This is something that always baffled me. Non-violent protesting is usually held up to be both admirable and effective. I fail to see how that can be in most cases. Let’s start with the most severe types of non-violent protests: hunger strikes and other displays of self-harm even going as far as self immolation. I have no idea of what these are supposed to do. To me, the best thing that can happen in conflict is to have the enemy destroy itself and this is what these cases seem to be to me. I would be thrilled if my enemies chose to hurt themselves.
The second type that I don’t understand is picketing. These types of protests don’t directly harm the participants but they do focus their energy away from effective means of getting what they want. I have worked at several large company headquarters that had regular picketers. Those of us working in the building, including the higher ups that would be able to change things, usually had no idea of what they were even trying to say. The only effect to us was that we would get an e-mail telling us to use an alternate entrance of exit those days. Again, that seems outstanding for the people that aren’t on the picketing side.
There is another type of non-violent protest that I think I understand a little more. That is a protest that dares the opposing side to harm a protester such as a protester laying down in from of a tank or bulldozer. My knee-jerk reaction would be just to run the person over but I can see how that would be bad PR and would probably make the situation worse overall.
It may just be a personality issue with me but I don’t see why non-violent protests can’t be defeated in the vast majority of cases simply by ignoring the non-violent protesters or calling their bluff and literally squishing them. To me, having those that oppose you refuse to cause harm to themselves and refuse to fight is about the best thing that can happen.
Where are non-violent protests supposed to get their power from?
Think of it this way; if people are starving themselves or immolating themselves on your front lawn, and you don’t choose to at least talk to them, how does that make you look abroad? Hell, you don’t think other citizens are going to start getting worried if the government is ignoring people killing themselves to illustrate a point?
And of course it opens the door to a violent counter. If all you’re doing is sitting somewhere in a big group, and the government sends in the men with clubs, it makes the gov. look a *lot * worse than if the protest had started violently.
I do not think I would consider self-immolation as a “Non-Violent Protest”.
Picketing can work very differently from what you described. I have helped in two successful picketing campaigns. One was to stop a garbage incinerator from being built in 1991. We gained enough support through small grass root actions to stop a million dollar campaign by GE to build a garbage incinerator in Monmouth County. Our success inspired other counties to stop incinerators from being built. The form of picketing took place at county and town halls, at major intersections, at college campuses, and on the way to the shore. It consisted of letter writing, picketing, action at the county seat during open meetings, door to door petition drives. What started with four environmental groups working together grew to include neighboring chambers of commerce, doctor associations, the county Democratic Party, the Newark Star Ledger and Asbury Park Press and eventually two of the Republican Freeholders that crossed party lines when they verified the reports of increased mercury danger if the incinerator project went through.
There is another form of “Non-Violent Protest” you have overlooked, the boycott. Ask the Tuna industry about the effectiveness of a boycott on sales in the 1980s. The combination of a large boycott, massive picketing and celebrities taking up the cause of Dolphin safe tuna fishing did hurt Tuna sales. The Iceland fishing protest over whaling got Iceland to reduce its whaling activities at least.
The point of non-violent protests is to get your opponent to overreact to the protest, and in doing so come to realize that their policies are ridiculous. Is it really worth it to continue with this policy? You want your opponent to think: Is it really worth it to beat people up, unleash the firehouses and the dogs to enforce our policy?
This all assumes that your adversary has some sort of conscience. Which is why Gandhi’s approach eventually worked with the british but a non-violent protest by Jews would not have worked against the Nazis.
In the US the point of non-violent protests is to get the hearts or the stomachs of the news-following public. Bull Connor may be as amendable to appeals to conscience as the Nazis were, but if you can get a sizeable chunk of the electorate calling their representatives, you can bring pressure to bear.
A lot of it is pointless because a lot of it has been done too many times before and therefore elicits nothing. I’ve marched around in stupid circles carrying my stupid sign often enough to feel entitled to say so. The general public is not intrigued by Yet Another Protest March. If you don’t at least break records for number of people attending such an event, everyone kind of yawns. The powers that be don’t issue statements in response. The media doesn’t stick microphones under the noses of politicians and ask them to do so.
The ones that stand a better chance are those that are done with a streak of originality, especially humor. Something that would make Letterman, something that will amuse the general public and thereby loosen them up to perhaps listening to what you’re trying to say. As with advertising, things that were slick and shiny decades ago don’t necessarily work now.
As American as apple pie, the people peacefully assemble to petition for a redress of grievances. Radicals start it, usually. Bunch of crazy hippies and snotty college kids. You sneer. Next time, you see a returned vet in a wheelchair or with an arm sleeve pinned up. You don’t sneer, you are perplexed, confused. “Hey! Isn’t that Gramma?” You start to think…
I believe they are supposed to get their power from the shame they evoke in the opressor.
This works only, I would say, in very limited circumstances. For example, I think Gandhi was lucky to try it on with the British who, fundamentallu good johnnies at heart, eventually issued a mumbled apology and buggered off, as opposed to, say, the Mongols, who would have painted the entire subcontinent red with the blood of their non-violent opponents and then had a clambake without a single twinge to their conscience.
What I don’t get is when officials “resign in protest”. So, you’ve got 20-something years of time in with the gov, heading for a comfortable retirement, then the new boss is a dickhead, so you throw your career away over it. Wha? Seems like you’d accomplish more by subverting from within.
Your knee-jerk reaction would be to murder somebody???
But to your main point. If you’re contrasting them with *violent * protests, there are obvious advantages. One is it inhibits your opposition from branding you a criminal or a terrorist and having you and your sympathizers rounded up or otherwise persecuted. This is a HUGE advantage strategically in any political protest. The minute you become a threat in the public mind you’re toast.
And a well-run peaceful protest seeks to do the opposite, to portray the opposition as the threat and the protesters as sympathetic victims. Why is that important? Because generally speaking, powerful people have a hard time staying powerful if the public thinks that they’re villains. That’s basic politics.
On a smaller scale, you also shouldn’t underestimate embarrassment and annoyance as persuasive tactics. People will make concessions to avoid these things, especially if they start attracting undue public attention or interrupting workflow.
Well, it depends on what you define as “changed things for the better”, but I would argue that there are lots of terrorist (slash “freedom fighter”) campaigns or, for that matter, wars (the ultimate form of violent protest) which have radically altered the world. Whether you think of that as for better or worse is then largely a matter of perspective.
Just off the top of my head, a series of violent campaigns in Northern Ireland (beginning with the 1916 Easter Rising, and culminating in the IRA) was important in gaining Ireland’s independence. Whether it had much of an effect on the state of affairs in Northern Ireland later on is an interesting question.
To use an example probably a lot closer to the hearts of many dopers, what would you call the American Revolution except a violent protest that had profound results, for better or for worse?
I suppose most folks who resign in protest have already tried to change their work environments and the boss’s mind. After it’s futile, they have three options. Keep working in a position they can’t stand, subvert the system from within, or resign. Continuing to work is intolerable. Subverting the system from within is, except in rare circumstances, not very honorable (you’re getting paid, but not doing the work you’re getting paid to do, and are in fact undermining them). The only decent option is to resign.
The point of a non-violent protest becomes easier to understand if you compare its possible outcomes with the various possible outcomes of a violent protest.
Besides, a non-violent protest is sometimes a good place to get laid.
1916 was a absolute landmark in Irish history. The Rising itself was very unpopular. In Dublin the rebels were pelted with fruit by the public when they were marched through the city by the British. It was the fast and unsympathetic execution of the leaders that made public opinion change. The Union died with that decision. The UK lost the normal ‘keep your head down’ Paddy and because of that they lost power eventually. The 1916 leader Padraig Pearse had said that what was needed was a '“blood sacrifice”. Connolly another leader of 1916 when asked what the chance of a military success was by a man in the GPO replied “None whatsoever”.
My point is that it was the reaction that changed things not the initial violent act. That reaction could possibly have been achieved by means of peaceful protest but Ireland in those days didn’t have the luck of having a Gandhi(such men are rare). We had enough angry radicals who wanted the fast unsubtle route and they took it.
In more modern times IMO the IRA definitely bombed their way to the negotiation table and profited from it but as you say that point is up for debate.
True, but to illustrate the point of government overreaction, it’s worth pointing out the rebels who participated in the Easter Rising originally had very little support from the general public in Ireland. They were blamed for a huge amount of destruction to Dublin and many deaths, and were widely reviled. It was only after Britain proceded with executing many of the leaders after perfunctory trials that sympathy began to shift to the rebels. Some of the executions made the British look particularly bad, as in the case of one individual who was shot mainly because he was the brother of one of the ringleaders; one of the other ringleaders went before the firing squad sitting in a chair because he was suffering from a gangrenous leg wound. If the British had confined themselves to executing two or three of those most responsible, it’s likely that the movement would have garnered much less support in later years. Instead they created a whole pantheon of martyrs.
While the Easter Rising was surely violent, it illustrates very well how a severe reaction by the government can easily backfire.
Ireland did have its share of peaceful campaigners for Home Rule/independence at that time, though. There was always John Redmond, William O’Brien and United Ireland, etc.
I don’t understand the OP’s position. Didn’t you study history? Of course non-violent protests work. Sometimes, they’re pointless and ineffective, but that’s true of any form of campaign, whether violent uprising or advertising.
Didn’t you learn about Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King? Do you think the Civil Rights Act would have occurred without the March on Washington? Without the Selma Bus boycott? Without the huge wave of non-violent protest and civil disobedience that occurred thanks to King, Parks, and other leaders?
Didn’t you learn about the Vietnam War, and how public opposition eventually forced the government to get out? Don’t you think seeing marches and protests on the news and on the street corner every night might have helped shape public opinion?
Others have dismissed it, but I believe non-violence could have worked against the Nazis. Hitler and Goering might have been immune to shame, but the vast majority of Germans who supported the Nazi party were not.
What on earth would lead you to conclude that non-violent protest is ineffective? What do you think has a better record of success that it?
Seems like you’d accomplish more by subverting from within.