I think what they’re looking for in terms of methodology is what objective criteria they use to determine if a protest is violent or nonviolent, as well as what constitutes success or failure. These are not trivial questions, and there’s lots of debate surrounding virtually any given movement, so to make objective determinations about a large number of such movements raises the question of how they’re resolving all these questions and debates. Some might argue that such questions are inherently political and up to interpretation.

As another user in this thread pointed out, it may be a case of confusing correlation with causation: if a movement is popular, it may be more likely to succeed and more likely to be considered nonviolent, as compared to a less popular movement employing the exact same tactics.

The lack of distinction between strikes shutting down entire industries vs walking around for a bit with a witty sign is one of the many reasons the study is kind of silly.

Yes, but it’s complicated. I’ll use Iran’s long tradition of nonviolence as a case study.

In the late 1800’s when the shah tried to sell out tobacco farmers to foreign exploitation, and virtually everyone in the country opposed it, resulting in a tobacco boycott. Virtually everyone in the country participated it, including members of the shah’s own harem, and religious leaders issued a fatwa condemning anyone who violated it. The shah was forced to cave to pressure and reversed the decision.

This boycott movement helped for organization that would set the stage for later (largely peaceful) protests that led to the shah signing a constitution and establishing a democratic parliament. Unfortunately, he died shortly afterwards, and his son was much less cooperative, and called on foreign assistance to shell parliament, and successfully restored himself to power.

During WWI, Iran was invaded by the Ottoman, British, and Russian Empires, and the country suffered greatly from disease, famine, and the Armenian genocide, leading to over 2 million civilian deaths during the period. The Qajar dynasty collapsed, as did the Ottoman and Russian Empires, allowing Britain to dominate the power vacuum. They supported the new Pahlavi dynasty into power, there was a parliament, but the shah generally appointed whoever the British told him to as prime minister.

At this point, oil had been discovered in Iran, and the Iranians were stuck with an awful, exploitative deal that the previous dynasty had signed, as part of their general policy of selling out every part of the country to foreign colonizers so the shah could have a bigger harem. This deal was substantially worse than the general deal the US offered (which was generally 50/50 between the country that owned the oil and the country that built the infrastructure to extract it). But the terms didn’t actually matter because the British violated them all the time, vastly underreporting how much oil they were extracting so that they paid virtually nothing, and the Iranians had zero oversight of their records. Britain relied on this oil to be one of the richest and most powerful nations on the planet, while the Iranians remained some of the poorest people in the world.

For the next several decades, the Iranian people repeatedly asked Britain very nicely if they would possibly consider not stealing all their oil. And for those decades, the British completely stonewalled them, refused to consider any sorts of concessions whatsoever. Even with their own, hand-picked prime ministers, they still stonewalled them.

Finally, in the 1950’s, and a peaceful democratic movement successfully pressured the shah to appoint a popular leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, as prime minister - the shah finally became more afraid of popular discontent than he was of the British. Mosaddegh, after making attempts to negotiate, made a decision with overwhelming popular support, to nationalize the oil industry. This, however, led the British to impose a blockade, crippling the country’s economy.

Mosaddegh was an idealist, and he believed the Americans would see his cause as just, connect it to their own revolution, and back him up against the British. At this point, most Iranians had neutral or positive views of the US, seeing them as well intentioned, if naive, not understanding how long the Iranians had been struggling against British colonialism. All of these perceptions were proven completely wrong, because, rather than backing them up, Eisenhower agreed to use the CIA to overthrow Mossadegh to protect BP’s profits and to ensure British cooperation with NATO and the Korean War. This was the first of the CIA’s coups of democratic governments.

A stark example of this betrayal is that, the day before the coup, a US ambassador called Mossadegh and fed him a false story about how his supporters had been calling the embassy with death threats, and he was afraid he’d have to shut it down. Mossadegh - who had refused to crack down on (CIA funded) protests, or censor the (CIA controlled) press, or seek aid from the Soviets, or otherwise do anything to disrupt the infiltration out of concern for principles and respecting dissent -then issued as public statement calling for his supporters to cool it and stay off the streets. When his residence was attacked, no one was on the streets to come to his aid. He lived out the rest of his life under house arrest, while the shah used his absolute power to hunt down and exterminated the Iranian left - until he finally crossed the US and was himself overthrown by the current government.

When the stakes were low (from a geopolitical perspective), like, some poor tobacco farmers trying to maintain their (still quite poor) lifestyle, nonviolence worked. When the stakes were higher, like, changing the whole structure of the government, nonviolence worked better than one might expect, but generally encountered violent resistance and counter-revolution and fell apart. When the stakes were very high, like, trying to get a world-spanning empire to stop stealing the resource it needed to dominate the world, nonviolence was not very effective at all.

Being in Iran’s position, it really wouldn’t matter what they did to try to appease Westerners, so long as they assert control over their natural resources - so they don’t really bother. The goal of nonviolence is to be “in the right” but Iran’s history proves that you can be 100% “in the right” and still lose because foreigners don’t know/care about what’s being done to you, or are propagandized to side with the oppressor.

This doesn’t necessarily apply to protests in the US, but it can. If you’re a nonthreatening old white lady and your goals are not too disruptive to the empire, then sure, do nonviolence. But if you’re someone who the news could villainize, who people will assume the worst of just because of your race or religion, then they’re probably going to characterize you as violent whether you are or not. And if your goals are something that would disrupt the ruling class’s hold on power, then understand that the only reason they aren’t gunning you down is that they aren’t afraid of you - the real dangerous part about nonviolence is that it can be effective, and if power is threatened it will respond with force.

100%. A credible threat of violence is the real sweet spot, it’s the currency that the whole world operates by. Actual violence is primarily only useful for establishing that threat.

Like, Brian Thompson was an evil person but he was just a cog in a machine and not that hard to replace. However, his killing spooked the industry, and at least for a time, they stopped denying so many claims, which saved many lives - because there was a credible threat that if they deny someone’s claim, they (or someone who cares about them) might kill those responsible. On the other side of the equation, the state was very concerned about finding the killer/someone to pin the blame on, because they needed to establish a credible threat of violence against anyone who might follow his example.

People in America seem to love “going postal,” just one big dramatic act that only you know about and that you won’t walk away from. But that doesn’t really set up a credible threat for the future. Thompson’s killer at least had the good sense to try to get away - if he did, then he could continue providing a credible threat, and he would also provide a “proof of concept” for people looking to fight back without necessarily dying.

Ideally, if you could have a more formal organization that could lay out demands and red lines, it would add to predictability and help keep the threat of violence consistent and predictable. Otherwise, there’s just a vague sense that maybe someone out there will be set off by something, but it’s hard to negotiate with that, hard to say which actions might set someone off. Stochastic violence isn’t ideal, but if more formal organizations are subverted in the various ways they are, then violence becomes less controlled and directed, and the credible threat of violence becomes harder to establish.

Interesting how the paper picks East Timor/Indonesia as a case study but makes no mention of the massacres of the PKI and suspected communists, which the US was ambivalent, if not supportive about.

Any serious study of resistance movements around the world will paint a very different picture, one in which nonviolence is frequently met with slaughter, and people turn to violence specifically because nonviolence failed.

The fact of the matter is that people living in the imperial core cannot be well versed in the history of every country in the world (to the extent that we can even exert influence in the first place), and this allows the media to either ignore things like the massacres in Indonesia, or spin them in such a way to justify the preferred side through biased framing. The thing the paper cites as a major determining factor of success or failure is defections from security forces, but what if those security forces come from thousands of miles away?

Trying to assert a universal principle on a tactical level regarding such broad categories is kind of silly in the first place. It’s too broad. You have to assess what you’re trying to accomplish and formulate a strategy to get there based on the particular situation you find yourself in.

From “The Jakarta Method:”

This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask:

“Who was right?”

In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?

Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.

Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.

We can’t condemn the Nazis because if we condemn the Nazis people will think we’re Nazis. When people see that we won’t condemn the Nazis, that’s how they’ll know we aren’t Nazis.

Non sequitor. Not what I said and not a Republican.

Campaigns are about winning swing states, those are just the rules of the game. Kamala lost that game worse than any Democrat in nearly 40 years. Maybe the rules we have aren’t fair, and if they were different, she would’ve lost by a smaller margin. But then, both campaigns would’ve been run completely differently, the same candidates might not have even been the nominees, etc.

By the actual rules of the actual game, Kamala lost extremely badly.

This was literally the worst electoral map for the Democrats since 1988 when Republicans won Illinois and California.

I’m confused, when you talk about voting “Democrat,” do you mean, for the Democratic-Republicans? I was thinking of voting Federalist, personally.

Since our system makes it impossible to change from the two currently existing parties, it follows that the two parties we have now must be the ones we started with.

But regardless, this is typical shortsighted liberal (i.e. capitalist) analysis that only looks at the immediate outcome and only at electoral politics. If a significant portion of the electorate can make a credible threat to sit out if their demands are not met, then they can leverage that threat to get what they want. The right is much more willing to do this because they put their values above reason, and it works - many Republican candidates understand that if they look soft on things like abortion or guns, a sizable portion of their base will defect, even if it means voting for a crank and throwing the election. Democratic voters are much more committed to being “reasonable” and so refuse to set any red lines anywhere, and the results are clear: the right successfully shifts the Republicans to be more extreme, the Democrats follow, and the left falls in line and accepts it. We are desperately overdue to start learning from their successful tactics and from our own failures, setting down red lines, and thinking beyond the current cycle. And we can debate where exactly red lines should be set, but if genocide doesn’t deserve one, nothing does.

Moreover, the facts of physical reality, the material conditions, and the myriad of crises we’re facing demand radical changes beyond what we are told are possible in the existing system. But those things are physical, natural, immutable facts, while our political system is, on a fundamental level, manmade. We do not have to abide by its rules and what it tells us is and isn’t possible - but we do have to do that regarding the laws of nature, which tell us about things like climate change. Monarchy had no mechanism built into the system to transform into liberal democracy, and yet, here we are. That’s because there are fundamental mechanisms for change that exist within every political system, whether the system wants them to or not, and I don’t just mean revolutions, but demonstrations, strikes, etc. And so, the party I voted for, PSL, participates in electoral politics for the express purpose of building organization beyond electoral politics. Helping a candidate who I see as fundamentally unacceptable win an election is less important that helping to promote that sort of organizing.

It’s very frustrating and the thread I linked made me feel like I was losing my mind. I try to seek out perspectives I disagree with but a lot of times I just end up concluding, “Damn, these people are even worse than I thought.”

What gets me is how wildly people in the thread blew it out of proportion. You had someone quoting “first they came for” as if lifting sanctions on a leader we installed is comparable to the Holocaust.

It’s like everyone needs everyone to agree that every time Trump sneezes, it’s the literal worst thing that has ever happened, and if you push back on anything ever you’re the enemy. These same people fantasize that they can win elections by appealing to moderates.

But the thing that really grinds my gears is how they all default to hostile intervention in foreign countries despite knowing absolutely nothing about their situation. The “null” position should be leaving everyone alone, but instead, it’s whatever the government or media tell them. Or in this case, whatever a random tweet from a crypto grifter tells them. And they will try to bring down the hammer of social condemnation and use things like this as a way to equate communists to fascists and kick us out of spaces, even when they aren’t actually at all invested in the issue.

Buncha clowns.

My apologies. I tried to control-F and apparently that doesn’t work on usernames.

In any case, my take is essentially just, “Hands off Syria.” I didn’t think we should arm him, I don’t think we should sanction him, etc. I don’t really think that’s a shit take, but it’s certainly drawn some criticism over the years.

Cool, so then, why did 1500 people just upvote a picture of a tweet calling him a terrorist, and criticizing the lifting of sanctions against him? Why did only like 40 people downvote it? That’s what I’m calling out.

Where were you when in that thread, by the way? Why are you criticizing my take and not that one? Don’t tell me you only saw the thread sitting at 7 upvotes and missed the one with 1500. My bad.

Most of the regimes you support are the result of military coups of actual revolutions.

Really? Which ones, specifically? I’m not aware of any like that.

Why support the genocides or the oppression of workers?

I don’t.

Still doesn’t make it socialism.

If you want to write off the whole history of socialist theory as well as every revolution that called itself socialist as having nothing to do with socialism, then I might suggest that you’re the one who should find another name for whatever it is you believe. Marx and Engles were socialists. Lenin was a socialist. Ho Chi Minh was a socialist. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were socialists. They identified as such, acknowledged each other as such (when possible chronologically), and are widely seen as such. But I guess you personally are the ultimate authority on who is and isn’t a socialist, and I just need to DM you whenever I have any questions about that.

Who exactly is a socialist in your mind, anyway? Any actual human being you can name, aside from yourself?

In practice, it’s the opposite. You want to spend all the effort of revolution just to end up with more oppression because you get overthrown by CIA-backed fascists.

So, as I assumed, no answer to the Mossadegh problem.

Nowhere in that comment did I assume that you’re against revolutions. You’re in favor of them, as you said. A bit too in favor of them, tbh. You seem to think revolutions are trivial matters, that if the gains of a revolution are lost, you can simply do it again. If you’re not prepared to commit to whatever’s necessary to win and secure those gains, you’re probably better off not doing it at all.

Nothing I’ve said is remotely disingenuous. You’ve just decided you hate me because of memes and meme ideologies. If you’re attempting to demonstrate the importance of theory through this silly display of ignorance and infighting, you’re doing a good job of it.

People become “tankies” because they take these questions seriously and study them. You can’t understand it because you don’t, and haven’t. Your ideology (whatever it is) wasn’t chosen because of a rigorous study of history and theory, but because it looks nice. It’s fun to denounce people as authoritarians, makes you feel good, whatever. But you don’t actually have reason or evidence to back up your position, you’re not interested in engaging with such historical or theoretical questions at all. None of you are, really. It’s all just memes and yet you have this bizarre, misplaced confidence, that because your catchphrases sound nice it means your ideology works.

and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.

I must correct my previous statement.

Socialism is when you violently overthrow the bourgeoisie, then immediately allow yourself to be overthrown by a fascist counter-revolution in which everyone on the left is exterminated, because you’re too afraid of your own shadow to stop them.

Tell me, what are your thoughts on Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran? A progressive leader who came to power through a peaceful, popular movement against British colonialism, nationalized the oil industry and reclaimed it’s profits for the benefit of the common people, and then, as the CIA began infiltrating the country, refused to implement any “authoritarian” measures, leading to his overthrow? Leading to the installation of the shah who hunted down and exterminated any and all leftists in the country with his secret police? Leading to generations of Iranians living their entire lives under far-right governments, with no end in sight?

There’s a reason why existing socialist governments are willing to employ authoritarian methods, it’s called “survivorship bias,” as in, all the movements that were too averse to such methods were subverted and exterminated.

Honestly, I find your position less coherent and less respectable than outright liberalism. If you’re serious about revolution, then you have to be prepared for what that entails and you have to understand the life-or-death stakes. If you blow it, not only will everyone involved be killed, but the example will live on and the next opportunity might not arise for another 100 years or more. You are playing with powerful forces, and failure is not an option. It’s necessary to adapt to the situation and use whatever methods are most effective, whether those methods are “authoritarian” or not.

What you want to do is to try to fight the vastly superior foe of capitalism, but before you even start, you want to put on a blindfold and tie one hand behind your back. You want to win in the “right” way, the way that makes you feel good. You’re trying to play games, but the other side does not fuck around.

Of course, I assume you don’t have thoughts on Mossadegh because I assume you haven’t actually studied historical examples to inform your views, nor actual theory. My views are not something I was born with or that were just naturally appealing to me, it’s only after studying such things and seriously considering them that I arrived here. In a world where leaders like Mossadegh didn’t get overthrown, I wouldn’t hold the views I do, unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. I’d rather survive, win, and deliver on material improvements, rather than be an aspiring martyr.

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.

Fredrick Engles, famous non-socialist

Socialism is when you ask nicely for the bourgeoisie to pretty please give up their wealth and stop exploiting people and the nicer you ask the more socialistier it is.