Kim Voss, a UC Berkeley professor of sociology, says appeals rooted in American values may be more effective today than those evoking memories of the Civil Rights Movement.
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.
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.
Chenoweth’s painstaking research, unprecedented in its scope and historical breadth, has shed new light on the understanding of civil resistance, political change, and the surprising effectiveness of nonviolent action.
The key ingredients of a successful nonviolent resistance movement, the researchers found, are:
A large and diverse population of participants that can be sustained over time.
The ability to create loyalty shifts among key regime-supporting groups such as business elites, state media, and—most important—security elites such as the police and the military.
A creative and imaginative variation in methods of resistance beyond mass protest.
The organizational discipline to face direct repression without having the movement fall apart or opt for violence.
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.
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.
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