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 9 months 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
glitchdx@lemmy.world 9 months ago
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 9 months ago
Square for doubt?!! I was wrong thinking it was cross for doubt?
glitchdx@lemmy.world 9 months ago
idk, it was the first result for “doubt meme” for me.
nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
jj4211@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
ameancow@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
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…
Raiderkev@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Idk, that French deal seemed to work out pretty well.
ameancow@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
wpb@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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 business 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.
underline960@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
What does Chenoweth consider is violent?
Where’s the line where she would classify your movement as violent (and therefore likely to fail)?
wpb@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If I have to be completely honest with you, and this is and indictment of their research, it seems heavily dependent on what the protest is for or against.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Is there a list available?
At this point I’m curious what they consider violent. Straight up military uprising?
yournamehere@lemm.ee 9 months ago
thanks. that was great.
sommerset@thelemmy.club 9 months ago
Bogus unsupported stats
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 9 months ago
George Floyd protests had more than that (closer to 8%) and they didn’t really change anything.
ameancow@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
RandomMouse@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
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.
WraithGear@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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
Amberskin@europe.pub 9 months ago
As a catalan actively involved in the 2012-2017 push for independence, I call bullshit.
sommerset@thelemmy.club 9 months ago
That’s horseshit made up statistics.
jj4211@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
WraithGear@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And that pushing apparently includes activities the report defines as “nonviolent”
RandomMouse@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
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.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
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.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 9 months ago
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.
Gladaed@feddit.org 9 months ago
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.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
Doorbook@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
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 see as a diplomatic out to a movement that is, otherwise, violent, they don’t really work.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
The radical flank effect:
Corn@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Also all their examples of non-violent successes had violent factions demonstrating the alternative.
K1nsey6@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
jj4211@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
Ledivin@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Er… Hong Kong?
Googledotcom@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Hong Kong wasn’t 3.5% of Chinese population
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 9 months ago
“more likely” not “will work”
EldenLord@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
fishos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s a social contract basically: we will be peaceful as long as you allow us to remain peaceful.
EldenLord@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 9 months ago
How many of those were backed by much more powerful foreign powers?
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
threeganzi@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Tell that to Hong Kong demonstrators on June 16, 2019, with 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.
Googledotcom@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Hong Kong wasn’t at or above 3.5% of Chinese population
threeganzi@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I think we’re all aware. And Hong Kong isn’t (wasn’t) China. 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 it’s right to free speech, democracy and autonomy.
ultranaut@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
threeganzi@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
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.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That second part is encouraging.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They didn’t “assert” anything, Mr. high school debate squad, they looked at hundreds of campaigns over the last century and reported results. The study is linked - you’re welcome to critique their methodology after reading it.
OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 9 months ago
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?
RandomMouse@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
Economic tactics. The general strike is more powerful than people seem to realize.
Cattail@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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
mrodri89@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
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.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
[deleted]bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The MSM just fear an orange reprisal. They’re also pandering to the middle of the ground voters.
VampirePenguin@midwest.social 9 months ago
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.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
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.
VampirePenguin@midwest.social 9 months ago
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.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
So how do you keep the police from making it violent?
WraithGear@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Armed protestors
CtrlAltDefeat@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Numbers.
OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 9 months ago
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
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Police like to be more violent the more they’re outnumbered!
drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They are already outnumbered.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 9 months ago
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?
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Name one non-violent protest that changed the material conditions of those protesting, I’ll wait.
Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz 9 months ago
The 1989 East German monday demonstrations.
Klear@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The Velvet Revolution.
AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 9 months ago
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.
Wolf@lemmy.today 9 months ago
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.
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
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.
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Vote harder! Interpretative dance and ask nicely.
That’s how real change happens.And look at this fed (and my answer):
lemmy.world/post/31384291/17679569Could it be they are scared of actual change and started a social media campaign?
Coincidentally also the same message from Bernie the sheepdog.
x.com/BernieSanders/status/1932148252800905415
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.