Peaceful Protest
2020-01-26
Peaceful protest is held, without question, as a virtuous activity. It’s how people "make their voice heard", and nobody gets hurt in the process. It’s seen as civilized, responsible, and good. It’s commonly portrayed as the only legitimate way to demand change.
I’ve recently started to question these premises, and want to lay out the historical and logical processes that started that skepticism.
How did peaceful protest start
Peaceful protest is fairly new - for most of human history, if a people truly wanted their government to do something, they’d demand it, or have a revolution so that a new leader can properly address their concerns. If you look over that link, every single one refers to times where real people fought their leaders and died, for a cause they believed to be paramount. These were not political conflicts by one ruler against another, for insulting some family member - these were genuine political grievances that affected real people’s lives.
Of course, "protest" is not necessarily new; the concept of people disobeying their government out of protest has existed for some time. However, for most of history, if people disobeyed, the government would use violence against them until they did obey. This situation leads, quite obviously, to rebellions. Any disloyalty amongst the citizenry turns into a rebellion. Therefore, if you disagree with the king on any point, you might be rebellious. This notion is important, because it’s so different from what we (in a relatively free society) are used to. To us, we can think, speak, vote, and organize in ways that are completely contrary to what our government wishes, and the government can’t do a thing about it. Usually.
Non-violent protest only became a regular feature of the political landscape during the British empire, which (for all its faults in the handling of the American colonies) really did try to create a more free world (see Aside 1). British citizens could, in limited cases, voice their disagreement with the king or the state church. Laws needed to exist which restrain the government from dominating its people, structures had to be in place which explicitly protected people’s rights to freely speak against the wish of their leaders.
It doesn’t take too long of a stern glance around the world today to note that peaceful protest doesn’t exist everywhere; the Arab Spring threw into sharp relief that not every society is structurally prepared for that. The only two outcomes, thusfar, of the Arab Spring have been either revolutionary war (as in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt), or being brutally suppressed by the government (Bahrain, Egypt again). The only "success" story of the Arab Spring is arguably Tunisia, which overthrew its government and made a constitution. Or have a look at Sudan, Ukraine (who is now being forcibly invaded by Russia), or Tajikistan.
That’s what we in the industry would call "mixed results".
I’m sure that objectors will be quick to note that these protests-that-had-to-turn-into-revolutions only seem to occur in Africa and west/central Asia. But that’s part of my point - peaceful protest doesn’t work everywhere. You need a political system which explicitly carves out a limited government which cannot act against its people. Without that (or, sometimes, even the government will use violence against its people, who may need to use violence in return.
When to use peaceful protest
So given what we understand about the tenuous nature of peaceful protest, what does it aim to do? By its very definition, it’s impossible for a peaceful protest to force anyone to do anything. Peaceful protest’s only goal is to have someone else use force on your behalf to enact change that you desire. The only reason leaders stepped down during the Arab Spring is because their council or military (which they required support from) pushed them out.
Many people point to the American Civil Rights (for black americans) movement as another example. Peaceful protest such as Birmingham and Selma served to illustrate that these black Americans had to live under miserably racist conditions every day of their lives - the protest’s goal was to put media spotlight on this situation, and force the majority of Americans to consider whether they thought this is what freedom looked like. Blacks had no chance of revolution or violent overthrow - they did not (and still don’t) constitute enough of the population to be able to support a violent uprising that could cordon off any part of the United States for themselves. So if you can’t realistically fight your way to freedom, you need someone else to fight. In this case, they had to convince the majority that the situation was immoral and unconstitutional, and that black Americans required help. (See Aside 2 about black militarism).
It’s worth repeating, Peaceful protest’s only goal is to have someone else use force.
When peaceful protest makes no sense
Peaceful protest should be questioned as a tactic when the protestors are already a majority. If a majority of people demand action, and their vote has so far not worked, peaceful protest is pointless. Peaceful protest is a demonstration of how many people want something, which may lead to someone else forcing the leadership to change course (or risk sinking the ship for everyone in power). But in these cases, the vote should have already have established how many people want something. Voting is, by its nature, where the populace gives its true and honest opinion on how they should be governed. What could peaceful protest possibly accomplish that voting does not?
If the political system doesn’t reflect the majority’s will by the process of voting, peaceful protest won’t help.
For instance, in Hong Kong an electoral landslide after years of continuous and iconic protests has still not resulted in China ceding even an inch of ground to the protestors. What is left? A vast majority of Hong Kong people have made it extremely clear, for years, what they want. China has not given it to them. Negotiations have failed.
So violence is good?
Initially I wasn’t going to include this section, because I didn’t want this whole thing to be a teatise on revolution. The scope of this piece is peaceful protest, not "How To Overthrow An Empire And Look Good While Doing It". The only purpose was to illustrate that peaceful protest is a tool, not to be universally applied. However, after re-reading it, I came to the conclusion that many would read it and start to think that this was some kind of call for violence, specifically that Bernie bros or Antifa assholes would try to use this logic to justify why they’re not peaceful. Those people have proven that they don’t need a justification for violence, but at the very least I want to make it clear that if they start saying these things, the original author included a section explicitly clarifying why they’re idiots.
No, violence is generally a poor idea. Very often the people who agitate for violent revolution are profoundly unfit to carry it out, they want other people to fight for them. It’s not all that different from the peaceful protests - hoping someone else does your bidding. How many people seethe online with revolutionary bile, but who have never been in a fight or held a gun?
Violent rebellion, when done wrong, usually cements the power of the government that is being fought against. It gives license for the government to crack down on any dissident, and usually provides sympathy for the government by regular folk who otherwise wanted to see it gone. After all, would you rather have Tsar Nicholas, or Lenin? Given a choice of two bad options, most people would probably go with the lesser of two evils.
And let’s be frank, violent rebels are usually not savory people. Propaganda may paint successful rebellions as righteous knights standing up to a moustache-twirling kingpin, but usually rebels are coarse people who only know the language of violence to start with. Very rarely do people like Branch Davidians have to stand up to a government power. Most rebels, if given power, would establish just as bad a government as the one they fought against.
Asides
1: The British were almost solely responsible for taking legal action against the concept of slavery, something that had existed since the dawn of humankind. British justices and thinkers were also largely responsible for judicial principles that today we consider core to any fair system of law, such as Blackstone’s Ratio, Habeas Corpus, and Right to silence (what we in America would refer to as the 5th amendment). American law directly descends from British Common Law, and mostly just extends the power of the people over the government. But the underpinnings of "freedom" as we currently conceive it, are an entirely British political phenomenon. Just ask the various French Revolutionaries if they thought their opponents should be granted equal rights.
2: Black militarism had a fatalistic outlook on the generosity of most Americans towards black Americans. They did not expect that peaceful protest would result in anything more than televised brutality of blacks for the majority to cheer during the evening news. The main flaw of black militarism (aside from their overtly black supremacist and genocidal nature) was believing their own propaganda, that regular Americans could never be convinced that black Americans were being unconstitutionally oppressed by the government. The big failure of black militants was inability to distinguish between government power, regular Americans at large, and the political divides in their own country. They viewed the world in the way a child might view it; they saw "white people" as anyone who wasn’t black, and anyone who wasn’t black must be complicit in oppressing black people.
