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.
YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed
Submitted 11 hours ago by MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Comments
gabbath@lemmy.world 25 minutes ago
vivendi@programming.dev 1 hour ago
Bourgeoisie propaganda
10001110101@lemm.ee 1 hour ago
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).
Pringles@sopuli.xyz 1 hour ago
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.
Godric@lemmy.world 21 minutes ago
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.
D_C@lemm.ee 26 minutes ago
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.Squizzy@lemmy.world 44 minutes ago
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.
ofchesoneofthose@lemmings.world 43 minutes ago
Nothing is what you achieved for the last 100 years lmao
destructdisc@lemmy.world 27 minutes ago
Take your liberal propaganda and stuff it
brandon@piefed.social 5 hours ago
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:
- Every major movement in history has incorporated elements of violence;
- Which movements we retroactively consider as violent is determined by sociological consensus.
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".
qevlarr@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
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
JustJack23@slrpnk.net 10 hours ago
Why Civil Resistance Works the book that 2x figure comes from has been implicated in cherry picking data.
If peaceful protests worked (as good as this article suggestions) the BBC wouldn’t be writing about them.
jonne@infosec.pub 9 hours ago
Yeah, look at the Iraq war protests, they didn’t amount to anything because they were peaceful and easily ignored by the media.
Sylence@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
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.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I personally feel like a lot came out of it, though. The USA left Iraq for example.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
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)
-
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
The article pointedly says that non violent protests were more successful because a lot more people were involved than in the violent protests.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
Claims without any supporting evidence aren’t that interesting.
JustJack23@slrpnk.net 10 hours ago
How to blow up a pipeline has a chapter on the topic.
You can also read the original book and check the examples.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Quoting System of a Down: “Why don’t you ask the kids at Tiananmen Square…”
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Tbf they didn’t reach 3.5%, did they?
1989 population was 1 billion and they only managed to have 1 million protestors which is like 0.1%
SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 5 hours ago
Non violent protests only work when there’s a threat of violence backing it.
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah, it gets violent because the power in place provokes it, either directly or inderectly (like not letting people protest).
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
eg Ghandi in India succeeded for this reason.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
“Our words are backed by nuclear weapons”
-Mahatma Gandhi, Circa 2010
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 hours ago
YSK, This is blatant propaganda
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 22 minutes ago
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.
annie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
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)
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 hours ago
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.
LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
100% agreed, this line of arguing is how they’re trying to keep us docile.
This book changed my opinion on non-violent resistance movements a few years ago. Highly recommended.
How Non-Violence Protects the State (Peter Gelderloos)
Ebook: theanarchistlibrary.org/…/peter-gelderloos-how-no…
Audiobook: youtu.be/CSo1PGWojxE
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
bingo.
aceshigh@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Winner winner chicken dinner!
Seasm0ke@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
are 2x more likely
Meaning, there can be instances where it’s true or not true.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
66% of the time it works every time.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 7 hours ago
And you need backing of the mass public. Keyboard warriors who sit on their ass and don’t get out there won’t work.
Lowpast@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
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.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
You talk about research, so I’m curious: has any nonviolent campaign succeeded without an accompanying violent campaign?
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
The research is pretty clear on this:
Lol. What was the methodology on this “research”?
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
“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.
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Maybe you’d need 3.5% of China’s population? Or are we counting Hong Kong as a military occupation? Well, I doubt if 3.5% of Ukrainians protested that Russia would just leave, so external occupations probably don’t count.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 5 hours ago
the Arab spring also springs to mind.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 5 hours ago
3.5% of the people work all the time if you cherry pick your data.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 hours ago
I think the research was done prior to that event. It’s fairly old 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.
fodor@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
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.
MetalMachine@feddit.nl 5 hours ago
This sounds like propaganda
ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I’ve heard the 3.5% static for major general strikes being effective, not so sure about protests.
Objection@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
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.
dom@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
Is this why the opposition always tries to escalate the peaceful movement into a violent one?
Nemo@midwest.social 10 hours ago
That, and so they have an excuse to incarcerate or kill the leadership, see: Haymarket 7, Joe Hill, &c
AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 5 hours ago
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.
DerArzt@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Cops are great at making any protest violent.
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with cocks
al_Kaholic@lemmynsfw.com 9 hours ago
It’s it wrong to throw rocks when people are shooting you with rubber bullets?
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 8 hours ago
Rocks?
shalafi@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
The guys with Glocks? Agreed.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 9 hours ago
This is an important question. I believe the research in question was defined 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.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
History is written by the victors.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 7 hours ago
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.
itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
We can have a little violence. As a treat!
ragingHungryPanda@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
I don’t want to ask about the chocolate
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
600k protested against the Iraq war in Australia 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?
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
boot licker post
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I have never known a protest to succeed at anything in my life
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Remember when the Nazis surrendered because of all the witty placards people marched with?
antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
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.
nialv7@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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.
Objection@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
Interesting how the paper picks East Timor/Indonesia as a case study but makes no mention of the massacres of the nonviolent 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.
Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 hours ago
‘France’ has entered the chat
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
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.
13igTyme@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
The US population is about 340 million. So we would need 11.9 million to protest.
annie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
bbc link imagine my shock christ what a fucking rag
lordnikon@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
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.
Ougie@lemmy.world 34 minutes ago
Well that’s total bs, in Greece there’s been dozens of non-violent protests far exceeding 3.5% that have failed spectacularly.