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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 o
by 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 agoExactly. 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 agoI 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 agoThe grandfather comment said and implied nothing about British goodness. It was a pragmatic decision.
- crispinb 7y agoI 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 agoMassive 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.
- taneq 7y agoI'm not saying they were great, and definitely on an organisational level they did some evil things. But on an individual level, shooting an unarmed person in the face in cold blood generally just wasn't done in the same way as it would have been in some other regimes.
- Super_Jambo 7y agoTo think Indian independence came about with no threat of violence seems like a whitewashing of history. The British state chose to deal with the non-violent. But would they have bothered without the fear of violence?
- tim333 7y agoThe Brits gave up most of their colonies so probably. Though it was after being knocked back by a lot of real violence in WW2.
- quetzthecoatl 7y agowhere do people get the idea that british were nice in India? They killed millions in WW2 famines alone (to fund the war campaign). The reprisals after 1857 mutiny is said to have killed 10 million Indians. Right there from two incidents you have 15 million deaths. British were much more save than the Nazis when it comes to genocide of "others", colonization, savagery etc. They get a free pass in the west as opposed to the Nazis simply because British killed Asians, Africans and Native Americans when Nazis killed fellow whites. This is pure racism.
- _khau 7y agoAs a Brit, I can confirm that there is a large section of our population that thinks the empire was a positive thing and pines for a return to it. Even the 'white man's burden' is viewed by many as a necessary endeavour. It's the number one criticism I have of my own country (and I have many). It's nationalist propaganda that panders to exceptionalism and it seems to have worked on half of the electorate unfortunately.
- brigandish 7y agoI would say a large section of our population want to go back to a certain style of governance that they believe (true or not) was around during the empire, that of strong economic liberalism and free trade with the rest of the world. I'd say it's one of the big philosophical differences with the EU (its protectionism is its main defining characteristic, after all) that has led to the Brexit vote. The number of people who want the empire back though, I reckon you could count those on one hand.
- Doubl 7y agoEurope has not given itself a free pass when it comes to colonialism. For example, at the moment they're hiding a bell in Cambridge University lest it turns out to have formerly been used on a slave plantation. There was no government organised genocide in British colonial history that I know of, not even in Ireland in the 17th century where arguably the worst atrocities were carried out. Saying Britain killed millions in India in WW2 is complete hyperbole.
- watwut 7y agoThere was more then Ghandi and non violence affecting politics back then. He was not the only player over there and there were violent people seeking in dependence too.
- taneq 7y agoYeah, I wasn't saying that Ghandi did it alone or that the British were squeaky clean. In other situations against other adversaries, though, his approach would have just got him instantly shot. The fact that this never happened shows the general character of the British that he faced.
- tim333 7y agoGhandi was quite shrewd as to what he could get away with. He started protesting in South Africa in 1893 when they were probably not terribly nice to non whites. Gene Sharp who pioneered studying non violent resistance wrote a book about it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_as_a_Political_Strategist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_as_a_Political_Strategi...
- crispinb 7y agoAs she explains in the video, that was Erica Chenoweth's a priori guess too, before looking at the data. Her study, looking at all the available data from every resistance movement involving more than 1000 people since 1900, apparently suggests otherwise. Non-empirical 'commonsense' guesswork turns out to be wrong far more often than most people think. So it's great that the Chenoweth's of this world are curious enough to put their guesses to the test.
- Super_Jambo 7y agoAnd the replication crisis showes that 'empirical' social science that contradicts common sense should not be taken as fact. This seems especially true when the conclusions align closely with the incentives of people who have the power to get research friendly to their interests infront of you.
- crispinb 7y agoTrue enough on the not taking it as fact. I don't, though I think it carries more weight than so-called 'commonsense' (which I dont' share your apparent respect for). Obviously it should be subject to good empirical critique.
- Veen 7y agoIf you have a problem with the methodology or evidence presented here, then why not describe your issues? That would at least be useful. Unlike you, Chenoweth presents a substantial amount of evidence and reasoning. Assuming that everything that comes from the social sciences is politically motivated exhibits reasoning as flawed as assuming the opposite.
- zielen_miejska 7y agoIn oppressive states protesters tend to just disappear and there is little evidence about their fate. Does the methodology correct for this?
- 7y ago
- goto11 7y agoIn an interesting example, Nazi Germany actually scaled back their T4 "euthanasia" murder project because of popular protests.
- ben_w 7y agoFascinating — I’d never heard of that before, and it seemed strange that any public opinion could sway the Nazi regime, but the Wikipedia page has a lot of references: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
- dghf 7y agoThere was also the Rosenstrasse protest, where a group of non-Jewish women managed to get their Jewish husbands released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenstrasse_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenstrasse_protest
- thejohnconway 7y agoThe Nazis were super-paranoid about public opinion, and made some fairly serious efforts to track it (on a population level, so not about individuals).
- thekid314 7y agoNormally I would agree with you. But right now in Sudan a non-violent revolution is occurring. The civilians are demanding a civilian government from Hemeti, the head of a militia that is responsible for war crimes in Darfur. Hemeti doesn't care what the western governments think, he is only beholden to the Gulf governments who are propping up the economy with money. They Gulf governments would prefer he uses force quickly and ruthlessly. His troops have used some violence, 4+ died about a week ago. But they haven't cleared the sit-in with their full force yet. I think this is because if Hemeti used full scale violence he wouldn't have a state to rule over. The non-violent protesters have enough support that a violent response would fracture the armed forces, militias, civilians, and government into non-governable chaos.
- danso 7y agoThe study claims, "between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns", not that the former were always more successful than the latter.
- fsloth 7y agoActually I would argue exactly the opposite. If you are an oppressive regime, you likely have the maximum capability for violence many times over in your region. Hence violent civil resistance will start off with a bad footing in two ways: 1. People are not so keen to take up arms 2. For any amount of violence, the government will likely respond with an overwhelming amount of violence. Non-violent strategies, on the other hand beat these two stepping stones: 1. Non violent strategies, if they are at all popular, are way less riskier for individual participants and due to their non violent nature are easier for people to copy 2. Government has a way harder time to respond to non-localized non-violent influence strategies, as their oppressive regime is likely specialized in fielding force projection troops to localized events
- chongli 7y agoYeah, the determinant of the success of nonviolent movements is not the oppressiveness of the regime, it's the relative dependence on resources vs labour. Since it's much harder for the government to force everyone to go back to work than it is to throw a few violent people in jail, nonviolent movements can paralyze an economy and hold the government to account. This is not as effective in so called "resource-cursed" countries. There, the government does not care whether the population works, so long as the oil keeps flowing. It's much harder for a nonviolent movement to disrupt the economy in that case, and hence oppressive regimes tend to thrive in resource-cursed countries.
- tim333 7y agoIt's a messy example but in Myanmar/Burma the government used to be pretty uncaring and oppressive but eventually enacted democratic reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932015_Myanmar_political_reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932015_Myanmar_poli...