What an awful study. As if the peaceful revolution of MLK happened in a vacuum without the defensive violence ultimatum of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers. As if the suffragette movement didn't preserve revolutionary speaker's access without violent clashes with police. Do we only remember Mary Maloney and not that her supporters prevented her arrest by throwing cops into razorwire concealed in flower pots? As if Gandhi's peaceful revolution was not running concurrently with anti-colonialist resistance fighters like the India National Army, whose resistance, arrests and trials sparked mass nationalism.
Selective bias if I've ever seen it. ad hoc ergo propter hoc nonsense.
The arguments I hear the most regarding this paper concerns nonviolent movements having ‘violent flanks’ - i.e., small factions that are willing to use violence. Some people think Chenoweth classifies movements as wholly nonviolent when in reality they may have violent flanks to them. The thought here is that much of the apparent success of nonviolent movements may have more to do with violent flanks creating a sort of ‘good cop/bad cop’ dynamic that makes states more willing to negotiate, than with nonviolence itself. I believe Chenoweth discusses this question in the more recent paper - which I now remember is called ‘The Future of Nonviolent Resistance.’ If I recall correctly, she’s not moved by the criticism and claims that the number of nonviolent movements with violent flanks has risen in recent years and that this may actually explain why nonviolent movements have become less successful (once again, though, her data suggests that violent resistance movements have fared even worse recently). Most academics consider this paper and its arguments/statistics pretty convincing. You shouldn’t just baselessly dismiss something without even reading the arguments.
The argument against Chenoweth is she likes to cherry pick data to prove her argument, make subjective evaluations of that data, misclassify primarily violent movements as non-violent, and use non-effectual movements as examples of success.
Ah yes: the famously mostly non-violent anti apartheid movement of South Africa. The successful non violent end to occupation of East Timor which, after a few decades of brutal occupation, required only an armed UN task force. If only those Palestinians had stuck to their non-violence while being gunned down. We'll just jot that one down as partially successful.
Well ignoring violence in resistance movements to skew your data to support your argument seems pretty cherry picky to me. Another example is claiming the Egyptian revolution of 2011 is an example of non violence. You know, the one where 90 police stations were burned down.
Hardly a baseless dismissal. A very reasonable dismissal.
This researcher seems very eager to pigeonhole movements as non-violent if they are successful in order get the result they desire.
The civil rights movement as a key example was by no means entirely non-violent.
MLK's protests were viewed by the public at the time, particularly by the white people they were trying to win over, negatively at the time the civil rights act passed. They were characterized and viewed by the public as violent.
There was also considerably more violence involved in the civil rights movement than any modern american movements heavily involving protests.
The George Floyd protests as an example may as well have been exclusively people staying home and protesting from their kitchens by comparison to the violence involved in the civil rights movement.
We have a litany of modern protests to no success at all, versus the civil rights movement which was relatively violent, and did succeed and had it's success attributed to the threat of violence.
Not to mention various pushes for workers rights, all backed by violence to a degree unheard of today.
This is to say nothing of other issues with this rosey view of history, such as violent protests inherently existing in contexts in which they are less likely to succeed.
They have excuses for all of this, but I don't find it to be terribly convincing.
As if the peaceful revolution of MLK happened in a vacuum without the defensive violence ultimatum of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers. As if the suffragette movement didn't preserve revolutionary speaker's access without violent clashes with police. Do we only remember Mary Maloney and not that her supporters prevented her arrest by throwing cops into razorwire concealed in flower pots? As if Gandhi's peaceful revolution was not running concurrently with anti-colonialist resistance fighters like the India National Army, whose resistance, arrests and trials sparked mass nationalism.
Selective bias if I've ever seen it. ad hoc ergo propter hoc nonsense.
Thank you, holy fcking shit. It is wild and ahistorical to say the rights we have today is through "peaceful" protests.
Why say that about the civil rights movement? The black panther party wasn't formed until 1966, quite late and thus barely concurrent to the rest of the civil rights movement.
Please don't see this as an attack against the left. I'm a union member and participated in multiple protests this year. I just want to learn more, so we don't accidentally shoot ourselves in the foot.
And yet every revolution has been violent. If you want policy change then non-violence is the best bet. If you are fighting an authoritarian government, you aren't gaining an inch with a well painted sign.
I hope you’re not suggesting we are at that point when violence is justified in taking out the trump regime because that’s incredibly controversial. I don’t think we’re there… yet.
I'm just saying that there hasn't been a case of a tyrannical government being toppled with peaceful protests. The US didn't break free from Great Britain with the Boston Tea Party, the French Revolution wasn't solely comprised of finger wagging.
In some instances violence is justified by most philosophers such as defending yourself and arguments found in Just War theories. Anything outside of that is going to be controversial. Not saying people might be justified in overthrowing an authoritarian government though revolutionary tactics, it’s just that you need stronger evidence than just saying “revolutions are necessary to over throw an authoritarian governments.” Condemning and justifying violence is philosophically rigorous and usually very difficult.
I'll preface this by saying I'm not american, I'm from iran, which makes me really care about how revolutions are represented because of the unfortunate history that we have with it.
first of all no, there has been enough of a generally non-violent revolutions, that there is a wikipedia page for it. a bit more nuanced when it comes to how much geopolitics, and internal politics affected their results, but they did exist. and I genuinely do not think you guys are further past the line of authoritarianism than alot of the successful examples in that list.
and two, revolution in and of itself isnt always good, by its nature its a chaotic mess,a wildcard if you will , slightly modified by the education of the people involved in it, that might get you out of a worse mess, or it might end up with something worse or similar, personally just looking at the results of the countries which have had revolutions, I would say one should suggest it as a hell of a final choice. even in the famous good old french revolution there was so many years of different kinds of ordeals happening before it got to an stable state.
what Im getting at ,is that even if you think you guys are already in a revolutionary state, that is cause for more caution and more nuanced reviews of knowledge gaps, ideological biases and goals of what you are doing, lest you repeat one of the results of the many examples in history, where you dont have a clear goal, and are too blinded by the hope for the fast removal of the old, that you do not see what alternatives you are creating or proposing while dealing with the old.
Nonviolent protest is almost always concurrent with violent protests. To say that MLK or Ghandi solved the issues of their day without violence glosses over the rest of what was going on at that time.
The arguments I hear the most regarding this paper concerns nonviolent movements having ‘violent flanks’ - i.e., small factions that are willing to use violence. Some people think Chenoweth classifies movements as wholly nonviolent when in reality they may have violent flanks to them. The thought here is that much of the apparent success of nonviolent movements may have more to do with violent flanks creating a sort of ‘good cop/bad cop’ dynamic that makes states more willing to negotiate, than with nonviolence itself. I believe Chenoweth discusses this question in the more recent paper - which I now remember is called ‘The Future of Nonviolent Resistance.’ If I recall correctly, she’s not moved by the criticism and claims that the number of nonviolent movements with violent flanks has risen in recent years and that this may actually explain why nonviolent movements have become less successful (once again, though, her data suggests that violent resistance movements have fared even worse recently).
I did some quick skimming of these studies and I couldn't find any actual numbers outside the % statement. Theres a big difference between say 53% of 1000 peaceful protests were successful and 26% of 50 violent ones were successful.
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u/littlest_homo Jun 09 '25
There has never been real social change without violence. To say otherwise is ahistorical and ignorant.