[yellow, a finger up, looking smug]
The answer to oppression is NEVER violence
Turn the other cheek
Pacifism always wins
You could earn rights by asking nicely instead
[yellow, proudly showing us a huge book]
Don’t believe me?
Open a history book!
[yellow, looking frustrated as they are shuffling through the book’s pages]
Ok so…
Uhm…
Not this page…
Wait…
The next one…
Awkward…
Another…
Yeah but…
For sure this time…
[yellow, sweating, protecting their book, a hand raised towards us]
Can you stop looking?
You’re being rude
That’s my book
https://thebad.website/comic/please_resist_responsibly
Why not both?? Brought to you by a radical flank theorist.
Imagine a group of people that is perceived as violent agitators. Lets assume they have demonstrated that they will escalate their violence if their demands aren’t met. However, the people in power do not want to negotiate with terrorists, do not want to legitimize violence and their only answer to it is oppression. Now imagine a second group of people that has adjacent demands but obeys to non-violence principles and to methods generally regarded as civil disobedience. This second group will point at the violent radicals and position themselves as a reasonable alternative. The people in power will see them as a way out of the violence and will be willing to negotiate with them.
Overall, the first group might not get all it wanted, but there will be compromise and change towards their demands.
This can only work with people in power who eventually, bottom down, have a conscience and semblance of ethics. Dictators don’t care about repressing their own people and will avoid the false dichotomy by lumping both groups together and send them to prison camps.
In practice it is also really hard to navigate as the opposition to the people in power is de facto divided, creating double opportunities to tank each group with various techniques like media manipulation, attacking leadership with lawsuits, blocking funding etc.
In an examination of 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns, between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent campaigns achieve partial or full success at twice the rate of violent campaigns
Here, I opened the book (research paper) for you. and look! violence was involved in the successful outcomes!
especially in light of the enduring violent insurgencies occurring in some of the same countries—begs systematic investigation.
In many cases, both nonviolent and violent campaigns exist simultaneously among different competing groups.
you can’t isolate the non-violent campaigns from the violent campaigns in such an analysis, they’re part of the same environment.
I’ll also note that the research paper doesnt clearly identify how they generated their numbers. the underlying dataset they used is enitrely absent. so we can’t make any inferences on how well they actually isolated and calculated their values.
in short: doesnt show its work.
The first quote you pulled requires the preceding sentence for context.
Despite these assumptions, from 2000 to 2006 organized civilian populations successfully employed nonviolent methods including boycotts, strikes, protests, and organized noncooperation to challenge entrenched power and exact political concessions in Serbia (2000), Madagascar (2002), Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004–05), Lebanon (2005), and Nepal (2006). The success of these nonviolent campaigns—especially in light of the enduring violent insurgencies occurring in some of the same countries—begs systematic investigation.
The second quote you pulled merely precedes an explanation of how the authors attempted to address the difficulty of separating violent campaigns from nonviolent campaigns.
In many cases, both nonviolent and violent campaigns exist simultaneously among different competing groups… To address these difficulties, we established some standards of inclusion for each of these categories. The list of nonviolent campaigns was initially gathered from an extensive review of the literature on nonviolent conflict and social movements. Then we corroborated these data using multiple sources, including encyclopedias, case studies, and a comprehensive bibliography on nonviolent civil resistance by April Carter, Howard Clark, and Michael Randle. Finally, the cases were circulated among experts in nonviolent conflict who were asked to assess whether the cases were appropriately characterized as major nonviolent conflicts, and also which notable conflicts had been omitted. Where the experts suggested additional cases, the same corroboration method was used. The resultant data set includes major resistance campaigns that are primarily or entirely nonviolent.
And none of what they did addresses the root cause of the problem. that you can’t take two campaigns in the same ‘region’ and separate out the impact.
Since they didnt provide the actual data they analyzed nothing they said has any value or merit.
Edit: Let me make this simple for you
To estimate the effects of each independent variable on the likelihood of cam- paign success, we employed multinomial logistic regression (MLR), which compares the probabilities that different independent variables will result in each respective outcome: success, limited success, or failure.
Even the math they used to generate their results is incorrect. two campaigns (one non-violent, one violent) in the same political sphere are not independent variables.
I don’t want to say about the frequency or which way is more effective, but there have been nonviolent revolutions. Wikipedia even has a page about it. It took me only a few seconds of searching to find it.
So, the comic author is mocking people who make conclusions without actually looking at the data, and meanwhile, they seem to have written the comic making the opposite conclusion ironically without actually looking at the data, either.
It would be so nice if things were always one way or always another way, and people love to assume that their common sense and existing knowledge will be enough to make conclusions, but the comic is right in that regard. If you tell other people your conclusions but you haven’t done the research, you really do open yourself up to looking foolish… Not that it seems like most people care about that these days.
So, you guys going to take out your child rapist leader now?
No, because Americans are actual pussies.
What country do you live in?
If it’s anywhere near the west, odds on their leader is either already fascist or facing serious competition in the polls from one.
What’s stopping YOU?
Public Education in the US LOVES Martin Luther King Jr.
Barely ever any mention of Malcom X.
I hold that nobody would’ve listened to MLK if the alternative wasn’t Malcom’s approach.
The Black Panthers did more to advance gun control laws than any “radical left hippie kumbaya” ever did. Let minorities have the same freedoms and suddenly things need to be toned down for everybody.
I swear half of lemmings are yellow guy
I’d say a full 100% of us are considering both guys are yellow guy.
The real reason MLK Jr is posthumously a hero.
I too would have an easier time achieving major changes through non violent means if I had my jojo stand Malcom X standing menacingly out of sight behind me at all times threatening more violence and more uprisings if my peaceful demands were not met.
