Peaceful protests are by definition useless and only Americans think it works.
Hell no? Nonviolence—properly planned, properly utilized nonviolence in the appropriate conditions—does work. The classic (good) examples here are Gandhi and MLK, but they’re are far from the only ones. What doesn’t work is American style cargo cult “protests” that reproduce the appearance of protest without having an actual theory of victory. This article does a great job explaining this.
2 examples that only worked thanks to being the alternative to other violent movements. Gandhi in particular also got a lot of people killed in his “peaceful” crusade, and did nothing about it.
I mean diversity of tactics is important; in practice many successful movements are going to have violent and peaceful wings (or one wing that does both, e.g. the US labor movement), both of which meaningfully contribute to the end result. That doesn’t mean the peaceful wing is useless or toothless; peaceful movements have options for escalation up to and including a general strike.
Hell no? Nonviolence—properly planned, properly utilized nonviolence in the appropriate conditions—does work. The classic (good) examples here are Gandhi and MLK, but they’re are far from the only ones. What doesn’t work is American style cargo cult “protests” that reproduce the appearance of protest without having an actual theory of victory. This article does a great job explaining this.
2 examples that only worked thanks to being the alternative to other violent movements. Gandhi in particular also got a lot of people killed in his “peaceful” crusade, and did nothing about it.
I mean diversity of tactics is important; in practice many successful movements are going to have violent and peaceful wings (or one wing that does both, e.g. the US labor movement), both of which meaningfully contribute to the end result. That doesn’t mean the peaceful wing is useless or toothless; peaceful movements have options for escalation up to and including a general strike.