this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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Actual fights. The first time we fought the Nazis, we didn't beat them by protesting; we beat them with bombs and bullets.
Nonviolent options only work under the threat of a violent plan-B.
...and plan-A has been completely ignored for decades.
Is this just your conjecture, or do you base this on something? Because there is research that supports nonviolent protest movements being the more effective path.
Can you link that research?
What I'm familiar with is Erica Chenowith who authored work in this area. Here's her summarizing it on TEDx:
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/success-nonviolent-civil-resistance/
https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/advocacy-social-movements/paths-resistance-erica-chenoweths-research
One of the reasons is that nonviolent resistance attracts more supporters, and once there's enough support for enough time, things are more likely to change.
It's based on observing current events through the lens of the education I've received on history. Protests by themselves today require a ridiculous scale to accomplish peanuts; contrast that to MLK Jr's protests during the civil rights movement. His got shit done. Why? Because the Black Panthers were standing by with rifles. Today's protests are all bark from a toothless mouth, so we're allowed to yip away until it's out of our system, then the status quo just keeps trucking along. There's no modern iteration of the Black Panthers to back up all of our nonviolent protests.
The 50501 movement / ICE protests are starting to show promise, but again, scale - we've seen nationwide protests regularly for months, and so far all they've accomplished is being an inconvenience for ICE... in exchange for making themselves a target to multiple facets of the military.
We need more than noise.
It takes more than months to do anything. The civil rights movement you're referencing took decades.
Protests against this neonazi flavor of right wing extremism have been happening for decades. They haven't accomplished shit. To the contrary, things have gotten considerably worse. The protests are ignored. The protests will continue to be ignored so long as they're just noise.
Please share the research, I'm genuinely interested.
Just replied on another comment. Search for Erica Chenoweth https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw