Post: #1

I've always been looking for more information about the effectiveness of protests and it's a subject I honestly don't have much knowledge of. I thought this would a good time to provoke a discussion after seeing Trump tweet about the protests taking place in Iran.

A study was done a few years, more about it below

https://www.fastcompany.com/3040831/peac...ate-change

The study claims that peaceful protests are more effective

"Their most striking finding: Nonviolent campaigns were successful against government repression 46% of the time, more than twice the success rate (20%) of their violent counterparts. Not only that, they found the success rate of violent insurgencies has actually been declining in recent decades, and that nonviolent resistance campaigns have a stronger tendency to lead to democratic governments and lasting peace later on."

Unfortunately, I remained unconvinced as the article also points out that is only using mass movements. Which could be categorized anyway the author wants to frankly.

"Their initial dataset in 2011 cataloged the outcomes of all such mass movements they could find from 1900 to 2006—adding to 323 nonviolent and violent movements in all, from Gandhi’s movement in 1919 to the coup that removed Thailand’s prime minister from power in 2006."

I will admit it's a difficult subject to study though. What exactly is a protest? Were the protests in Eastern Europe actually effective or did the Soviet Union just go bankrupt?

Personally, I would guess that violence would be a more effective solution for causing change, though frankly, I don't have any evidence.

The Indian independence movement led by Gandhi and the Americans Civil Right Movement are the main two examples of effective peaceful protests. However, the prevailing belief that these two movements worked because they were peaceful is a ludicrous one. They both worked because the governments that they were fighting were willing to use violence against peaceful people. MLK purposely choose areas where he thought the locals would resort to some level of violence to quell the protests.

Personally, I'm not sure peaceful protests are that effective. The best way to handle peaceful protests to simply ignore them (though some that have swelled to very large numbers have also worked since the government is usually unwilling to use violence against a really large amount of people)

The most recent peaceful protest in the USA that I can think of was the Women's march, which DT mostly ignored other than a few brilliant tweets.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-t...ople-vote/

And then everyone went back to work.

Post: #2

I don't think peaceful protests ever really have worked, they just got lucky with their timing in the grander scheme of history.

MLK and the civil rights movement got lucky on the peaceful protesting because TPTB were afraid of communism becoming a force within those communities. The 60s were filled with communist sympathizers and other libtards openly supporting the soviet union. A blunt overture would satisfy most moderates from going towards overt communism.

Ghandi got lucky because England was financially and physically exhausted from a long war back home coupled with weak leaders who didn't want to do the needful to quell the problems.

I ultimately think violent protests are always the most effective means of change if the environment isn't goldilocks'd like above.

Post: #3

If you want to totally change a system or regime, you cannot vote it out at the ballot box or make it go away with gatherings, banners and shouting .

Either it collapses on its own from total bankrupcy (like the old eastern european soviet bloc in 1989-1991) or you kill off the rulers through a war (Nazi Germany 1945) or overthrow and drive them out through an armed revolution (Cuba 1959).

Peaceful protests at most just get one political party out and another one in, with no change to the overall system. The differences are often cosmetic & superficial.

Post: #4

The only peaceful protests that have worked have been those where money has been moving silently from one side to the other, whether deliberately or by dint of larger economic forces.

The political history of America is to a large extent its economic history. The Civil War did not erupt over slavery as a moral issue, it occurred over states' rights (economics, that is) and the economic impact of slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed over discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations. My guess would be that someone, somewhere with a lot of money stood to gain a hell of a lot from a massive influx of cheap black employment to the workforce. Oh, hey, apparently the civil rights movement had a lot of (((support))). And even when you read the Wiki article about the civil rights movement in the US, it seems to be a distinct minority of activity that was peaceful and a lot of rioting that finally scared the government into legislating.

Try the book A Nation of Deadbeats: per John Reed:

Quote:our political parties are essentially two sides of an ongoing debate about monetization of debts. If I understand Nelson correctly, America has always had a political party of creditors and one of debtors. The creditors want to be highly leveraged—making them debtors—but they do that in ways such that they bear little or none of the normal risk associated with borrowing, especially high-leverage borrowing. And the creditors want to be paid in gold or some other rock solid money. The debtors on the other hand are perennially borrowing too much, getting into financial trouble as a result, then wanting the government to inflate the currency so the debtors have an easy time paying off their debts.

At present, the Democrats are the debtor party, generally, they always have been going back to Thomas Jefferson. The Republicans, founded by Lincoln and others generally are opposed to “printing” excess amounts of money. At present, Democrats are “printing” money in monstrous quantities to make it easy to pay off the national debt and to pay off all the freebies like entitlements and welfare and the Republicans are trying to avoid being taxed to pay for all that Democrat vote buying.

The funny thing is this is pretty much what was happening in variations throughout American history. The political parties either emerge from the various financial crises, or have their platform altered radically by those crises. In other words, the political history of the U.S. is essentially the financial crisis history of the U.S. Those creamed by financial crises have always wanted the federal government to bail them out, not just since the New Deal.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #5

Peaceful protests only work if the other side is shameable or cares about public opinion.
Wanna be Gandhis would become unpersons in Stalin's Soviet Union, 1980s China, Pol Pot's Cambodia or current day North Korea.

Post: #6

I suppose that the backdrop would be considered war (England and France), but the magna carta could, in a sense (between the two principle parties, barons and sovereign) be considered a peaceful protest.

It was more like a withholding of support, until a new (explicit) contract was signed.

But citizens today could do the same (provided they had bargaining power, like the barons).

Post: #7

(12-30-2017 11:20 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  The only peaceful protests that have worked have been those where money has been moving silently from one side to the other, whether deliberately or by dint of larger economic forces.

The political history of America is to a large extent its economic history. The Civil War did not erupt over slavery as a moral issue, it occurred over states' rights (economics, that is) and the economic impact of slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed over discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations. My guess would be that someone, somewhere with a lot of money stood to gain a hell of a lot from a massive influx of cheap black employment to the workforce. Oh, hey, apparently the civil rights movement had a lot of (((support))). And even when you read the Wiki article about the civil rights movement in the US, it seems to be a distinct minority of activity that was peaceful and a lot of rioting that finally scared the government into legislating.

Try the book A Nation of Deadbeats: per John Reed:

Quote:our political parties are essentially two sides of an ongoing debate about monetization of debts. If I understand Nelson correctly, America has always had a political party of creditors and one of debtors. The creditors want to be highly leveraged—making them debtors—but they do that in ways such that they bear little or none of the normal risk associated with borrowing, especially high-leverage borrowing. And the creditors want to be paid in gold or some other rock solid money. The debtors on the other hand are perennially borrowing too much, getting into financial trouble as a result, then wanting the government to inflate the currency so the debtors have an easy time paying off their debts.

At present, the Democrats are the debtor party, generally, they always have been going back to Thomas Jefferson. The Republicans, founded by Lincoln and others generally are opposed to “printing” excess amounts of money. At present, Democrats are “printing” money in monstrous quantities to make it easy to pay off the national debt and to pay off all the freebies like entitlements and welfare and the Republicans are trying to avoid being taxed to pay for all that Democrat vote buying.

The funny thing is this is pretty much what was happening in variations throughout American history. The political parties either emerge from the various financial crises, or have their platform altered radically by those crises. In other words, the political history of the U.S. is essentially the financial crisis history of the U.S. Those creamed by financial crises have always wanted the federal government to bail them out, not just since the New Deal.

So who actually gained from the massive influx of cheap black employment in the 1960s? Frankly, it looks like everyone lost, other than millions of women who entered the workforce a few years later. (financially speaking)

Blacks had already migrated North in massive numbers from 1870-1950 for manufacturing work. One of the many reasons labor unions were formed and the minimum wage was passed was to prevent cheap labor from the southern cities from entering the market. Black labor participation rates were arguably higher in the 1950s then they've ever been.

Post: #8

Politics is about power and human nature. Unless it impacts the pillars of power its ineffectual.