this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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I disagree. Hard data shows that peaceful protest works in a way that violent protest absolutely does not
The moment violence happens, the whole movement loses its credibility and high ground and opens the road to despotic overthrow of the movement. This is why it's so important to guard against the tactic of your enemy installing agitators to discredit your movement and open the door to violent suppression of it.
Let's take a look at the so called "successes" of violent revolutios:
So my assumption of anyone pushing for violent overthrow of the government is that they want a king, a single party totalitarian government, or a military dictatorship. This being Lemmy, the most likely case is that you want to install a communist single party system.
I personally want nothing to do with it.
"Faced" "was forced to" why the passive language? Yes, France indefensibly forced Haiti to pay reparations for Haitians "stealing their property" (freeing themselves from slavery), a debt which it still, unbelievably, upholds.
I'm not sure how it's discrediting for a revolution to be crushed by an overwhelmingly powerful outside source. It kinda seems like you're just trying to intimidate people into falling in line at that point.
Of course, we should also look at what happens to peaceful reformers who achieve some degree of success at decolonization. Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, for example, is the perfect example of the approach people like you advocate. Peaceful, democratically elected, didn't crackdown on anyone's rights. Guess what happened? He faced, as you put it, "economic isolation" as the British blockaded them in retaliation for exerting control over his own country's oil. Then he was overthrown by the CIA. Shit like that is exactly why anybody with any sense who gets in a position like that does the sort of thing that makes you denounce them as "totalitarian."
Convenient, isn't it? The peaceful people who oppose colonialism get quietly deposed or exterminated, while the violent ones get condemned and economically isolated. Almost as if you don't want anything to change at all.
Both of which were clearly and unambiguously better than the states that preceded them.
My point in the Haiti point is that you ended up with an Emperor for life, as in all the other cases where you ended up with kings or single party systems. And yes, I can accept that from the very poor starting points of many of these countries, maybe the shakeup at least loosened something that could have opened up improvements in the next century or something. They certainly didn't produce immediate benefit.
But the USA is not at that kind of starting point yet. They still have an (admittedly flawed and likely compromised) democracy with a strong economy and still very high living standards, even if they aren't evenly distributed. They do still have some checks and balances and rule of law that has not yet been subverted. Moving from this to a full autocracy, single party system, theocracy, military state or monarchy would not be a step up by any stretch of the imagination. It would be a disaster that would take decades if not a century or more to recover from.
So yes, sometimes things get so bad that you really can just toss it all out and probably not lose much, but that's not the case in really any western democracy. In most cases today all you'd get is something worse than what you already have.
As for peaceful revolutions, there are tons of examples, all creating far more prosperous democracies than the regimes they replaced, more or less from day one. I have an emotional place in my heart for this kind of revolution as I live in the first country listed and know the benefit we still get from that peaceful revolution today.
1. The Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia, 1989)
Over just 41 days, a student-led movement brought down the Communist government without a single shot being fired.
Outcome: A peaceful transition to a democratic parliamentary republic and the election of Havel as President, and massive improvements in living standards.
2. The People Power Revolution (Philippines, 1986)
Also known as the EDSA Revolution, this movement ended the 20-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
Outcome: The military eventually refused to fire on the crowds, leading Marcos to flee to Hawaii and the installation of Corazon Aquino as President of a democratic nation which grew and improved living standards for decades to come.
3. The Singing Revolution (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1987–1991)
The Baltic states achieved independence from the Soviet Union through a massive cultural and non-violent uprising centered on national identity and song.
Outcome: Despite Soviet military intimidation, the three nations successfully restored their independence by 1991 and are now democratic members of the EU and NATO with vastly better living conditions than under Soviet rule.
4. The Peaceful Revolution (East Germany, 1989)
This movement led to the most iconic symbol of the Cold War’s end: the fall of the Berlin Wall, doing away with the communist party rule in East Germany.
Outcome: The opening of the borders and the eventual reunification of Germany in 1990 as a single democratic and progressive nation which grew it's living standards in great strides in the coming decades.
5. South Africa’s Transition from Apartheid (1990–1994)
It's funny to me how most of your examples involved the USSR peacefully ceding power. If you're up against someone with a conscience, sure.
I don't deny that peaceful movements can be effective (especially when backed with an implicit threat of force). I do deny that they are consistently effective, as proven by Mossadegh and countless similar stories around the world. From The Jakarta Method:
Peaceful movements that challenge Western economic interests in regions remote enough for the Western public to not care get massacred. Meanwhile, violent revolutions have provided massive increases in quality of life in many countries, including China, Vietnam, and Cuba. If you want to argue that peaceful methods are more likely to be successful within the imperial core that's one thing, but if you want to lay it down as though it's some universal law that violence never works, I'm going to call that out as absurd.
I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that the government system that oversaw the Holomodor was one with a conscience? As someone who lives in a former Soviet satellite state, I can ensure you they didn't do this out of the kindness of their hearts, they did it because they collapsed under their own incompetence. And if Cuba is the standard you have for quality of life, I feel sorry for you.
Huh, and here I thought they did it because peaceful protests were just so darn effective.
First off, Cuba's quality of life is greatly impacted by the US embargo. Secondly, even with the embargo Cuba's quality of life greatly improved compared to what it had before. If the standard you have for quality of life is the Batista gangster state, I feel sorry for you.
Funny how you chauvanists always try to compare the quality of life in former colonies to that of the imperial core as if it's some kind of point in your favor. If you do an actually fair comparison by looking at what came before, Castro was a massive improvement over Batista, the PRC was a massive improvement over the ROC, and the USSR was a massive improvement over the tsar.
I'm comparing what our lives are here under democratic rule here in my country to what they were under the single party communist system. And we have no desire to go back. The communists will never win another election here, and for good reason. If you have to force your system of government on the population at gunpoint, it's not anything to be proud of.
And again, if you want to argue that's true in certain situations, then knock yourself out. Don't try to propose it as some universal law or dismiss objective quality of life improvements in other countries.
I'm only arguing based on the real world examples presented on each side of the argument to date.
Just so long as you arbitrarily exclude Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, and the many, many other cases where the CIA overthrew peaceful, democratically elected leaders who went against their economic interests, while also blaming countries for things outside of their control, and refusing to consider changes in quality of life and insist that every former colony be compared to the nations that stole/are stealing their wealth and resources.
I think you are making my point for me. Violent revolutions are often if not usually hijacked and perverted by violent parties to achieve their own ends, which almost never line up with the needs of the actual citizens of the territory.
I have no idea how showing a bunch of peaceful movements that got slaughtered "makes your point for you."
It looks to me like you are listing violent revolutions.
"Violent revolutions" like when Mossadegh was democratically elected? Or Jacobo Árbenz, again, being democratically elected?
You are making my point for me. Westerners are so ignorant of the histories of these countries that it doesn't matter how peaceful they are. You'll just assume that they're violent based on nothing. How are you supposed to win public support when the public doesn't know you exist, and doesn't care if you live or die?
You were talking about the CIA overthrows of said leaders. All were violent revolutions. Including the 2 you list.
Either you're just ignorant and doubling down to try to cover for that, or you have an incredibly low standard for what counts as "violent revolution" to the point that there's no reason to listen to anything you say, because evidently voting for a peaceful leader is a "violent revolution."
Not sure who you're trying to fool, or if you're just utterly delusional. Par for the course for an anti-communist either way tbh.
Disavow the violence all you want, and indeed doing so is very much the role of the non-violent sect of the movement, but you need the threat of violence to succeed, that's just the reality. The Civil Rights movement never would have succeeded without the Black Panthers. The LGBTQ+ movement needed the Stonewall Riots.
Well, I'm sure they'll bury you on your moral high ground while they install countless systems to disenfranchise you and everyone you know. But I'm sure if you just ask them kindly not to do that, it'll all work itself out.
And they'll bury you in the despotic regime your violence creates.
Child, this is not the place for you. Go back to l/memes