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The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance

64 points by ozdave 7y ago

baybal2 7y ago
The article says that nonviolent civil resistance is effective But truth is that nonviolent civil resistance is not effective. The few "regimes" that were "toppled" by it never stood in ranks of real regimes, or were at their dying breath. I wish authors of the article ever told that to Ugandans, North Koreans, and after all Chinese. China sees sporadic riots nearly weekly (which are almost never covered by Western press.) I'd say that as a percentage of population, the amount of people who ever raised a hand on policeman/official person and served term should be around 5-7%. That was way higher in eighties when forced sterilisation campaign was at its peak (imagine men having to stand still while a communist pokes his dirty finger into their wives'...)
- fiala__ 7y ago
  Literally the first sentence of the video description: > Between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. You're just saying "No." without providing anything more than an opinion and some anecdotal evidence. You're absolutely right that under many oppressive regimes like China pretty much any kind of protest beside outright civil war is suppressed, but that doesn't defeat the point of the article. Also, saying things like > dirty communist pokes his finger ... really doesn't help you here.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > but that doesn't defeat the point of the article. It does, very much. Read what is my point above. What argument they have against that? Their reasoning is shallow, their data is very meticulously gathered, but is nevertheless massaged, and people behind the report... take a look at their bios and judge yourself. I have a lot of anger for types of people calling for peaceful sit ins when crowds are already being showered by machine gun fire. Those share the blame for people's deaths as much as regimes doing the killing. Doing that is an advocacy for moral frailty.
- tremon 7y ago
  What drivel. Why is "toppling a regime" your only benchmark for measuring success? What is your justification for favouring your own anecdata over the article's statistics? How is "sporadic riots in China" an example of nonviolent resistance, and how does it further your argument?
devoply 7y ago
Nonviolent or violent civil resistance can easily be co-opted by other actors like the CIA or KGB for their own nefarious agendas. Be wary of being pawns for assholes. Transforming your country into a liberal, democratic country requires the fact the country evolved itself into some sort of democracy. Not someone forced that on you through a manufactured war or revolution.
- notahacker 7y ago
  Popular protest is part of the evolution of a country into some sort of democracy, and it's generally much bigger assholes complaining that every popular protest against them is backed by the CIA/KGB/Iran/Saudis/neighbours (even when that claim has a grain of truth to it...)
- chriselles 7y ago
  CIA covertly backed Solidarity with non violent aid. In that specific ring fences example, did anyone outside of the Soviet/Polish regimes have issue with it then or since? Would any/many Poles consider it a mistake or criticise the effort or result?
  - crispinb 7y ago
    Same with Serbia's Otpor! IIRC there was a fair bit of criticism of them within Serbia for taking American (if not CIA?) funding, and who knows whether that specific act was the right decision. But the did get rid of Milosevic, remarkably peacefully given the nature of the regime.
    - chriselles 7y ago
      I had Otpor! Co-founder Srdja Popovic as a lecturer for a Harvard/JFK School course on non violent social change. It was a really interesting opportunity to learn from someone who has actually led non violent social change, rather than just researching/writing about it. A bit like YC compared to other accelerators. Experience doing over talking. Optor’s ‘Laughtivism” Strategy was quite creative and funny. While it was never discussed, I suspect you may be right about Otpor’s sources of funding. It could be disinformation, but it could also be true.
cies 7y ago
Next thing destruction of property is also called violence. Let's think of the abolition of slavery as an example. This was a huge, important change that came about by civil resistance: slave owners were mostly backed by law during the period of resistance. It was not non-violent, especially if destruction of property (e.g. freeing a slave) is counted as an act of violence against the slave owner/ law. I do not believe this change was easier to provoke non-violently and/or non-property-destructively.
- sudoaza 7y ago
  Another case of violent successful resistance is the cuban revolution. My guess is only small changes that can be coopted/incorporated into current system can do so non-violently.
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- tim333 7y ago
  If you are going to count freeing slaves as violent then you have an odd definition of violence.
  - cies 7y ago
    It was "loss of property" by law... It's not my def, it's the def-by-law of those days.
nsoonhui 7y ago
The nonviolent civil resistance is only effective when your opponent is a regime that is beholden to the opinion of its people or of the world. For oppressive opponents who don't actually care very much about human rights, nonviolent resistance is simply ineffective at all.
- taneq 7y ago
  Exactly. Ghandi was very brave, it's true, but his success in India says as much about the British as it does about the power of nonviolence. Try the same stunt against ISIS or North Korea and you'll only achieve being shot out of hand.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    I have a feeling you haven't read much British colonial history. Amritsar? Boer concentration camps? Indian emancipation had nothing to do with British goodness. It had much to do with mass uprisings, clever tactics, and more than a few blown-up railway lines.
    - Veen 7y ago
      The grandfather comment said and implied nothing about British goodness. It was a pragmatic decision.
      - crispinb 7y ago
        I read taneq's (admittedly sketchy) comment as suggesting that the Gandhian part of the Indian independence struggle was effective not because of its nonviolent tactics, but because of the relatively benign nature of British colonial governance.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      Massive exhaustion, inability, and unwillingness to maintain their colonial empire after losing the best part of two generations to European wars had the most to do with it. Unfortunately, we are still dealing with the fallout of Britain's abdication of responsibility.
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skrebbel 7y ago
Sidenote: if you're ever a dictator somewhere, move your capital away from the big population centers. Invent some nutcase reason like "God told me to do it in a dream". Make sure that most inhabitants of your new capital are civil servants, whose livelihoods directly depend on your government's stability. Civil Resistance, violent or not, will be significantly less effective. Eg Naypidaw (Myanmar), Astana / Nur-Sultan[1] (Kazachstan), Brasilia, Islamabad (Pakistan), Ciudad de la Paz (Equatorial Guinea), etc. I'm not sure if there's statistically sufficiently many capitals-in-the-middle-of-nowhere but I bet there's a direct correlation between "capital is also the major population center" and "success rate of uprisings". It even holds for functioning democracies. I don't think the "yellow vests" people in Paris would've had a similar impact in Australia, where the government is comfortably far away from Where People Live. [1] Woa check the new name! It's like renaming Washington DC to "Donald". [2] [2] EDIT: Omg I just realized that George Washington did exactly that. Some ego! I had always assumed that it had been founded/named long after Washington was dead, but nothing like that was the case. It's really the "Trump Hotel" of cities.
- baybal2 7y ago
  [1] Checked it, writing from there, and probably will be for few more months. Been selling widgets to rapid transit company there. Can't wait to go back to China, but it seems that there is a new local client on the horizon =(
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    Wow, what was the popular response to the name change? China can't stay behind now, can they? Can't wait for Beijing to be renamed to Jinping.
    - baybal2 7y ago
      > what was the popular response to the name change? There was a ~15-20 people scuffle few weeks later, and 1 day without Internet. Nothing though on the day of the renaming. Locals more or less grew apathetic to the idea of ruling elites being a joke over last 30 years. Some I'd say even like it that way, saying that "Imagine our joke president for life would've been a proper dictator, like somebody as sharp as that Paul Kagami dude, no, things are better this way"
cf141q5325 7y ago
A while back I read "The failure of non violence" by Peter Gelderloos on the topic who argued for the opposite. Not an academic work but I found it interesting to read about a different point of view.
- clydethefrog 7y ago
  See also The Great Leveler by Scheidel: "Deep and long-lasting levelling of both the absolute and relative degree of income and wealth inequality has found its place primarily in conjunction with the ‘Four Horsemen’ of levelling: namely, mass mobilisation warfare; transformative revolutions (such as communism); state collapse; and plague and pandemic episodes" https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/02/23/book-review-the-great-leveler-violence-and-the-history-of-inequality-from-the-stone-age-to-the-twenty-first-century-by-walter-scheidel/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/02/23/book-rev...
- brlewis 7y ago
  I skimmed the first 6 pages here: https://web.stanford.edu/group/peacejustice/Gelderloos-Failure-of-Nonviolence.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/peacejustice/Gelderloos-Failu... It seems he's arguing that a diversity of tactics is more effective than nonviolence alone. Chenoweth's methodology if I understand correctly was to divide a lot of civil resistance campaigns into violent and nonviolent, and compare the success of the two groupings. It's possible that they're both right, that a diversity of tactics wins, but is more likely to win when that diversity is skewed toward nonviolence.
jcims 7y ago
This seems incomplete. Humans and most animals tend to naturally resist along a spectrum (sometimes referred to as the force continuum), and for most that spectrum will include violence at the extreme end. Nonviolent civil resistance scales tends to scale more quickly because there is less at stake for the individual participants under most circumstances. But it's still resistance, and still an indicator that some percentage of the populace has less tolerance for provocation before things begin to turn violent. That's where i think at least some of the effectiveness of the nonviolent approach comes from...the threat of a lot more people turning violent. About the only thing I would take away from this is that if I want to organize resistance, it might be more effective to spend time marketing it and scaling horizontally first than to flame out on a skirmish and scare possible supporters off. Once the tribe starts to grow, however, it becomes much easier to turn up the heat when necessary. Also, no tiki torches.
chriselles 7y ago
Solidarity in Poland would be an outstanding example of successful non violent civil resistance that was a catalyst for a cascade of largely(but not entirely) non violent revolutions across Eastern Europe and Russia between 89-91. It is also a successful example of external non-violent support as the CIA provided strictly non violent support in the form of cash, communication, printing, and copying equipment and supplies. Largely shipped covertly via Swedish maritime cargo and other means. The key learning point, especially for governments interested in interfering in the affairs of other countries, is that it requires a committed and motivated existing and self sustaining organisation. In the case of Solidarity/Poland, CIA simply provided some additional momentum to what already existed. Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan also provides considerable moral support and political capital to put the spotlight on the existent Solidarity. Not only are non violent movements twice as successful(on average) than violent revolutions, but they are also more sustainable/resilient. There was an excellent course run out of Harvard JFK School called “Leading Non-Violent Movements for Social Change”. It was led by Srdja Popovic, founder of Otpor! that helped remove Milosevic fro. Power in Serbia. Check out CANVAS: https://canvasopedia.org/ https://canvasopedia.org/ Great free resources.
- jcora 7y ago
  > Not only are non violent movements twice as successful(on average) This is a meaningless comparison because they aim at entirely different things. The French revolution was different than the fall of communism. Funny enough, the October revolution was also largely a non-violent event, with just a few casualties. The ensuing Civil War, however...
  - chriselles 7y ago
    It is a perfectly meaningful comparison. A domestic, intrinsically motivated movement, supported externally with non violent diplomatic, financial, and moral aid, acted as a catalyst to the largely non violent removal of many authoritarian repressive regimes. All of which have largely avoided civil war with the exception of Ukraine due to a resurgent Russia responding to excessive NATO expansion. Former Yugoslavia doesn’t count as it excluded itself from the Soviet Warsaw Pact sphere Nd attempted non alignment.
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cf141q5325 7y ago
The statement about the successrate is based on the following database >To these ends, we constructed the Nonviolent andViolent Conºict Outcomes (NAVCO) data set, which includes aggregate dataon 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006.35 >The NAVCO data set contains a sample of resistance campaigns based on consensus data ofscholars of both violent and nonviolent conºict. Resistance campaigns include campaigns for do-mestic regime change, against foreign occupations, or for secession or self-determination. Omittedfrom the data set are major social and economic campaigns, such as the civil rights movement andthe populist movement in the United States. To gain inclusion into the NAVCO data set, the cam-paign must have a major and disruptive political objective, such as the ending of a current politicalregime, a foreign occupation, or secession. About ten campaigns (four nonviolent and six violent)did not ªt into any of these categories but were nevertheless included in the data set. The codingscheme assumes that each campaign has a uniªed goal, but most campaigns have multiple fac-tions. The dynamics created by these circumstances will be further explored in a later study https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/file... https://www.du.edu/korbel/sie/research/chenow_navco_data.html https://www.du.edu/korbel/sie/research/chenow_navco_data.htm...
- Joeboy 7y ago
  So it seems like you need some proprietary thing called Stata 11 to see the data. I think I'm just going to continue being profoundly sceptical.
  - danso 7y ago
    Stata is a pretty entrenched tool (never figured out myself what past colleagues got from using it, other than it was just what they had been trained on), but luckily there are software libraries that make it easy to import and then export to something else, such as R's `foreign`: https://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html https://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html
  - dagw 7y ago
    In addition to the R reader already mentioned, Pandas (python) can also read Stata out of the box.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
I read it best put in the book "Blueprint for Revolution" (which, believe it or not, was mentioned in Adam Grants' "Originals"). Long to short, Popovic wrote: nonviolence is more successful because it casts a wider / deeper net. Adding violence to your tactic severely reduces the number who will embrace and participate in your change movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint_for_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint_for_Revolution
- tokai 7y ago
  A black bloc uncle old me once, that in political struggle you need a militant and a civil/political branch. With as little direct connection between the two as possible. One of his reasons was the one you pointed out. The other that the persons that participates in violent struggle, are a bad fit for dialogue and building something lasting up afterwards.
bjourne 7y ago
This is probably the reason why the Israeli state is so fearful of the BDS movement. Violent resistance is easy to quell, but reduced trade due to the boycott is harder to do something about. It is also hard to motivate how people exercising their right to not purchase goods for ethical reasons are acting in bad faith. I believe that is how South Africa's Apartheid system was brought down. The ANC actually engaged in terrorism - but that wasn't what ended the system - it was the global economic boycott.
hprotagonist 7y ago
We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
challenger22 7y ago
History class in U.S. high schools greatly emphasize the success of nonviolent protest, and it was surprising to me that they actually are twice as effective. I had recently come to the conclusion that this history lesson was mostly an intended plan to indoctrinate people away from tendencies to perform violent protest; it is nice to see that it is actually measureably correct.
Theodores 7y ago
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War So you can have a 'violent' movement that does not get round to using violence. The movement can be effective enough to not need to fire a single shot. Because of this it is a bit silly to compare and categorise non-violent vs. violent resistance. If you read The Art Of War then the keep the powder dry idea is quite key to winning. Timing and leadership matters more. How many 'leaderless' movements, e.g. Extinction Rebellion, Occupy Wall Street etc. have got anywhere? Precisely zero. Modern day capitalism demands war and terrorism. It is all part of the illusion. Over the centuries UK/US interests have got to be good at it. The terrorism meme invariably gets rolled out but no genuine resistance movements ever use terror tactics. It is a sure way to lose popular support. The distinction between sabotage and terrorism isn't widely appreciated. So although 'burning down the parliament building' might be a perfectly valid act of sabotage it will always be an act of terror in the media whether it is Guy Fawkes or Hitler doing it. I would be more interested in knowing what resistance movements succeeded based on their counter surveillance skills. If a movement has a non English language and other culture that is hard for spies to learn then success is much more likely.
tuxxy 7y ago
These kinds of articles are always odd to me. Movements don't occur in vacuums where one tactic is explicitly used by the participants. The civil rights movement also had many acts of violent resistance with it. Trying to claim that any single tactic is more effective is simply not valuable because there will _never_ be a single tactic in use. All this serves as academic masturbation on what tactics have been best used in the past. By all means, keep speculating what is the best way to enact change, but be aware that your academic theories aren't going to matter much to people who are actively being oppressed. Direct action gets the goods.

64 points by ozdave 7y ago

The article says that nonviolent civil resistance is effective But truth is that nonviolent civil resistance is not effective. The few "regimes" that were "toppled" by it never stood in ranks of real regimes, or were at their dying breath. I wish authors of the article ever told that to Ugandans, North Koreans, and after all Chinese. China sees sporadic riots nearly weekly (which are almost never covered by Western press.) I'd say that as a percentage of population, the amount of people who ever raised a hand on policeman/official person and served term should be around 5-7%. That was way higher in eighties when forced sterilisation campaign was at its peak (imagine men having to stand still while a communist pokes his dirty finger into their wives'...)

fiala__ 7y ago
Literally the first sentence of the video description: > Between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. You're just saying "No." without providing anything more than an opinion and some anecdotal evidence. You're absolutely right that under many oppressive regimes like China pretty much any kind of protest beside outright civil war is suppressed, but that doesn't defeat the point of the article. Also, saying things like > dirty communist pokes his finger ... really doesn't help you here.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > but that doesn't defeat the point of the article. It does, very much. Read what is my point above. What argument they have against that? Their reasoning is shallow, their data is very meticulously gathered, but is nevertheless massaged, and people behind the report... take a look at their bios and judge yourself. I have a lot of anger for types of people calling for peaceful sit ins when crowds are already being showered by machine gun fire. Those share the blame for people's deaths as much as regimes doing the killing. Doing that is an advocacy for moral frailty.
tremon 7y ago
What drivel. Why is "toppling a regime" your only benchmark for measuring success? What is your justification for favouring your own anecdata over the article's statistics? How is "sporadic riots in China" an example of nonviolent resistance, and how does it further your argument?

devoply 7y ago

Nonviolent or violent civil resistance can easily be co-opted by other actors like the CIA or KGB for their own nefarious agendas. Be wary of being pawns for assholes. Transforming your country into a liberal, democratic country requires the fact the country evolved itself into some sort of democracy. Not someone forced that on you through a manufactured war or revolution.

notahacker 7y ago
Popular protest is part of the evolution of a country into some sort of democracy, and it's generally much bigger assholes complaining that every popular protest against them is backed by the CIA/KGB/Iran/Saudis/neighbours (even when that claim has a grain of truth to it...)
chriselles 7y ago
CIA covertly backed Solidarity with non violent aid. In that specific ring fences example, did anyone outside of the Soviet/Polish regimes have issue with it then or since? Would any/many Poles consider it a mistake or criticise the effort or result?
- crispinb 7y ago
  Same with Serbia's Otpor! IIRC there was a fair bit of criticism of them within Serbia for taking American (if not CIA?) funding, and who knows whether that specific act was the right decision. But the did get rid of Milosevic, remarkably peacefully given the nature of the regime.
  - chriselles 7y ago
    I had Otpor! Co-founder Srdja Popovic as a lecturer for a Harvard/JFK School course on non violent social change. It was a really interesting opportunity to learn from someone who has actually led non violent social change, rather than just researching/writing about it. A bit like YC compared to other accelerators. Experience doing over talking. Optor’s ‘Laughtivism” Strategy was quite creative and funny. While it was never discussed, I suspect you may be right about Otpor’s sources of funding. It could be disinformation, but it could also be true.

cies 7y ago

Next thing destruction of property is also called violence. Let's think of the abolition of slavery as an example. This was a huge, important change that came about by civil resistance: slave owners were mostly backed by law during the period of resistance. It was not non-violent, especially if destruction of property (e.g. freeing a slave) is counted as an act of violence against the slave owner/ law. I do not believe this change was easier to provoke non-violently and/or non-property-destructively.

sudoaza 7y ago
Another case of violent successful resistance is the cuban revolution. My guess is only small changes that can be coopted/incorporated into current system can do so non-violently.
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tim333 7y ago
If you are going to count freeing slaves as violent then you have an odd definition of violence.
- cies 7y ago
  It was "loss of property" by law... It's not my def, it's the def-by-law of those days.

nsoonhui 7y ago

The nonviolent civil resistance is only effective when your opponent is a regime that is beholden to the opinion of its people or of the world. For oppressive opponents who don't actually care very much about human rights, nonviolent resistance is simply ineffective at all.

taneq 7y ago
Exactly. Ghandi was very brave, it's true, but his success in India says as much about the British as it does about the power of nonviolence. Try the same stunt against ISIS or North Korea and you'll only achieve being shot out of hand.
- crispinb 7y ago
  I have a feeling you haven't read much British colonial history. Amritsar? Boer concentration camps? Indian emancipation had nothing to do with British goodness. It had much to do with mass uprisings, clever tactics, and more than a few blown-up railway lines.
  - Veen 7y ago
    The grandfather comment said and implied nothing about British goodness. It was a pragmatic decision.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      I read taneq's (admittedly sketchy) comment as suggesting that the Gandhian part of the Indian independence struggle was effective not because of its nonviolent tactics, but because of the relatively benign nature of British colonial governance.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    Massive exhaustion, inability, and unwillingness to maintain their colonial empire after losing the best part of two generations to European wars had the most to do with it. Unfortunately, we are still dealing with the fallout of Britain's abdication of responsibility.

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skrebbel 7y ago

Sidenote: if you're ever a dictator somewhere, move your capital away from the big population centers. Invent some nutcase reason like "God told me to do it in a dream". Make sure that most inhabitants of your new capital are civil servants, whose livelihoods directly depend on your government's stability. Civil Resistance, violent or not, will be significantly less effective. Eg Naypidaw (Myanmar), Astana / Nur-Sultan[1] (Kazachstan), Brasilia, Islamabad (Pakistan), Ciudad de la Paz (Equatorial Guinea), etc. I'm not sure if there's statistically sufficiently many capitals-in-the-middle-of-nowhere but I bet there's a direct correlation between "capital is also the major population center" and "success rate of uprisings". It even holds for functioning democracies. I don't think the "yellow vests" people in Paris would've had a similar impact in Australia, where the government is comfortably far away from Where People Live. [1] Woa check the new name! It's like renaming Washington DC to "Donald". [2] [2] EDIT: Omg I just realized that George Washington did exactly that. Some ego! I had always assumed that it had been founded/named long after Washington was dead, but nothing like that was the case. It's really the "Trump Hotel" of cities.

baybal2 7y ago
[1] Checked it, writing from there, and probably will be for few more months. Been selling widgets to rapid transit company there. Can't wait to go back to China, but it seems that there is a new local client on the horizon =(
- skrebbel 7y ago
  Wow, what was the popular response to the name change? China can't stay behind now, can they? Can't wait for Beijing to be renamed to Jinping.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > what was the popular response to the name change? There was a ~15-20 people scuffle few weeks later, and 1 day without Internet. Nothing though on the day of the renaming. Locals more or less grew apathetic to the idea of ruling elites being a joke over last 30 years. Some I'd say even like it that way, saying that "Imagine our joke president for life would've been a proper dictator, like somebody as sharp as that Paul Kagami dude, no, things are better this way"

cf141q5325 7y ago

A while back I read "The failure of non violence" by Peter Gelderloos on the topic who argued for the opposite. Not an academic work but I found it interesting to read about a different point of view.

clydethefrog 7y ago
See also The Great Leveler by Scheidel: "Deep and long-lasting levelling of both the absolute and relative degree of income and wealth inequality has found its place primarily in conjunction with the ‘Four Horsemen’ of levelling: namely, mass mobilisation warfare; transformative revolutions (such as communism); state collapse; and plague and pandemic episodes" https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/02/23/book-review-the-great-leveler-violence-and-the-history-of-inequality-from-the-stone-age-to-the-twenty-first-century-by-walter-scheidel/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/02/23/book-rev...
brlewis 7y ago
I skimmed the first 6 pages here: https://web.stanford.edu/group/peacejustice/Gelderloos-Failure-of-Nonviolence.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/peacejustice/Gelderloos-Failu... It seems he's arguing that a diversity of tactics is more effective than nonviolence alone. Chenoweth's methodology if I understand correctly was to divide a lot of civil resistance campaigns into violent and nonviolent, and compare the success of the two groupings. It's possible that they're both right, that a diversity of tactics wins, but is more likely to win when that diversity is skewed toward nonviolence.

jcims 7y ago

This seems incomplete. Humans and most animals tend to naturally resist along a spectrum (sometimes referred to as the force continuum), and for most that spectrum will include violence at the extreme end. Nonviolent civil resistance scales tends to scale more quickly because there is less at stake for the individual participants under most circumstances. But it's still resistance, and still an indicator that some percentage of the populace has less tolerance for provocation before things begin to turn violent. That's where i think at least some of the effectiveness of the nonviolent approach comes from...the threat of a lot more people turning violent. About the only thing I would take away from this is that if I want to organize resistance, it might be more effective to spend time marketing it and scaling horizontally first than to flame out on a skirmish and scare possible supporters off. Once the tribe starts to grow, however, it becomes much easier to turn up the heat when necessary. Also, no tiki torches.

chriselles 7y ago

Solidarity in Poland would be an outstanding example of successful non violent civil resistance that was a catalyst for a cascade of largely(but not entirely) non violent revolutions across Eastern Europe and Russia between 89-91. It is also a successful example of external non-violent support as the CIA provided strictly non violent support in the form of cash, communication, printing, and copying equipment and supplies. Largely shipped covertly via Swedish maritime cargo and other means. The key learning point, especially for governments interested in interfering in the affairs of other countries, is that it requires a committed and motivated existing and self sustaining organisation. In the case of Solidarity/Poland, CIA simply provided some additional momentum to what already existed. Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan also provides considerable moral support and political capital to put the spotlight on the existent Solidarity. Not only are non violent movements twice as successful(on average) than violent revolutions, but they are also more sustainable/resilient. There was an excellent course run out of Harvard JFK School called “Leading Non-Violent Movements for Social Change”. It was led by Srdja Popovic, founder of Otpor! that helped remove Milosevic fro. Power in Serbia. Check out CANVAS: https://canvasopedia.org/ https://canvasopedia.org/ Great free resources.

jcora 7y ago
> Not only are non violent movements twice as successful(on average) This is a meaningless comparison because they aim at entirely different things. The French revolution was different than the fall of communism. Funny enough, the October revolution was also largely a non-violent event, with just a few casualties. The ensuing Civil War, however...
- chriselles 7y ago
  It is a perfectly meaningful comparison. A domestic, intrinsically motivated movement, supported externally with non violent diplomatic, financial, and moral aid, acted as a catalyst to the largely non violent removal of many authoritarian repressive regimes. All of which have largely avoided civil war with the exception of Ukraine due to a resurgent Russia responding to excessive NATO expansion. Former Yugoslavia doesn’t count as it excluded itself from the Soviet Warsaw Pact sphere Nd attempted non alignment.

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cf141q5325 7y ago

The statement about the successrate is based on the following database >To these ends, we constructed the Nonviolent andViolent Conºict Outcomes (NAVCO) data set, which includes aggregate dataon 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006.35 >The NAVCO data set contains a sample of resistance campaigns based on consensus data ofscholars of both violent and nonviolent conºict. Resistance campaigns include campaigns for do-mestic regime change, against foreign occupations, or for secession or self-determination. Omittedfrom the data set are major social and economic campaigns, such as the civil rights movement andthe populist movement in the United States. To gain inclusion into the NAVCO data set, the cam-paign must have a major and disruptive political objective, such as the ending of a current politicalregime, a foreign occupation, or secession. About ten campaigns (four nonviolent and six violent)did not ªt into any of these categories but were nevertheless included in the data set. The codingscheme assumes that each campaign has a uniªed goal, but most campaigns have multiple fac-tions. The dynamics created by these circumstances will be further explored in a later study https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/file... https://www.du.edu/korbel/sie/research/chenow_navco_data.html https://www.du.edu/korbel/sie/research/chenow_navco_data.htm...

Joeboy 7y ago
So it seems like you need some proprietary thing called Stata 11 to see the data. I think I'm just going to continue being profoundly sceptical.
- danso 7y ago
  Stata is a pretty entrenched tool (never figured out myself what past colleagues got from using it, other than it was just what they had been trained on), but luckily there are software libraries that make it easy to import and then export to something else, such as R's `foreign`: https://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html https://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html
- dagw 7y ago
  In addition to the R reader already mentioned, Pandas (python) can also read Stata out of the box.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

I read it best put in the book "Blueprint for Revolution" (which, believe it or not, was mentioned in Adam Grants' "Originals"). Long to short, Popovic wrote: nonviolence is more successful because it casts a wider / deeper net. Adding violence to your tactic severely reduces the number who will embrace and participate in your change movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint_for_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint_for_Revolution

tokai 7y ago
A black bloc uncle old me once, that in political struggle you need a militant and a civil/political branch. With as little direct connection between the two as possible. One of his reasons was the one you pointed out. The other that the persons that participates in violent struggle, are a bad fit for dialogue and building something lasting up afterwards.

bjourne 7y ago

This is probably the reason why the Israeli state is so fearful of the BDS movement. Violent resistance is easy to quell, but reduced trade due to the boycott is harder to do something about. It is also hard to motivate how people exercising their right to not purchase goods for ethical reasons are acting in bad faith. I believe that is how South Africa's Apartheid system was brought down. The ANC actually engaged in terrorism - but that wasn't what ended the system - it was the global economic boycott.

hprotagonist 7y ago

We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

challenger22 7y ago

History class in U.S. high schools greatly emphasize the success of nonviolent protest, and it was surprising to me that they actually are twice as effective. I had recently come to the conclusion that this history lesson was mostly an intended plan to indoctrinate people away from tendencies to perform violent protest; it is nice to see that it is actually measureably correct.

Theodores 7y ago

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War So you can have a 'violent' movement that does not get round to using violence. The movement can be effective enough to not need to fire a single shot. Because of this it is a bit silly to compare and categorise non-violent vs. violent resistance. If you read The Art Of War then the keep the powder dry idea is quite key to winning. Timing and leadership matters more. How many 'leaderless' movements, e.g. Extinction Rebellion, Occupy Wall Street etc. have got anywhere? Precisely zero. Modern day capitalism demands war and terrorism. It is all part of the illusion. Over the centuries UK/US interests have got to be good at it. The terrorism meme invariably gets rolled out but no genuine resistance movements ever use terror tactics. It is a sure way to lose popular support. The distinction between sabotage and terrorism isn't widely appreciated. So although 'burning down the parliament building' might be a perfectly valid act of sabotage it will always be an act of terror in the media whether it is Guy Fawkes or Hitler doing it. I would be more interested in knowing what resistance movements succeeded based on their counter surveillance skills. If a movement has a non English language and other culture that is hard for spies to learn then success is much more likely.

tuxxy 7y ago

These kinds of articles are always odd to me. Movements don't occur in vacuums where one tactic is explicitly used by the participants. The civil rights movement also had many acts of violent resistance with it. Trying to claim that any single tactic is more effective is simply not valuable because there will _never_ be a single tactic in use. All this serves as academic masturbation on what tactics have been best used in the past. By all means, keep speculating what is the best way to enact change, but be aware that your academic theories aren't going to matter much to people who are actively being oppressed. Direct action gets the goods.