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.
There has been a lot of encouragement of violence on Lemmy lately. When pressed, they’re usually not Americans. Don’t fall for it.
The day I stop advocating the potential for violence will be after I have left the US. All the authorities have to do to force unarmed protestors to turn “violent” is corral them into tighter and tighter spaces to where the protestors have no choice but to break windows and such just to have room to breathe.
Unarmed protestors are incapable of standing their ground in any meaningful way to prevent this. “Peaceful” vs “violent” protest is a false dichotomy.
Property damage isn’t violence, in this context.
If only we could convince most Americans of that
US American here and I agree.
I have a recent example where this is not true:
The Peaceful LA Protests of June, 2025
Mark my words, this will end with blood in the streets. We just need to decide whose blood. The executive branch could do with a reminder that it has no monopoly on violence.
I will decide it to be my blood then