When faced with blatant fascism and a government driven persecution of hard working people, there exists a strong temptation to respond with violence. Common examples of such violence includes the French Revolution and also the 1916 Easter uprising in Ireland. Apparently the British also had a bit of a spat with a few people in their colonies from 1765 to 1783, but that’s probably all unfamiliar to most readers :-)
Given recent events, some might indeed seriously wonder if we need another Revolution.
However, it turns out that we don’t. There is a far better way, one that has a greater statistical probability of success.
Nonviolent Resistance
In 2011 political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan published Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.
For the source material they analyzed 323 major political campaigns from 1900 to 2006.
So what did they discover?
Basically this:
Nonviolent is the path to go because that has a far greater probability of success. To be specific the nonviolent movements succeed about 53% of the time, compared to only 26% for violent ones.
The reason for the nonviolent approach having a far greater degree of success is because such campaigns attract a far larger, and far more diverse participation. That increases pressure on governments and makes suppression far harder.
I made reference to the violent 1916 easter uprising in Ireland. While it is true that in 1922 the Irish Free state was finally formed, that formation was achieved via negotiation and also popular resistant to British violence, and not because of what happened in 1916. Officially the new Irish State promoted those that participated in the 1916 uprising as heroes, but most of the people at the time just after 1916 viewed them with either indifference or open hostility. Parts of the city of Dublin was left in ruins, and the violence and death that it created motivated many Irish Nationalists to view it as a huge mistake.
The huge error then made by the British government was a violent and repressive response, and so they proceeded to execute the leaders of the rebellion and also proceeded with a campaign of mass arrests, internment, and closed courts martial. That transformed everything and so the tide of public opinion turned very robustly against the violence of British rule. It fuelled a growing sense of resentment and a desire for Irish self-determination.
Rather obviously this is not really about then, but instead is about now. The rise of the ICE Gestapo, anonymous armed masked thugs randomly kidnapping people off the street while they are working and then disappearing them is the reality we now face. The people being targeted are not criminals, but hardworking people.
There now exists a strong temptation for some to resist ICE with arms, but the far better response is one that consists of nonviolent protests. This is what is far more likely to trigger defections from ICE, and from the Republican elites, and bureaucrats —undermining the Trump fascist regime’s stability.
If we are to have a democracy that is to truly endure, then it needs to be one in which legitimacy can be maintained via a broad coalition of the oppressed. Violent uprisings often result in a backlash, and that needs to be avoided.
Why take this stance?
This is the reality highlighted by political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan within their book. The data they carefully gathered and analysed confirms that Nations that undergo nonviolent transitions are more likely to achieve durable democracies than those that emerge from violent conflicts.
How many people do we need?
Via the BBC, we have a truly fascinating deep dive into all this. It reveals this…
The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world
Here is the opening for the above …
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
Least you wonder, yes the article also leans upon the research by Erica Chenoweth of Harvard.
Interestingly enough, when she started her research into nonviolent protest in the early 2000s she was rather cynical about it all, but the data she gathered along with Maria Stephan, a researcher at the ICNC, convinced her.
OK, so where does this 3.5% come from?
Here is the apt quote via that BBC article …
“Numbers really matter for building power in ways that can really pose a serious challenge or threat to entrenched authorities or occupations,” Chenoweth says – and nonviolent protest seems to be the best way to get that widespread support.
Once around 3.5% of the whole population has begun to participate actively, success appears to be inevitable.
“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”. Besides the People Power movement, that included the Singing Revolution in Estonia in the late 1980s and the Rose Revolution in Georgia in the early 2003.
Why does the non-violent approach work, especially when it reaches the 3.5% mark?
There are no barriers to participation, you can generally openly discuss it and openly campaign to encourage others to join in. It does not exclude people who abhor and fear bloodshed, and it also maintains the moral high ground.
By engaging broad support across the population, nonviolent campaigns are also more likely to win support among the police and the military – the very groups that the government should be leaning on to bring about order.
During a peaceful street protest of millions of people, the members of the security forces may also be more likely to fear that their family members or friends are in the crowd – meaning that they fail to crack down on the movement. “Or when they’re looking at the [sheer] numbers of people involved, they may just come to the conclusion the ship has sailed, and they don’t want to go down with the ship,” Chenoweth says.
In terms of the specific strategies that are used, general strikes “are probably one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, single method of nonviolent resistance”, Chenoweth says. But they do come at a personal cost, whereas other forms of protest can be completely anonymous. She points to the consumer boycotts in apartheid-era South Africa, in which many black citizens refused to buy products from companies with white owners. The result was an economic crisis among the country’s white elite that contributed to the end of segregation in the early 1990s.
One last number.
On the day of dear leaders birthday party dictator parade that almost nobody turned up for, there was also all the “No Kings protests” all across the nation.
So how many turned out for that?
Lots did, or to be a tad more precise, the Wikipedia article on it advises …
A crowdsourcing effort to tally participation was led by data journalist G. Elliott Morris, who wrote on June 15 that “back-of-the-envelope math” put total attendance “somewhere in the 4–6 million people range. That means roughly 1.2–1.8% of the U.S. population attended a No Kings Day event somewhere in the country yesterday.”
It’s not yet at the 3.5% tipping point that will guarantee change, but it is already a good chunk of the way there.
Be encouraged – we really can do this non-violently, the goal is within reach.