on peaceful protests, it will be easier to get more people to fight than it would be of we advocate for violence from the start.
US during the civil rights movement era: yes
I gotta ask, how the hell was the US in the 1960s a safe place to nonviolently protest? Police violence aimed at colored protesters during that era was notorious. Plus the church bombings, the lynchings, the assassinations...
I don't think anyone said that nonviolent protest was safe...
Srdja Popovic
LOL
https://inthesetimes.com/article/wikileaks-docs-expose-famed-serbian-activists-ties-to-shadow-cia
Telling you have the name perestroika, by the hated traitor Gorbachev putting them in misery while corrupt oligarchs from the west leeched on Russia.
LOL complete BS
US during the civil rights movement era: yes
USSR under Gorbachev: yes
Serbia under Milosevic: yes, with difficulty on every step (Popovic was there doing it)
Imaginary history.
Israel under Netanyahu: probably yes
They murdered hundreds of palestinians during peaceful protests. GTFO with this BS.
USSR under Kruschev/Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernenko: not really
Russia under Putin: no, don’t even hold a blank sheet of paper
Iran under Khamenei: only if you’re doing a bread riot
Saudi Arabia, USSR under Stalin, NK under the Kim dynasty: no, and execution would be a possible outcome
How many times can you list russia/ussr? Give me a break with this lib imperialism.
Not sure you should include Gorbachev since he illegally dissolved the USSR against the will of the people.
dissolved the USSR against the will of the
peopleRussians
Seems to be just about everybody wanted to leave the USSR.
Yes, the USSR, famous for respecting the will of the people ...
This sounds like propaganda
I've heard the 3.5% static for major general strikes being effective, not so sure about protests.
The lack of distinction between strikes shutting down entire industries vs walking around for a bit with a witty sign is one of the many reasons the study is kind of silly.
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.
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.
I wanted to make an ironic, exaggerated comment here, but irony doesn't really work when it is 100% in line with what these people would actually say.
Change is so slow because this country has managed to form and propogate such a thoroughly oppressive system, that to call it out is to only reinforce what the people have been taught since day one.
These "freedom people" want their privilege so bad that they are willing to keep a monarch/oligarch in office who will perpetuate an oppressive system under the guise of ignorance.
Weren't those violent though? Or maybe I'm thinking of something else. The COVID era memories kinda blur together in my brain. I definitely remember a lot of destruction around that time though
Mostly peaceful, really, same as these. But obviously when you have literally millions of people protesting, there's bound to be some not-quite-ok stuff happening in all the chaos. Property damage, stealing, that sort of thing.
There's really no way to have zero violence at this scale, although I'd say there's a distinction between property damage and violence (one is done to objects and the other to people).
Don't forget we remember MLK protests as mostly peaceful too, but the media did not portray them that way back then either. The copaganda is ever present. But look up the 2020 protests and you'll get a lot of headlines reporting that they were in fact like 99% peaceful.
Not really. The overwhelming majority of those protests were peaceful. However the media latched on to the few cases where riots broke out which is pretty much what they always do.
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.
The MSM just fear an orange reprisal. They're also pandering to the middle of the ground voters.
Bourgeoisie propaganda
Remember when the Nazis surrendered because of all the witty placards people marched with?
My great uncle served in WW II. He wasn't exactly "reasoning" with the nazis.
George Floyd protests had more than that (closer to 8%) and they didn't really change anything.
Movements are not the same as protests, movements have leadership that has explicitly defined asks that the followers agree with. iirc the organizers had challenges with this, so their default asks were awareness and they got that.
So then by any reasonable metric it was a failure. Just that the failure was at the leadership level and had zero chance at success because of that no matter what happened
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.
Who wrote this article? Fairy tale bullshit??
BBC tier neoliberalism.
"Real victory is when you stop trying to resist" might as well be the Keir Starmer campaign slogan
look at this fed (and my answer): https://lemmy.world/post/31384291/17679569
Could it be they are scared of actual change and started a social media campaign? Coincidentally also the same message from Bernie the sheepdog. https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1932148252800905415
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.
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
As a catalan actively involved in the 2012-2017 push for independence, I call bullshit.
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:
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.
Is there a list available?
At this point I'm curious what they consider violent. Straight up military uprising and civil war?
thanks. that was great.
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?
100k Australians are the cause of the Iraq War 😔
No, if another 100k Australians had come out and then kept protesting day in day out for weeks/months they would have got the aus government to back down and not support the war.
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.
The radical flank effect:
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/3/pgac110/6633666?login=false
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.
Quoting System of a Down: "Why don't you ask the kids at Tiananmen Square..."
If you crush every 0.1% that shows up you will never reach 3.5%, or the alternative is to not protest until you have the numbers
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.
This is complete utter propaganda, especially considering it's coming from the BBC. History has shown us time and time again that the ruling class never gives up its power peacefully.
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.
Yes, thank you. It seemed bizarre to me as I was reading the article that this point is not brought up at all. Of course, it's impossible to perform controlled realistic experiments to disentangle the effects. But to not even acknowledge this crucial limitation in the research makes the reporting and research deeply flawed. The research would really need to take into account each conflict's preconditions, which is a very daunting task, to become more reliable. I understand it's hard to do this research, but it's only fair to demand that researchers temper their conclusions based on to the limitations. That kind of rigorous approach doesn't sell as many books or lead to as many media appearances though, sadly.
That's horseshit made up statistics.
Way more than 6% want single payer, but it's not happening.
A movement is a defined and coordinated event. It isn't wanting something. The stats are not made up, but they have a lot of context that isn't shared in the single sentence for sure.
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.
boot licker post
Name one non-violent protest that changed the material conditions of those protesting, I'll wait.
The Velvet Revolution.
The 1989 East German monday demonstrations.
Vote harder! Interpretative dance and ask nicely.
That's how real change happens.
And look at this fed (and my answer):
https://lemmy.world/post/31384291/17679569
Could it be they are scared of actual change and started a social media campaign?
Coincidentally also the same message from Bernie the sheepdog.
https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1932148252800905415
Pick up a rifle and do something then.
You guys who want violence are chomping at the bit for someone else to fucking do something and yet you do nothing.
The 'far left' in this country are a bunch of fucking pussies who do nothing but complain on the internet.
Are you seriously unable to differentiate between someone saying that we shouldn't be so quick to take violence off the table, and "I have a plan and the means to immediately begin using violence this second?"
Violence and Non Violence are tools, you don't throw out your screwdriver when you get a hammer and you don't try hammering in a screw without trying the screwdriver first.
You can prefer to resolve things peacefully while recognizing that it likely won't work at the same time.
If someone says 'I think all people should have healthcare" do you respond with 'Go become a Doctor then!"
The far left are pussies for not taking action, and the Liberals are far worse because they are half the reason we are in this mess. Y'all want to prop up Capitalism and Corporations, this is what you get. It doesn't matter if you asked the ruling class to play nice with the power you handed them or not, it's not our fault you are so naive.
Can't answer my question. I'm not surprised.
Liberals never live in reality that is why they allow fascism to happen.
Looks like you are the one being violent with your rhetoric.
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.
'France' has entered the chat
That statistic only works if the government cares what we think. Voters have trained politicians that they can do whatever they want with no repercussions. Therefore, they do not need to care what we think.
On the one hand, most of those incidents cited were in the face of a regime that also didn't want to care. Just hard to ignore circumstances if 3.5% of your people are out on the streets and likely most of the people off the streets agree with them.
On the other hand, they base this on very few instances, so it's hardly a statistical slam dunk, it's vaguely supportive of some concepts, but anyone taking note of specific numbers is really overextending the research beyond what it can possibly say.
It's about resistance, not violence per we. Choosing the right kind of resistance for the situation is how change is made. Non violent protesting is for raising awareness and building solidarity. Violence is purely for defense and to show when a line has been crossed. Otherwise your movement will just become the next police state regime, if it doesn't get crushed outright. People advocating for violence on social media are either bots or bad faith actors trying to stop the movement. Anyone seriously considering violence against the state sure as shit aren't posting about it on Lemmy.
I'd say that being distruptive is what we should be discussing about. Strikes or boycotts, when organized well, can be examples of non-violent can actually work, while holding a sign in a park doesn't do anything.
Agree. But also, holding a sign in a park with 20 other people that you coordinated with is not nothing. It's community building and solidarity, which are both essential.
Interesting how the paper picks East Timor/Indonesia as a case study but makes no mention of the massacres of the PKI and suspected communists, which the US was ambivalent, if not supportive about.
Any serious study of resistance movements around the world will paint a very different picture, one in which nonviolence is frequently met with slaughter, and people turn to violence specifically because nonviolence failed.
The fact of the matter is that people living in the imperial core cannot be well versed in the history of every country in the world (to the extent that we can even exert influence in the first place), and this allows the media to either ignore things like the massacres in Indonesia, or spin them in such a way to justify the preferred side through biased framing. The thing the paper cites as a major determining factor of success or failure is defections from security forces, but what if those security forces come from thousands of miles away?
Trying to assert a universal principle on a tactical level regarding such broad categories is kind of silly in the first place. It's too broad. You have to assess what you're trying to accomplish and formulate a strategy to get there based on the particular situation you find yourself in.
From "The Jakarta Method:"
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask:
“Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.
Vincent Bevins the author of The Jakarta Method actually wrote a book about why the protest movements of the last few decades rarely achieved their stated goals. It’s worth checking out.
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.
Bogus unsupported stats
Er... Hong Kong?
"more likely" not "will work"
Hong Kong wasn’t at or above 3.5% of Chinese population
We're at that point and yet has Trump been impeached for denying due process and trying to create a process with ice to deport people without a trial to a foreign prison for life? Or for blatantly ignoring orders from federal courts and the Supreme Court?
Until Trump is in prison or tried for his crimes this article doesn't sway my opinion at all. Fact is too many loopholes exist in the rule of law in the usa. Only way to fix it is creating a new government with a new constitution. The executive branch as it is has way too much power consolidated. The current form of government cant go on as it is. Especially because of how much money and bribery is now involved.
I dont see this being resolved peacefully. Fascists never go peacefully. NEVER
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.
The cries for violence here are quite disgusting. I understand our American friends are frustrated, but violence is only going to get you killed. The police in the US have been receiving military gear for decades now. If you want violence, you will get it.
Then there are some major misconceptions about the 3.5% rule. That is for persistent non-violent protests. Week in, week out, for months at a time, before this yields results. Violent protests drive away many of the people you need on board to achieve genuine change and make it exponentially harder to get to your 3.5%. Try getting a grandma or a family with kids to join when molotov cocktails are being thrown around.
So for everyone here calling for violence, you are idiots and you won't achieve a damn thing.
There's two basic options for change here. Defiance, and violence.
The defiance would have to be so ongoing it could not be ignored by drumpf and his cronies.
And the violence will have to be so well planned and extreme (eg: wholescale assassinations) it would make the nazi republican politicians actually fear for their lives as they don't give a shit about anything else.
That's the only two real options for change. Long and ongoing defiance, or quick short controlled violence.
However this is all moot as I am convinced neither will happen.
The us people haven't the will to do the 'necessary' violence, and will only do a protest here and there until they've accepted this is their new normal and go back to their existence.
Insanely well put and underrated comment.
I really want to be happy about the turnout for No Kings. I wanted to be, but I actually followed the coverage of several sites of protests. Most of them were over in less than 2 hours from what I saw. It was like a weekend lunch break for most people, and they even brough their infant children with them because they couldn't be arsed with a babysitter.
If anyone believes it won't be back to business as usual in the Fourth Reich on monday they are delusional. You need to care a hell of a lot more than that to stop a fascist regime, and the horrible sad truth is that most Americans just don't. They've been bred to be far too individualist to give more than the just bare minimum. The moment it becomes an inconvenience for them they're over it.
This was a PR stunt at best. A corporate email stating "We're working hard to dismantle the regime. We have our best people on it. Pizza party next Friday."
Also I'd say that peaceful and violent aren't binary. Like, there's standing somewhere holding signs without being distruptive, then there's civil disobedience like blocking traffic without being actually violent, then there's protests where protestors will use violence to defend themselves if they have to without actively seeking to engage in violent acts, and then there's straight up rioting, where people go out their way to attack people, or smash windows or burn cars and shit.
And, of course, it varies from person to person. If there's protest X happening, one person could think of is as violent (or call it violent as a way of propaganda) while one person wouldn't.
And the violence will have to be so well planned and extreme (eg: wholescale assassinations) it would make the nazi republican politicians actually fear for their lives as they don’t give a shit about anything else.
I'm curious as to what you think comes after this? We just go back to a representative democracy with 30% of the population still in a cult of personality surrounding the guy you just took out? Everyone behaves and we live happily ever after?
Fucking delusional.
you're the bigger idiot if you think non-violence works against fascists, and you'll achieve even less (unless you count the deaths of innocents that are on your hands, coward)
One thing I love about the protests is seeing the little children and grandmothers marching side by side with my extraordinarily angry ass. Yeah I have to moderate my language a little, but I feel much less alone seeing a multi-generational sea of people standing with me.
Just existing is getting a lot of us killed. It ain't even just the poor anymore, we've got real assassinations happening.
I dont support it but I understand it. All the achievements of the baddies at the moment is being carried out aggressively if not violently.
Its hard to see that and just march.
The US population is about 340 million. So we would need 11.9 million to protest.
the US is too spread out and too stupid to mount consistent protests in those numbers.
Non violent protests work on a platform of sympathy, violence is fear, a lot of people lack any sympathy for no kings protests and those against it don't seem to fear it
How are you going to demand change when a ragtag militia force can stop it?
Economic tactics. The general strike is more powerful than people seem to realize.
Chenoweth has valid points worthy of debate but I have to say, I'm never going to get my political philosophy on direct action from the fucking beeb.
I want philosophy direct from the Monarch! /s
"This was partly the result of strength in numbers. Chenoweth argues that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to succeed because they can recruit many more participants from a much broader demographic, which can cause severe disruption that paralyses normal urban life and the functioning of society."
In other words, violent protests work better, but they lack the amount of people.
In a capitalist system, all protests are violent because the capitalist system is violent by definition.
As long as we industrially murder people all around the globe, protests have not been successfull.
And nobody cares if women got the right to vote in this system. Its like making a party about women being able to join the NSDAP.
We are imperialist. We need to be stopped by any means necessary.
Phony liberal bullshit for controlling the masses.
edit: YSK this article is old and largely debunked.
no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of a population has ever failed
US police: hold my riot gear!
Keep Goodhart's law in mind:
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
All i know is what happened in Germany
Yeah. 3.5% would be about 2.8m people. This number has been exceeded easily last year when the AfD scandal happened. Absolutely fucking nothing happened.
I honestly cant recall seeing any peaceful protest accomplishing anything of significance in my lifetime. Most successful protests I hear about are the French lighting up Paris when they try to raise the retirement age. They just try again 2 years later though.
Non-violent protest kinda imply that the receiving end doesn't react violently ehh. If they start sending riot police and water tank then it would 100% spiral.
Also non violent protests turn violent because the opposition embed bad actors to create the violence or counter protest pushes people to violence out of self defense.
No man it was all the lawsuits and SLAMMING headlines.
lol of course this garbage bootlicker propaganda is left up on .world, a classic example of their quality modding skills
glad to see the comments calling it out for what it is
bbc link
imagine my shock
what a fucking rag
How in the world did you derive those numbers? How do you even quantify that in practice?
Also, of course British State Media is going to discourage violent protests.
The problem with the statement from the title is that a non-violent movement that big won't happen in many countries, or sometimes won't happen without turning violent. Both should be accounted for when talking about this.
I've been fed up with logic, common sense and such as opposed to stats at some point, because I was mostly reading ancap stuff and ancaps are a bit too detached in that direction.
But it's rightfully said often that throwing stats is just another kind of lies. Interpreting statistics is too complex, most people can't do that, common sense and logic are indeed more important.
If that were true, what happens if two different non violent movements each with more than 3.5% of the population involved, exist at the same time in direct opposition to eachother?
Democratic peace theory happens and they talk it out.
That second part is especially encouraging.
It shouldn't be. Asserting that "no non-violent protests have failed" ignores an obvious null hypothesis.
Tyrannical regimes attack non-violent protests that get large enough, and then call said movements "violent" to justify what the state did to them.
While this is obviously not true. It is hilarious seeing that some comments call bullshit on this while thinking that violent protests have any better chance to succeed.
I believe that a non-insignificant number of them are pushing an agenda.
How many of those were backed by much more powerful foreign powers?
Square for doubt?!! I was wrong thinking it was cross for doubt?
idk, it was the first result for "doubt meme" for me.
🙄
The average person doesn't like violent civil unrest, shocking.
Also, I bet you can mess with the numbers to mean about anything you want by changing what classifies as "violent". A lot of people include property destruction in their definition of violence. But a lot of other people don't and only consider that property damage.
Thanks Bernie the sheepdog.
Make sure the sheep don't make waves.
And don't forget to say pissrahell has aright to defend itself
Also there was a study done of what outcomes violent protests have. You think you're going to make things better but usually violently instilled governments aren't good people no matter if you're left or right.
You end up instilling another extreme regime for the one you initially wanted to fight.
Still waiting on you "violence is the only way" crowd to do some violence.
I don't think we're there yet.
Take your liberal propaganda and stuff it
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.
This was going to be my counterexample too. Millions protested in the US, UK, Australia, and elsewhere before any troops were committed and it still didn't help. I dont have solid numbers but I'd be shocked if less than 3.5% of people were involved. They were the biggest protests ever at the time.
I personally feel like a lot came out of it, though. The USA left Iraq for example.
Peaceful protest works great under two conditions:
The article pointedly says that non violent protests were more successful because a lot more people were involved than in the violent protests.
Claims without any supporting evidence aren't that interesting.
Edit: OP changed his post after I called him out for not referencing any sources
How to blow up a pipeline has a chapter on the topic.
You can also read the original book and check the examples.
P.C. this is article about the fourth mentioned protest in the article, and literally the second paragraph is about clashes. There are 11 casualties during this series of protests.
But you knew that with your high standards of verifying information right?