Erica Chenoweth initially thought that only violent protests were effective. However after analyzing 323 movements the results were opposite of what Erica thought:
For the next two years, Chenoweth and Stephan collected data on all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacity, and more. The results turned her earlier paradigm on its head — in the aggregate, nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change.
If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.
If nonviolence gets you want you want, you don’t resort to violence in the first place. Did the author account for this and consider whether resistance categorized as violent began as nonviolent?
Every US protest which involved violence that I have looked into except one started peaceful and only became violent because of police starting the violence, provoking protestors to defend themselves by forcing them into dangerous situations, or police overreacting to instigators and agitators.
The only one where the protestors were the ones who instigated violence that I have come across was the Jan 6th insurrection. There could be more, but that is the only one I have found.
Of course civil resistance that doesn’t end up with violence will be more successful. It is a lot harder to demonize protestors who didn’t have to defend their lives when you can’t pretend they were the violent ones.
The survivorship bias is highlighted in the summary:
all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow
Meaning all unsuccessful campaigns were not considered.
And unless they have very good parameters there have to be countless non-violent and ineffective campaigns.
If you did this as a ratio of failures over success the non-violent numbers would be sky high compared to the violent ones, the rate of failure would indicate violence is the way.
This whole thing seems like a really wordy way of saying “don’t resist”.
Also, civil resistance historically only works because there were people sitting there saying “well yeah THEY’RE nonviolent, but if we don’t get our change soon…”
The conclusions are more nuanced than the headlines. Her data shows that violent and non-violent methods often work in tandem. It tends to be different factions of the same movement using different methods, and they tend not to like each other. The more violent faction says the peaceful faction is naive, while the peaceful faction finds violent methods unconscionable.
More people will tend to join the peaceful faction, perhaps because it’s easier to join the side that isn’t asking morally gray things of them. However, the violent side plays a more direct role in undermining the system of oppression.
yeah, there has to be an “…or else” component
This is about what I expected of a study like this.
So… Saw Gerrera versus the Rebel Alliance.
The rebels were just better functioning and more democratic. Saw was an idealistic lunatic. The rebels were idealistic prgamatists, mostly.
I dunno Count Dooku was kinda cooking until the states theocratic gestapo stopped him
Eh, it’s a fun meme, but the whole thing was Palps playing both sides. Even Dooku was just a patsy in the end.
Now, Mon Mothma did go on to setup the New Republic in both canon and Legends. Neither version really worked out. Say what you will about Saw Gerrera, but he did recognize that the Republic wouldn’t have fallen if it governed well in the first place, and going back to that was a mistake.
That’s cool n shit, but I’m for hanging tyrants by the balls.
I would ask her to correlate them with existence of violent movements alongside.
The MLK-Malcolm X dichotomy
In short, the presence of a militant option alongside your nonviolent option is quite useful in compelling the opposition to your side because the other option is the militant one.
No one’s ever gotten rid of their oppressors by asking nicely.
no but sometimes by blockading streets. America’s understanding of nonviolence is poisoned
Laughable methodology, painfully transparent motive. This is propaganda.
Sometimes violence can be necessary to start. But anything won or held by violence will also be lost by violence. Only that which is held through peace and understanding will ever be secure.
Every country in the world was started with violence and has been held with the threat of violence, your statement is a pretty nothing.
not the czech republic or singapore
the czech republic has over 40 thousand police officers and singapore routinely executes drug dealers
So while it may be technically true in that no actual violence was involved in the latest changes of government system, the threat of violence is always there
Is that why they all imagine external threats to justify their militaries at the cost of the people? Much secure, very safe. Lol you’ve said nothing to disprove my point.
What country has ever been won through peace?
New Zealand is about as close as it gets, but even they broke out in to war after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi
Countries are problematic artificial constructions. That historically have almost always turned against those they govern when the alternative becomes inconvenient. Who ever implied that having a county was a goal or condition of winning? You’re thinking at the wrong level.
Unless you are taking over the entire world (through peace somehow), countries are what we have. Honestly doesn’t really matter the name. Call it what you like but the concept is going to exist.
How are you going to keep other groups from just conquering you?
If I’m not understanding, can you explain what level I’m supposed to be thinking at? Is this some sort of anarchy thing where everyone exists as their own tiny little sovereign homestead?
No one should want to take over the world Etc. Everyone should leave everyone to live their lives. Just because we’re peaceful doesn’t mean we’re not armed. We just don’t use the bullets against our neighbors. We reserve them for tankies and fashies with boners for world domination. That’s how you keep other groups from conquering you.
This isn’t rocket surgery it’s basic Anarchy. And it’s really sad how so many replies to my comment just completely lack any self-awareness or irony.
Let me ask you this. Where you live are there any national elected political parties that aren’t largely an embarrassment. That can be expected to do things that benefit yourself and other people over enriching themselves and their friends? Have you never stopped to ask why it’s always that way?
We reserve them for tankies and fashies with boners for world domination.
Our neighbors are literally the fashies right now. They’re dismantling our government as we speak. We’re literally being conquered.
You said violence isn’t ‘secure’ but then said you need violence to protect yourself from tankies and fascists, unless they’re already in your country I guess?
I’m just not following. And I’m not sure how your last statements relate to the idea of ‘nothing won by violence is secure’? How is the embarrassment that is the Democrats related to fighting back against tyranny with violence if necessary? If anything Democrats are the argument that peaceful methods are failing, not an argument that violence will gain us nothing.
And lol @ “artificial constructions” literally every single human creation is an artificial construction
“Countries are problematic” lol be serious
…all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions.
323, in over 100 years. And they are exuding campaigns that did not work? I would assume there have been 10s of thousands of protests in that time that where non-violent and also ineffective. Why are they not included? What would make a campaign go from non-violent to violent? What constitutes a campaign, is it non-violent in whole or only part? I would check but I need to buy their book.
I can not even think of any movement that resulted in territorial or government change that did not involve some form of violence. This study does not seem to pass the sniff test.
Yeah honestly, if you’re only looking at the campaigns that led to overthrow of the government or territorial liberation then it should be somewhat self evident that nonviolent campaigns have better outcomes. They lead to less death and less destruction of infrastructure which is desirable for whatever comes next. Unfortunately, that’s not always an option for people seeking liberation.
And wildly dishonest to try and spin every campaign as having some choice on whether or not to deploy violence. To top it off, the flat out writing off of all unsuccessful non-violent campaigns as if they don’t matter (even though most failed campaigns of these types result in people in cells regardless of if violence was employed or not)
I’m trying to find the data around the “data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables” and am not finding it. Closest I find is the excerpt from their book here https://muse.jhu.edu/article/760088 which tells a rather mixed story.
I understand this was posted within the context of ongoing events in LA. Of note in the research being shared here is the goal of “overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation” which I think is a very different scope. However, I would encourage reading their latest peer reviewed paper here which I believe does a better job of scoping the LA protests.
Of note is that it addresses the consistent conflating of “violent armed overthrow of the state” with “throwing rocks after getting shot at”.
What about this kind of protest?
He isn’t hurting anyone but himself.
Utter bullshit methodology. Reference: Benjamin Case, “Street Rebellions” (2022). Goes through the entire dataset of Chenoweth tangle of garbage. Case shows that every case of ‘civil resistance’ involved ‘non-violence’ of the order of UNARMED riots with punches, rocks, and fires were involved. So indeed, civil resistance with non-violent marches, barricades, punches, rocks, and fires have contributed social progress change of decomposing mass-murder militarists governments. Slinging such desctructive false claims is likely to be effective at de-mobilizing people confused about acceptability of burning down unoccupied parts of a genocide and pollution funding bank and military station (cop station), for example, and to have very serious consequences against authors of that sort of garbage. Another problem about Chenoweth’s methodology: they pretend intention of protesters of replacing a military hierarchist, heritage-based, fiction-book-based, racist pigs regime (asristocratic, ‘demo’-oligarchic, duopolist) with another regime of the same type of garbage with another shuffle of names and addresses. Even a cursory review of literature and interviews with real protesters has shown a lot of demand for flat local networks run by local competent persons, usually referred to under contested name space of words like anarchism, direct democracy, co-operative societies, etc.
They produce change but only incremental, impotent change that just temporarily assuages the protestor back into submission while fueling a false sense of accomplishment.
Its gonna happen again in the US and they will vote in more neoliberal shills while thinking they’ve won.
Violent change produces violent leaders.
Violence is a tool. It is neither inherently good nor bad. It is how that violence is used and perpetrated and the context around why it was employed is where the heart of the matter lies.
Someone who is violent against Nazis or those of equivalent ideology in self defense? Absolutely and unequivocally justifiable.
Someone employing state violence to detain civilians because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line? Absolutely unjustifiable and deserves to be stopped, even if it means employing violence in self/community defense.
You cant have violent change and then milquetoast leader. Violent suppression of Nazis has to continue for many years until things can be stabilized
A) prove it
B) violence against bad people is good actually
A) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2452292924000365
B) violence against bad people is sometimes necessary to stop them from hurting others. But it’s not “good”. If you could put all fascists in jail in a single moment with no violence, that act isn’t made better by adding violence. Therefore it’s not a good.
Lol you clearly posted the first study you could find that sounded like it agreed with you without bothering to read it, this does fuck all to support your claim.
Stopping bad people from causing harm is good. Harming them stops them from causing harm. Harming them is good. The only reason you are this committed to pretending otherwise is because you are hopelessly propagandized and far too stupid to critically examine your own beliefs.
And lol @ “If you could put all fascists in jail in a single moment with no violence”, you couldn’t ever do that, the only solution to fascism that has ever worked is violence and unless you’re completely historically illiterate you already know it.
The fourth element is especially important now. Don’t engage on the playing field Trump set up on what is plain to see is a setup to authorize martial law powers for himself.
But it also means don’t let government drive the conversation in media either. Keep standing up and keep the message clear that this is a stand against tyranny and let Trump and his admin flail, grasp at straws and reach for the Project2025 book of excuses. They look weak and unconvincing against the resolve of the peaceful resistance movement.
Based on the cases you have studied, what are the key elements necessary for a successful nonviolent campaign?
CHENOWETH: I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that’s sustained.
The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with — and reaction to — the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that’s a decisive factor.
The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.
The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed — which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes — they don’t either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.
Okay but also the second element is huge and we’re not doing that yet
Look at all the criticism from Lemmings and Redditors when an upper class member is trying to side with the movement by spending their money in print media to get the “No Kings” message out. That appears to be in a step in line with that second point but some that support the cause are in opposition to these actions.
Good thing unions peacefully protested for a 5 day work week and 8 hour days
Sure, when reality is sane. Not with Shitler at the helm.
Burn them all
The insane knuckledraggers currently in charge do not understand the concept of “peace”.
