Violence, Non-violence, and Misinformation

[@CriBolouf]

It's only partially relevant, but I once dealt with a person who was absolutely convinced that aircraft avionics were calibrated according to a flat earth model. So, after arguing with him for quite some time about how that would result in a large amount of air disasters, I got him a copy of the FAA's avionics calibration manual. It was a massive tome, and the guy said "Well I'm not going to read all of that" and I'm like "You could literally read the first few chapters and realize how wrong you are", so a few days later he tells me he read it and that he had highlighted where his point was proven, so I, of course, being the fool I am was kind of curious thinking maybe I was wrong all along, so I'm looking through the highlighted text and see nothing that supports his prior claim. So I'm like "Can you elaborate?" and he goes "See where it mentions the 'great circle'" and I'm like "Yeah, that's part of how in spherical space you can connect two points by making them two points on a circle that is perpendicular to the surface of the sphere...that's a big part of avionics"...and he goes "No, the 'great circle' is a term that describes flat earth...it's a circle, not a sphere." it was at this point I realized that the problem with 'do your own research' people is that they lack the comprehension skills to actually DO their own research.

[@LouigiVerona]

OMG, this is a very relatable story

[@JJ-qo7th]

It wasn't that he lacked the comprehension skills. It's that he was already ideologically committed. Any reason to keep believing, no matter how flimsy, will be used to support the conspiracy. They will look at a tool worth tens of thousands of dollars reporting an angular drift of 15 degrees an hour, as you would expect on a globe, and say, "It must be broken." It's not comprehension; it's obstinacy.

[@Ketowski]

@@JJ-qo7th Right, obstinacy. Very familiar.

[@ivanljujic4128]

This is also why it's important to have a solid foundation of education. Had he known what a great circle means from a geography class, this wouldn't have happened (well, maybe it would, depending on how willing or unwilling he would be to admit he was wrong - due to ego)

[@JJ-qo7th]

@ivanljujic4128 I watched a flerfer declare flight schedules fake because flerf would have made them impossible. "I don't think these flights are real. They're just there to keep guys like me from figuring this stuff out." Evidence against their conspiracy is just proof of a deeper conspiracy with these people.

[@Golbleen]

The thing is, the reason for the strong counterreaction to nonviolence is that in liberal society, nonviolence is widely encouraged in scenarios where it is *ineffective*, and violence is condemned in scenarios where it is effective.

[@Eight4E]

Now that's a good thought.

[@dragonslair951167]

Yeah, if we wait to use any form of violence until huge swathes of America are already in open rebellion, then that day of open rebellion will likely never come. Violent revolutions happen in increments, not all at once.

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

YES. THIS IS THE KEY. There is what I call "the cult of non-violence" in academia today and I spent the latter half of my time in college pushing back against following an internship at the USIP. There are good reasons for the neoliberal world order heavily invested in the status quo to champion non-violent resistance - it's not because it's the most effective.

[@olnnn]

​@@fuzzydunlop7928 Yeah they tend to want to push a neutered version of it that mostly involves stuff that can be ignored or easily weathered like non-disruptive protest marches, political campaigning etc. Strikes, blockading roads, clogging up the justice system, and many other things are also "non-violent" but that's not always what people associate with non-violent protest.

[@HM-rz8nv]

@@fuzzydunlop7928 The cult of non-violence is a good way of putting it. It's designed to make any potential movement submit to the authority and legal violence of a state, but framing any violent resistance against the state as "wrong". The cult of non-violence goes hand in hand with the cult of liberal-chauvinism. Violent resistance against liberal regimes is seen as "extra wrong", because liberals assume that a process of voting automatically means the tools for change are built in. They utterly ignore the fact that the process of voting in liberal societies is controlled by corporate political interest. The policies and candidates put forth is only an overton window of policies that the ruling class will allow. In spite of this, liberals will present this model as a system that is "superior" to any other form of government, to the point of imperialist hubris, and suggesting it should be enforced in other countries through regime change - ironically, a very violent act. So the "cult of non-violence", legitimizes the violence of capitalist liberal states and it rarely goes challenged, while framing violence against it as "unethical".

[@nw42]

Honestly, (re)igniting public discourse around the relative effectiveness of various resistance tactics may be one of the most valuable things Mangioni (allegedly) accomplished. I think we’re going to need a lot of resistance movements in the coming years, and these discussions are like a crash course for young activists.

[@Aster-v8j]

I feel like this would have been the perfect vid to describe how French revolution tripped at the finish line. A magnification of mistakes and a deep misunderstanding of collectivism outside of authoritarian regimes. You know trying to maintain an org while haters going to hate using DARVO and polarizing "choices"

[@jgaffney567]

@@nw42 it only rekindles a romantic notion that is akin to gun ownership and the second amendment, This romantic notion that guns will over throw despots,,,,not in today's hi tech world,,,thr only thing thst will work comes from a United people just as the study indicate

[@kayakMike1000]

​@@Aster-v8j the French revolution tripped well before the finish line. Atrocities committed by revolutionaries included the execution of thousands of people, including members of the clergy, aristocrats, and political opponents.

[@silentconversationswithima3750]

My theory is that the people who misinterpreted the raw data didn't read the key. They looked at 0 and thought it meant "no violence," so 1 must mean "yes violence."

[@LouigiVerona]

This! That's what I thought immediately when I saw that 0 means violence in their data set

[@AdobadoFantastico]

This is probably what happened. Unintuitive labeling is common across all use cases of spreadsheets.

[@GSBarlev]

Not to shift the blame, but this is why Enums beat lookup tables.

[@aazhie]

I heard 0 and thought that meant non violent for a moment until Rebecca said otherwise!

[@IneffabLeigh]

Oh god you're probably right

[@knate44]

There's this magical term called "diversity of tactics" I think people are probably going to have to become familiar with

[@aenorist2431]

If Tactic A only works because Tactic B exists - Tactic A cannot be said to work better than Tactic B.

[@cerumen]

@@aenorist2431so given that we don’t have very good data about this issue, that would indicate we should probably embrace a wide diversity of tactics, bc we don’t know which tactics are necessary or contingent (And keep collecting and analysing more data)

[@clydesimkins6129]

Non violence is great, but it’s better to also know how to fight? Pretty much the gist? And, while that’s great, just how prepared are we to understand peaceful tactics, and how prone are we to just being lazy and going out and getting a gun and not learning how to handle a weapon? Yeah, the equation is more complex, for sure.

[@EdwardLindon]

​@@aenorist2431The transition from the physics lab to, like, the real world is gonna be harrrrrrrrd...

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

​@clydesimkins6129 What is "justice" when the "system" is not for liberty? Acting as if it is, is but a poor judgment in heaven.

[@NQR-9000]

It's maybe because I'm a French speaking Belgian, but I feel that that way of separate violent and non-violent means isn't that significant here in continental Europe, and I'm starting to think that the problem in English speaking countries (that all have the notable characteristic of not having been invaded and occupied in recent history) is that they have developed some sort of "romanticisms" of both violence and non-violence, while the reality is as Rebecca said many times, far messier. My wisdom as someone who is member of not one but two unions for the same job, had been in many, many protests (the latest was this very morning!), some ending in confrontation with the police, and took part in at least as many strikes, is that the real point is that you are treated according to the level of nuisance you are able to unleash when you are unhappy. It can be by not working, it can be by blocking the street, it can be by just breaking the public image your country or your company is trying to maintain, but it's also can be by burning things and assaulting people, if needed. The question is always : what means of pressure do I have, and how can I acquire a stronger one?

[@auldthymer]

Thank you. I don't often get to hear from people with first-hand experience.

[@nousersnamesleft]

This is the civil rights movement in the US.

[@warheadsnation]

@@nousersnamesleft It needed both Dr. King (good cop) and Malcolm X (bad cop) to create a preferable path for Whites.

[@nell__byte]

On the one hand, I don't think you're necessarily wrong about the attitudes towards violence and non-violence held by white English-speaking people in English-speaking Global North nations. On the other hand, it's a pretty massive generalization to suggest that everyone in those countries does not have direct experience with the impact of violent or non-violent resistance (or just the impact of violence in general). In the US at least, marginalized communities ranging from Black to Indigenous to Disabled to LGBTQ have all made use of non-violent protest to successfully advocate for themselves and gain significant civil rights protections. As a disabled queer person, I can promise you that we are deeply familiar with the fact that non-violent protest and civil disobedience are only non-violent in terms of their resistance to hostile aspects of the society we live in. The response and treatment of civil resistors is often very violent and harsh, and the non-violent protest themselves may be physically peaceful, but are often quite raucous at the same time. Non-violent protest is hardly a zen affair, and I sometimes think that people misinterpret the word non-violent/peaceful protest by expecting these protests to be very quiet and passive, when they are anything but, as you've described. I want to make clear that I am not expecting you, as a Belgian person, to be intimately familiar with the history of civil protest and disobedience in the US, or any other English-speaking Global North nation. At the same time, if you're going to propose or make blanket observations like the ones you make here, there is some responsibility on your part to look into the history of the experience of marginalized communities and their history of civil resistance in the countries you're making these remarks about.

[@elisebrown5157]

Jury nullification on the Luigi Mangioni case would be a good example of civil resistance, right?

[@RebeccaWatson]

Yes!

[@ACAB.forcutie]

The news has not been reporting on the civil resistance that's been going on around the country

[@thesirz3]

Remember, never mention jury nullification in a courtroom. Say you'll follow the law. Say as little as possible in jury selection. In deliberations, come up with some reason the evidence is confusing or insufficient. Hang on the phrase "reasonable doubt" in your arguments to the jury. Never mention jury nullification or anything that could hint that's what you're doing. Never ask anyone to do it, just keep giving them excuses to latch on to.

[@sherlockwho5714]

Yes, but do you want to set a precedent for the justification of murder? Keeping in mind many Christians feel as you do about Drs who perform abortions. You may disagree with them but it doesn't change what they believe. This isn't to say violence is bad, it certainly has been able to make changes. The problem is when there is no organization ready to make the change and take control. Without organizing and building a group we could have many unalived CEOs and find nothing changed except for their security. Even if we successfully revolted and overthrew the government with a civil war, we will be left with potentially a fractured America as different groups fight to fill the vacuum. So while I can understand the appeal of violence, I also can imagine what that means. It means civilians being buried, it means people waking up in the middle of the night thinking they were back in the war. I based these opinions on hearing my Papa in the middle of the night. He played baseball games on the radio at night because it would apparently help him remember he was home not in the heart of Europe. So if we are going to put people through that then we need to be ready to bring order quickly and have enough people supporting us that we can keep this country together. If not well I personally don't want to end up like Libya.

[@aenorist2431]

Once you are in the jury, you can totally say jury nullification (maybe not use the actual term, but describe the context). You can, once selected and approved, not be held liable for anything you do - and as they can't ask you about it without telling you it exists, you can't have been lured into perjury either. Once you are on the jury and deliberating - just explain to the other jurors why you are letting the accused walk, and how its safe to do so.

[@fiercerodent]

I feel strongly compelled to not read the data and just accept this video as an authoritative source.

[@RebeccaWatson]

DAMMIT

[@markthesecond3380]

I know it's just a joke, but I wanted adhere to the spirit of the video. So, I went and checked the source myself. I downloaded the spreadsheet, imported it into google sheets (I don't have excel installed), and searched for the rows shown in the video. As far as I can tell, everything looks accurate and I didn't see anything that would contradict this video. 👍

[@D.S69]

​@@RebeccaWatsonHahaha 🤣

[@nw42]

@@markthesecond3380This is exactly why the only authorities I trust are pseudonymous KZbin commenters!

[@rainbowkrampus]

@@markthesecond3380 I feel strongly compelled to not read the data and just accept this comment as an authoritative source.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

Their follow up book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Should Know talks extensively about the 3.5% rule. Basically, when a measure becomes a target, is ceases being useful as a measure, as the old adage goes. If you aim for 3.5% you can get there without doing the things that you need to do to actually succeed. 3.5% is a measure of the amount of a population you need under typical circumstances, but that figure depends on doing the organizing work needed to get there, not other, less effective, methods like advertising or money.

[@cerumen]

Like confusing the map for the territory, right? Or…confusing the shortest straight path between 2 points on a map, for the way to traverse them. Sure there’s a better idiom for this.

[@silverXnoise]

That’s a great nugget of info. Pretty straightforward example of how correlation =/= causation, with a handy little explanation built in.

[@rdklkje13]

Another part of the problem is that the original research also showed that the 3.5% in active resistance need the passive support of a majority of the general population. This is something that many activists, hoping to use these findings as a guide, if not a recipe, have chosen to ignore. Or never even learnt because they didn't bother to actually understand the point before going around telling others about the 3.5%. Sigh. Much of the undeserved criticism of this work also comes from a (wilful) misunderstanding of Chenoweth et al.'s definition of non-violence. Super pacifists have derided them for counting campaigns with >0 deaths as non-violent. While more impatient types have looked for excuses to be violent, since that's so much easier than practicing non-violence, and claimed that non-violent campaigns have _only_ worked because of violent flanks, so we may as well skip the non-violent part....

[@incalescent9378]

Follow-up question: how many economists should understand this before this is understood in Economy?

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

@incalescent9378 You see this issue in baseball too. When batting average was the most important metric, the players with a high on base percentage were undervalued. So the metric switched and players who got on first but never hit for power were overvalued, so OPS (which adds in a power metric) became more important. OPS is still important, but you can have a high OPS with a poor balance between different parts of the stat and still be overvalued. Right now, look for a player who, when watching them play, is obviously better than their WAR (wins above replacement). Whatever they do well will be part of the next big stat.

[@unicornpower]

Thought the thumbnail said "why you're wrong, gremlin"

[@RebeccaWatson]

Gremlins are never wrong! Murray Futterman had it coming.

[@MarcillaSmith]

​@@RebeccaWatsonma'am, respectfully, what nonviolent resistance movement gave your nation its independence?

[@Purplefoxsoul]

@MarcillaSmith did you watch the entire video and listen to what was being said?

[@philuribe7863]

@@MarcillaSmithif you watched the video you'd know that your question is besides the point.

[@wh44]

@@MarcillaSmith Ma'am, respectfully, watch videos before commenting on them.

[@hpoz222]

once again nuance is important; "nothing but violence works" is just as naive as "never do violence or anything actually disruptive to capital"

[@christopherbedford9897]

Just as when scientists say "We don't know everything" flat earthers hear "We know nothing"

[@whatifiputsomethingsilly]

The problem is that narratives like this prevent the organized preparation of a militant force that specifically determined the success of the Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, etc. Instead it directs our efforts into twenty different "civil resistance" movements that achieve nothing, because they are disparate and not a centralized, militant force. Instead of trying to build political and military power outside of the existing appratuses, it gives no answer, doesn't conclude on a definite point, and will only end up reproducing the tendency to politically tail the Democratic Party that has led us to this current reactionary backslide. Vacillation and indefiniteness are not critical thinking, research must arrive at a practical conclusion to be practically useful and actually testable in terms of action. What this meandering does is, at best, partial theoretical recognition and practical ignorance. No one who watches these videos or reads these papers is even a step closer to achieving political change, because they don't have a clear practical direction that is in any way different from what we have before this, only the same thing in new words. This liberal idea of how we all need to "come together" is ahistorical and amounts at most to cowardice. The problem with Mangioni's action was that it was disorganized and singular, not a strategic plan to build up a force to struggle against the economic and political order, but a single execution. The common thread underlying those mysterious outlyer cases of successful violent revolution is the Leninist strategy of organizing revolution adapted to particular conditions. We can't bury our heads in the sand about that. Aside from the practical weakness, the research is rooted in metaphysical errors so fundamentally that it's hard to explain the analytical issues without going on endlessly, but I'll try if anyone wants elaboration.

[@wadejohnson3051]

So what will we do now because right now it looks like nothing

[@warheadsnation]

@@wadejohnson3051 We've never had a General Strike in America before.

[@badabing3391]

for practical purposes, the former actually gets more done than the latter

[@alarcon99]

That’s why “Do your own research “ only works if you actually know how to, you know, research 😂

[@pablodelsegundo9502]

Also why the dismantling of critical thinking and glorification of ignorance will destroy us as a species.

[@MrSupersmash93]

Also the reason I look up left wing videos like these to learn.

[@blacksmith67]

Not reading stuff drives me insane. People will argue about something they hold an absolutely belief in and not once ever go to the source. I was fact checking people back in the days where my search involved index cards that lead to physical books and journals. Now there is absolutely zero excuse to not, say, read the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

[@NaturalBornQuiller]

@@blacksmith67 Try and show them the source and the will REFUSE to even glance in it's direction

[@wentshow]

And you're not lazy and dishonest enough to claim you did the research when you didn't.

[@YoutubeUserAnon]

I feel like people oversimplify a lot of what happens with efforts to push for change. MLK and Malcom X were not enemies and it is hard to separate their impact. The biggest impact occurred during a complicated president's tenure manipulating congress. LBJ worked with MLK plenty but LBJ also viewed the push for civil rights legislation as an urgent matter to prevent uprising.

[@noconsent]

the civil rights act passing was because MLK Jr was shot to death and their was going to be a boiling over if the state didn't act. mlk jr getting killed seems pretty violent...

[@godemperormeow8591]

Malcom X just talked a lot of crap, did nothing for civil rights, and was being given death threats from “HIS” goofy ahh religion. The dude is a clown.

[@ubik5453]

The State will either squash resistance or past some reforms to calm down the resistance to re-legitimize in order to give "false change." The State will also find other subtle ways to suppress the resistance.

[@andreabrown4541]

With respect to LBJ, could be true but only with respect to the Fair Housing Act. Any discussions about Dr. King and Malcolm X, are even to this day wildly and surprisingly conjectural.

[@Macrochenia]

The attempt to paint MLK and Malcolm X as enemies was actually an organized effort on the part of the FBI in order to weaken the Civil Rights Movement.

[@Sky-bx9mn]

Seeing a lot of comments like, "Why did the researchers overlook and ignore this point? It's not like these videos are brief summaries of much lengthier research. Clearly if a concept or caveat were addressed by the researchers, it would be here, in this 15-minute video."

[@RebeccaWatson]

💀

[@ineednochannelyoutube2651]

What is the belief that these people are defending? People seem to really hold on against evidence and make wild conclusions like this if there is a belief that they feel they need to strongly defend, and the end result of this refutation of the effectiveness of the idea that civil disobedience works is that they think that there can only be violent revolution. Why do they so badly want it? I would be violent if I genuinely thought it would change things, but I understand that civil disobedience works so I'm not, but there's so many who want to reject that. Furthermore, there isn't nearly as many political as there are pro-violence comments so it's not that they have committed acts of violence that might be futile.

[@ruthspanos2532]

@@ineednochannelyoutube2651Based on 0 evidence…there’s someone they trust who is telling them that only violence works. In my imagination, a commenter was at their local militia meeting and their leader did a quick google search when they asked about nonviolent alternatives.

[@mikekeenan8450]

​@@ineednochannelyoutube2651 I'm guessing at least some of them are accelerationists.

[@quasinfinity]

​@@ineednochannelyoutube2651​ 👏 My best guess is desire for lack of change. Drastic change is scary, I can't fault anyone for wanting to avoid it

[@lasharael]

13:05 I want to offer the alternative explanation that people simply misunderstood the Boolean values. I bring this up because I did initially. Full disclosure, this is my first time interacting with any of this information. I'm a regular watching Rebecca's videos, but I haven't yet watched the other videos on this topic, and this was my first time hearing that this book existed. Rebecca described the data legend as saying 0 = v and 1 = non-v. When she said the two conflicts in the dataset had values of 0, I had to do a doubletake because I immediately misunderstood 0 as denoting non-v. I had to rewind and listen to her describe the legend again to realize I had it mixed up. This isn't Rebecca's fault. There was no lack of clarity in her description. Nor was it the data's fault, for the same reason. 0 = v and 1 = non-v just doesn't seem to make casual intuitive sense, even though there's no objective reason why that should be the case. If a lay reader's examination of the data was cursory, it could have been a simple enough misunderstanding to make.

[@ourmobilehomemakeover662]

Fair point. I did a mnemonic in my head that “violence is easy, non-violence takes more effort” in order for 0=v, 1=nv to make sense.

[@sarahmihuc3993]

Same - if someone experienced with certain kinds of big data research sees this, they will most likely assume 0=false=non-violent. Although, once she explained it, it also makes sense as in other areas of research, 0 is typically "not the outcome of interest" and 1 is "outcome of interest", here being non-violence (which is just confusing because it has negation inside of it). Also, ideally any good researcher or data scientist who would make the 0=false assumption should also know to look for the data dictionary and verify... But that doesn't always happen and you're very right that this may be the source of the confusion. (I'd also be interested to see how this belief/info is spreading online, but that's more of a research project on its own assuming no one has looked yet at whatever influencer or movement these people are getting their info from.)

[@douglasmcstewart]

I did the same double take on the data. My brain went to 0 means no violence and 1 means violence. I had to rewind for explanation of the specs.

[@GSBarlev]

All spreadsheet programs I'm aware of allow you to code in dropdowns with lists of valid values, thus saving people from needing to consult a numeric key. This is an excellent case study in why that feature is important.

[@neilbiggs1353]

@@sarahmihuc3993 Mathematically, I feel like taking the base 10 log of the number of fatalities attributable to the resistance movement would be a better field. It would take the opinion part out of it, and also maybe give a way to filter the data by how widespread and severe the violence was. For non-mathematicians, the log function would give an order of magnitude, so 10-99 casualties would be 1.xx, 100-999 would be 2.xx etc

[@toleyk]

I appreciate that you are willing to revisit a topic, look for new information, and challenge points made in your previous videos.

[@DahVoozel]

Accelerationists hate her for this one simple trick (checking the source material.)

[@rainbowkrampus]

You'll Be Shocked by What She Did!

[@justcommenting4981]

Didn't really deboonk accelerationism tho

[@badabing3391]

the nonviolent protests will surely make the democrats stop supporting genocide

[@rainbowkrampus]

@@justcommenting4981 Oh that's easy. It's a stupid baby "ideology" for overly privileged losers who have no concern for anyone but themselves. Same thing goes for antinatalism. These aren't ideologies. They're the incoherent gibberish of people who need to go to therapy.

[@MK_ULTRA420]

As an Accelerationist, we're winning so hard it's becoming boring 😂

[@asdffdsaasdf12345678]

While I also agree with the general point here and think this research is great having read this book myself, there is one counterargument I saw in the previous video's comments that did give me pause. Have technological changes made nonviolence less effective? It referenced a video from the KZbinr Innuendo Studios called the Ghandi Trap, which argued that misinformation within our current media landscape is a major reason why Black Lives Matter and other contemporary mostly nonviolent protests are less effective than those in previous generations. With Fox News and online misinformation, including people like Andy Ngo claiming that a thrown milkshake was cement, peaceful protests can be more easily vilified than before while the police violence is similarly minimized to that audience. Combine this with the "both sides" narrative of mainstream media that just helped get Trump reelected, and you have the recipe for nonviolent resistance to failure because it is too easily vilified by misinformation. A related issue was raised by sociologist Zeynep Tufekci in her book Twitter and Tear Gas, that social media allows groups like BLM or the Arab Spring to organize more quickly but at the same time prevents them from developing the solid support networks that fueled real change in previous successful movements, thus making them extremely fragile.

[@ilzuburgname1973]

not that the concerns in this comment are wrong per se, but shitty news hosts spreading misinformation is a problem as old as the news.

[@gaymer2316]

Right I think a better question is not whether civil resistance works (more often than not, on average, etc.), but whether it’s working for us right now.

[@alicec1533]

That technological innovations can increases the effective capacity of individuals and minorities to resist (violently or nonviolently), should also be considered. That may skew in favour of effective use of violent tactics by minorities/individuals. I haven't read the book (so I won't speak to its research.) But I agree with you that technology should play a part in evaluating case studies into the present. For instance, the use of 3d printed guns by insurgents in Myanmar is an interesting development.

[@beautyandgrace7997]

I saw that comment too and was hoping she’d bring it up. One part of that comment was on how algorithms affect the effectiveness of movements because the people most likely to see the content are already people on that side. You lose the effect of visibility and the “are we the baddies” moment bc the people on the other side aren’t getting that content. Also, the effect of individualism and the 24 hour news cycle on empathy, with individualism empathy is discouraged and for the people who are generally empathetic the news cycle has induced a lot of emotional burnout in people who do give a shit generally.

[@noconsent]

Just look at the cop city protesters. Completely peaceful. One guy gets ambushed in a tent and shot from the outside in. While others are charged under the RICO act. The city is still being built even though the masses don't support it.

[@255ad]

Peter Gelderloos argues non violence only works if there's a implicit threat of violence if it fails, which I'll admit it is kind of unfalsifiable

[@bhabbott]

unfalsifiable how? Only need one example that didn't have an implicit threat, and worked.

[@bretthansen3739]

This was my objection to the research. How many examples of oppressed people not being willing to resort to violence if the peaceful approach fails do we even have to use as data? I know peaceful activists, including MLK, saw value in being the carrot in a movement that also includes a stick. To me, the researchers admitting that they're research doesn't consider whether a peaceful approach backed by a threat is different than a peaceful movement not backed by a threat is the same as them admitting it has little to no real world value.

[@bretthansen3739]

@bhabbott One example wouldn't be a very big data set, so I think you're exaggerating there... But do you actually have an example of one? People use MLK as an example of peaceful resistance, but his movement was absolutely backed by threats (The Black Panthers, for example). Ghandibwas peaceful, but there were other people who fought the occupation more directly. Even if an active violent resistence movement didn't exist, it's very difficult to know exactly how much oppressors feared that the resistance would turn violent, or believed wrongly that jnrealed violence was violent protest. Any situation where people's lives and freedom are under threat is going to be extremely changed, and this data seems to argue thst the movement that pushed them over the top to victory was the one that succeeded, regardless of who's shoulders they were standing on.

[@aenorist2431]

Fun thing: Reality does not adhere to the rules of study design. Plenty of correct statements are unfalsifiable - but still correct.

[@markthesecond3380]

@@bhabbott How would you define "implicit threat"? I feel like almost any civil movement fighting back against an establishment could be considered at risk of turning violent. Any civil movement looking to make change would likely have to break some laws, cause public disturbances, or at least break some social conventions. Just doing that already carries some level of implicit threat of turning violent. Sure, the threat of a movement turning violent might not be high in some cases, but how do you measure that kind of risk? And where do you draw the line to say that the movement had enough threat to count?

[@ConvincingPeople]

I find it a bit odd that certain people would attempt to "refute" Chenoweth et al with Gelderloos, not because I have any beef with Gelderloos-we are politically much more similar than not, and I actually broadly agree with his arguments-but because the function and contexts of these texts and authors are so radically different as to make them essentially about entirely different things. Chenoweth's corpus is a non-prescriptive overview of revolutions at large which makes the observation that most successful movements predominantly focused on non-violent tactics-many of which, such as the destruction of property, state actors tend to categorise as "violent" regardless-tend to result in less authoritarian successor states with fewer internal purges or counterrevolutions after the fact. It's broadly pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian, certainly left-of-centre, but it does not seek to predict the future or to proscribe methods which may be effective in achieving those futures. Conversely, Gelderloos' article is a polemic meant to critique a tendency within modern radical thought and especially anarchist thought which shrinks away from violent confrontation with the state, even in direct response to state brutality, and particularly that tendency's handwringing over the historical association of anarchism with propaganda of the deed-otherwise known as the Luigi Mangione/Tetsuya Yamagami method of making a point. Gelderloos is an anarchist, speaking within the context of anarchist activism and history, drawing on a mix of direct experience with the subject and highly specific historical analyses, and addressed to a fairly narrow audience. His end goals for revolution as a process are, although not intensely prescriptive, nonetheless particular, and he is making a rhetorical argument in favour of what he believes to be the most effective means to those ends as well as attempting to challenge the specific lines of reasoning used to oppose them. I would even venture to argue that the two perspectives presented are not intrinsically wholly opposed: While replacing an oppressive state with significantly more democratic one is a very different task from abolishing the state entirely, requiring different methods and tools; what's more, I think it bears interrogating what sort of revolutions tend to be more violent and what other organisational tactics (vanguard party discipline, decentralised cells) and ideological frameworks (ethnonationalism, religious sectarianism) may be attached to that revolutionary violence in context, as I feel that this may in itself be just as instructive as how violent those revolutions were.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I mean, I think it is safe to say that by far most anarchists - "active" ones at least, and certainly historical figures in the movement - don't think just violence is enough for a revolution, either, and I never read Gelderloos as disputing that. There's quite the chasm between "not demanding strict non-violence" and "being primarily violent".

[@FunkeyPhysicsMonkey]

One thing that I was thinking is that I wonder if we were confusing correlation with caution. Like what if using more non-violent tactics was not more likely to work because it is more effective, but what if more non-violence appears more effective because the level of non-violence between violence and violence is more reflective of how much authority holds onto power. Like, personally, I think when oppressed people turn to violence, it is because they have tried non-violent tactics and it was ineffective which lead to escalation. What I mean is that I suspect the level of violence in a revolution probably reflects how oppresive the regime is and how hard they hold onto power. This could be why primary non-violent revolutions seem to be more effective, because by the time it was classified as a revolution, it was much earlier in the escalation process, indicating a regime more inclined to let go of power instead a regime that would force further escalation and inflict greater violence on the oppressed. That is just conjecture though. That said, I do agree that a diversity of tactics should be employed.

[@kenbrown2808]

just a note: a significant part of civil disobedience is clogging up the penal system by being arrested for the civil disobedience.

[@Macrochenia]

With today's for-profit prisons, is that still an effective tactic?

[@jonathanyun7817]

@@Macrochenia Just did a super cursory search, and it seems like use of private prisons is highly variable between states, with Montana having the highest concentration at ~50% of incarcerated people as of 2021, up ~135% from 2000. This is more concentrated in red-leaning states, while blue leaning states like New York and Connecticut ~0%. New Mexico had like a 30% decrease in private prison utilization over that time period, down from ~2100 to ~1500 inmates, currently accounting for 31% of their inmates as of 2021. These prisons typically make their money off govt contracts, on a per inmate-ish scale. Private prisons will likely expand in the coming years, but they've been historically dropping in utilization since their peak in 2012. Source: sentencingproject org & wikipedia on private prisons tdlr: this is a valid fear to have in a system that's hell bent on manufacturing profits out of whatever slop they can fabricate, but depending on your background and socioeconomic status (read: race and money) you'll probably be fine, especially if you're acting along-side others. There's strength in numbers, and every additional person helps lessen the load on others, strengthening the movement in the process. So get out there and exercise your right to demonstrate! (the other thing to be worried about though is a certain individual's eagerness to use his authority over the military to put down protests, but that's where nonviolence methods come back to minimize such violence. Strength in numbers, and your nonviolence extols you in eyes of the people)

[@stormburn1]

@@MacrocheniaIdk why it wouldn't be. They still need to process you, go through the paperwork, set or deny bail, and physically house and feed everyone. There are bottlenecks even if there's a profit incentive to widen them.

[@BlueberryEnjoyer]

Okay you first! I'll be over there not going to prison and using a different tactic. No offense but "lets all go to prison!" is a bad tactic.

[@ZachariahWiedeman]

@@Macrochenia There's a big difference between prison and jail.

[@atmosweeper]

Are commenters just conflating US protests against the Vietnam War with the actual conflicts that have occurred in Vietnam? I know next to nothing about this history but it's worth pointing out that the "Indochina revolt" screenshot at 11:29 is for years 1945-1954, but "Vietnamese Revolution" in the book screenshot at 8:45 refers to completely different years (1959-1975). Finally, when discussing the data you seem to be interpreting each row of the spreadsheet as a campaign, but actually each row just seems to provide a yearly classification for events that took place during multiyear campaigns/conflicts... i.e., "campaign" is not a granular thing. For instance, my interpretation of the screenshot at 12:06 is that things were primarily violent during calendar years 1971-1976 but nonviolent from 1977-1979. Editing to add: I downloaded versions 2.1 (yearly-level analysis as shown in video) and 1.2 (one entry per overall campaign) of the dataset. The Vietnamese Revolution has NAVCO ID = 156 in both datasets and is categorized as primarily violent, both on an annual basis from 1958-1965 (v2.1, seems like there aren't any entries past that year) and in aggregate from 1960-1975 (v1.2). So, when it comes to the categorization of the 1959-1975 Vietnamese Revolution in this dataset, Rebecca's point seems to hold up. ALSO: There is some discussion of how they define "campaign" in the codebook for the dataset, in the initial pages before the list of variables. It's confusing, but I think a "campaign" is the overall effort that can span many years, and each "campaign-year" is one calendar year within a campaign (one row = one campaign-year in v2.1, which is shown in the video), and there can be tons of "events" that take place during each campaign-year. Also, I didn't find anything about US Vietnam War protests in any of these datasets, so I still have no evidence for the conjecture in the first sentence of my original comment.

[@markw.schumann297]

Noticed the same thing about the date ranges.

[@cerumen]

Boosting because it’s like an actual critical engagement with the information

[@atmosweeper]

@@cerumen thanks, I try. I just edited my original comment - I downloaded the dataset to see for myself, and Rebecca's overall point holds up if you look at the rows corresponding to the 1959-1975 Vietnamese Revolution. Maybe they were overlooked because the spreadsheet is huge and the country is listed as South Vietnam, not Vietnam.

[@GogiRegion]

I didn’t pick up on that! In this case, the violent vs nonviolent answer was the same, but it’s such a good example of how one can unintentionally make a mistake when putting in genuine effort if you don’t double check and/or cross-reference smaller details.

[@badabing3391]

why are we subjecting wholly incomparable political events to statistics that requires comparability? Because its a harvard professor trying to justify only using tactics that wont hurt the other ivy league professors and the people who graduated from ivy league schools. No amount of nonviolent pandering will wipe away the crimes committed by the people of these institutions. Even making the book in the first place is an affront to an already impotent idea of justice in the western world. Do you think youd have nonviolently been able to execute kissinger or cheney or almost every president or any number of pardoned monsters? Did we gain any real universal welfare in the last 40 years? Did we ever successfully stop a US backed genocide? The most this country has to show for since the civil rights era is criminalizing marital rape and legalizing gay marriage, and its not like it put a dent in the suffering caused to the world at large (yk, the 95% of the world)

[@georgesos]

Defining "violence" is the hardest part of this whole discussion. Is it violence to deny people health ? Is it violence to privatize water sources and sell water in prices unaffordable for most? Is it violence to beat and gas workers protesting demanding higher pay? Is it violence to force people to follow specific religions? Is it violence to force populations to live in fear of death? If the answer to all the above is yes,then (violent) resistance is more than OK. But i could be wrong.

[@emilyz4104]

I think you're sorta missing the point here, though. It's a discussion of effectiveness of various tactics, not whether they're morally justified or not. Just about anything is morally justified as a response, but that doesn't mean that just about anything will actually _work_ as a solution.

[@noconsent]

violence is when you say three words on the phone. Violence isn't when you die to a preventable illness because a service you paid for won't cover the treatment you need to survive.

[@aenorist2431]

Whichever the answer to your questions - Corporations are not people, so nothing you do to them can be violence in any ethically objectionable way.

[@vernlindbergs3221]

@@aenorist2431 politicians and judges gave corporations the same rights as people a century ago.

[@pietrocavallo7955]

@@emilyz4104 really missed the point here... how you define if something is violent in a research about non violence is not crucial, but downright fundamental. If in it you say "X is violent but Y is not, then here is the data about why violence is less effective based on these criteria" the point of discussion is really not on the data per se as long as that is technically correct (altough we can still do that for more perspective), but it is on how and why you chose to define (and therefore consequently collect and categorize the events in the dataset and the conclusions you draw from) it in the first place. What I really find hard to grasp in all these videos, and I say that because I respect Rebecca as a scientist and as a person and I don't think she is malicious in any way nor stupid, is the purpose of this research: if the data is too historically contingent to really draw conclusion for modern day strategies, if so much time has been spent on saying "this research is in no way saying what we ought to do and that nonviolence is not important" (especially after ignoring that Peter's work was precisely about and intended to fight against how this kind of research could be, and actually has been, used to condem instead of understanding violent actions; not really to "debunk" it or its data with other data, so definetely missed the focus on that), if this research is not really pushing for anything, not even efficiency (because in that case it'd be actually arguing for nonviolence despite all the previous disclaimers, since then what is missing is an acknowledgment that efficiency is not the end of all actions nor their absolute or most important metric, not even in order to be the catalysis for another "more efficient" tactic), then what it is for?

[@EvilWeiRamirez]

We live in constant fear. It is fear of homelessness, being destitute and suffering when old, being unhealthy, being bankrupted by medical bills. We live in constant fear and that fear is capitalized on by the wealthy because it motivates us. Society wouldn't function without us being held to the edge. For one moment, the ceos felt a sliver of that fear, a sliver. And that is what we are celebrating. We are hungry for them to have empathy for us, and the only way for that to happen is for them to actually feel it. Medical bills cost more than bullets. Let's talk about market based solutions.

[@EdwardLindon]

What a cool, clever, poetic, non-committal way of sounding like you're approving of a murder.

[@Galanthos]

​@@EdwardLindonWhat a cool, clever, poetic, non-committal way of sounding like you really like the taste of boot leather.

[@SageWon-1aussie]

I think that you are missing the point that CEO's also have all those fears, and the fear of losing their privileged position. They are, in fact, the most fearful.

[@steventatlock5443]

@@EdwardLindon When they've created a system to profit from the death of their clients... yeah, I approve. They violated the social contract, not us.

[@sethtenrec]

@@EdwardLindonwhy “sound like it”, most do approve …full-throatedly

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

I reject the understanding that violence and non-violence are mutually exclusive, yet this is how it's usually portrayed. We credit non-violent actors for their successes while ignoring any of the violent actors who informed the decision-making processes of the regimes that eventually came to the table. The key is plausible-deniability. Violence when used with precision and at key moments can enrich non-violent methods. It's what brought the British Crown back to the negotiation table with Sinn Fein, it was the catalyst for the demise of the Franco regime in Spain, it has informed the decision for regimes throughout history to negotiate with more peaceful actors who otherwise they would never legitimize in such a way. The violent fringe will always be ignored in the history books, that doesn't make them any less vital to success. You need the violent fringe to persuade an oppressive regime they'll be better off in the long run talking to the peaceful activists they've been holding prisoner. Why would you do a job with a half-empty toolbox? I've spent the latter half of my college career pushing back against the orthodoxy that is the universality of non-violent resistance after doing an internship at the USIP, that was almost a decade ago and everything I have seen only reaffirms my beliefs on this matter. Why does the state use a carrot and a stick to ensure compliance? Simple. Because it works.

[@que6025]

Facts. There's no MLK Jr. and Rosa Parks without Robert F. Williams and Fannie Lou Hamer.

[@maol2038]

My (very uncharitable) thought when I see people decry civil resistance is that it's post-hoc justification for why they haven't participated in efforts themselves

[@LL-cz5ql]

based ❤

[@noconsent]

Or perhaps trying to justify why all the movements they take part in go nowhere, while seeing massive amounts of movement for the cause when one man engraves shell casings.

[@5ivearrows]

@@maol2038 basically nobody critiquing these responses is denouncing or decrying civil resistance. It is well understood that peaceful resistance is a key component of revolt. It's the negation of a parallel and concurrent violent movement as being important and necessary that is what is in dispute.

[@AshanBhatoa]

@@5ivearrows People have and do continue to actively denounce, dismiss and even disdain civil resistance to be fair, Maol is evidently responding to what they have seen (as they asserted). Uncharitable, however many individuals are much more interested in critiquing the modes and means of resistance, whilst never actually engaging in any tangible protest, activism, resistance themselves. Rather, it is all performative. It is slightly amusing and ironic. I agree that violent elements of any movement pose enough of a revolutionary threat to state power and its proxies, for those institutions to actually concede to societal grievances and plights. However, their are some sycophants intent on demonising those whom personally advocate for say, not putting yourself in the crosshairs of state retaliation. Seems particularly unconducive to building class solidarity of which is not consistent in various Western societies, due to multivariate reasons, of course.

[@thenayancat8802]

People on the internet being confidently and catastrophically wrong? I never

[@milascave2]

This is, of course,an old debate, It started when Gandi created the first mass movement of civil disobedience. I am not going to add my two cents to that But I'll tell you what. They don't mix. In otter words, if your things is smashing every window you can, don't do it at a nonviolent march or protest. Do at a different time, place, and name. To do that around non-violent people and then hide among them and let them take the bows for you is just cowardly. AND of course, that is much more true if your thing involves hurting people, cops included.

[@kamisakura568]

Yes! It was so frustrating watching BLM protests go from non- to violent in real time. Heck, any public gathering is volatile, the message gets lost and media coverage loves an angry mob. I'm looking at you, antifa.

[@aenorist2431]

And some of them even have the arrogance to make bad KZbin videos about it. Shocker.

[@noconsent]

@@aenorist2431 if they knew what irony was they'd be pretty upset.

[@BonusEggs4Sale]

Liberal "resistance" being confidently and catastrophically ineffective? I never

[@ucantSQ]

What I got out of this video is: I'm also insufferable at parties. I never quite knew what everyone's problem was. People don't find detailed research and carefully argued points fun? I always forget that.

[@Jay-yr9oi]

The number of times someone will be arguing with me and direct me to a study that actually backs my own argument because they didn’t read it and got it from a tweet that was probably cropping a very out of context sentence or two or a segment that doesn’t mean what they think it means when you actually know the academic language and don’t just apply common use definitions of a term is absolutely astounding to me. If you’re going to use data in your argument, actually make sure you understand it. Also, this is why media literacy and fact checking research skills should be part of a grade school education

[@hexlart8481]

I once had a transphobe link me a study and claim that it was evidence that HRT doesnt alleviate gender dysphoria. The study said, and I'm paraphrasing somewhat so take it with a grain of salt, that "although gender affirming care alleviated gender dysphoria, suicidality did not go down". The guy just skimmed the study and assumed that suicidality not decreasing meant gender affirming care was ineffective. Very selective reading fr.

[@Trepanation21]

Oh, dope. I just finished your "Is Violence the Answer?" video from a few days back, and I was craving some more discussion from you about these things. Really appreciating your insights. Listening & contemplating~

[@barlitone]

Thanks! This has been an issue in my (very limited) social media presence as well, although I don't bring the receipts like you do.

[@unchillada5858]

"There is evidence that violence works in certain situations. And it is time for people to admit that there is evidence that civil resistance works in certain situations." Exactly this. What works is conditional and situational. Both anarchists and communists know this if they have read any political theory from history

[@chernobyl169]

I don't think anyone was disputing that civil resistance works in certain situations I think people are saying that we are not in one of them

[@alphajackal6648]

Anarchists and communists should know better than to treat ideology as the precursor to circumstance. To think the decision to be violent or non-violent is made ideologically and not circumstantially is to deny materialism and embrace idealism.

[@LynxenX]

I feel strongly compelled to remind people violence is never the answer, its a question and sometimes the answer to it is absolutely yes. The line between non-violent activism and acquiescence is so razor thin it is essentially never possible to balance on it while affecting meaningful, lasting change. Which is why learned helplessness by way of non-violent activism is so heavily advocated for in (most of) North American society today. The ruling class insists on it because it maintains the ruse of "change being possible" while ensuring the status quo never actually shifts enough against them so as to truly challenge their rule.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Indy is the kindest way to give us aftercare once the Sad Bad Mad topic is over. Thank you for the Indy-care, Rebecca.

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

5:00 "revolution is a mixture of violent and non-violent tactics" is a phrase that both non-violent and violently inclined activists should internalise. You use both tools appropriately and you don't shy away from using either, try one if it doesn't work try the other. That's why you end up with people smashing windows and gluing themselves to doors, they tried holding a sign and were ignored.

[@d.d.d.a.a.a.n.n.n]

5ivearrows claiming that SS peer review is just saying yes you have an opinion is way off. Social scientists use data and evidence to support their point and peer reviewers frequently challenge their interpretation of evidence because no, an opinion is not good enough

[@5ivearrows]

The word science is doing heavy lifting in a field where incredibly complex, often unobservable and unquantifiable factors, including the unknowable thought processes of human beings, are at work in a condition of unrepeatability. That's not science, it's literally just fancy opinion.

[@DinoMomPlays]

@@5ivearrows Your same argument could be applied to, say, climate change (is incredibly complex, has often unobservable or unquantifiable factors), yet the theory is able to make falsifiable predictions which have stood up to scrutiny with commendable precision and accuracy. Complexity is not an argument against the merits of a field of research, and certain statistics lend themselves *incredibly* well to being modeled. That's the challenge with complex research areas: find the signals that rise above the noise.

[@5ivearrows]

@@DinoMomPlays that's a great point and fair enough! I agree. In the context of Chenoweth's work, the analytical framework they use to examine these historical events should be able to fairly easily contend with challenges, but they don't. For example, they leave aside important concurrent violent components of the Indian Independence Movement as well as the greater context of post war global geopolitics in their analysis. A couple of other important factors arise here as well that distinctify this from climate science or an equally complex field- you are trying to determine the factors and conditions that lead to a specific outcome dictated by physical reality. In social sciences, this is all much squishier. What constitutes success? Is an "independent" India that is still a vassal state of the west by the financial instruments of the IMF actually "independent?" There is a lot that's arguable here.

[@neilbiggs1353]

@@DinoMomPlays They're not entirely wrong, what they are alluding to is the one of the issues in the 'Replication Crisis' which tends to affect social sciences more than the hard science as far as I recall. With climate change to use your example, there is at least broad agreement on the actual data, even if not all conclusions are in agreement. With something like political science or anything using opinion polls the data can be highly subject to errors in sampling, framing, consideration of confounding factors etc. With that said, I would prefer to hear people looking at the data and the methodology involved rather than dismissing them because the field as a whole tends to struggle. Psychology is incredibly difficult to arrange control groups for for example, but I don't think we can afford to just dismiss every conclusion in that field!

[@MCArt25]

@@5ivearrows "I don't like it when scientists disagree with me, therefore I'm going to shit on an entire scientific field."

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

I mentioned your video to my colleagues at Wolf PAC. They agreed that if you are interested you'd be a great speaker at our next conference, probably in July. Combating misinformation is a big part of what we do and that's your area of expertise. We have also spent a long time studying people like Chenoweth, Pauline Sabine, and Jane MacAlevy.

[@RebeccaWatson]

Feel free to shoot me an email! rebecca at skepchick dot org.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

@@RebeccaWatson Will do, thanks.

[@ItWasSaucerShaped]

@@RebeccaWatson Wolf PAC was founded by Cenk Uygur, who these days is mostly making transphobic and anti-immigration content. Would not recommend interacting with them. YMMV.

[@vvevv88]

🚩

[@devifoxe]

This is frustrating.... The idea of dichotomy between violence and non-violence is wrong! And this is even if can agree what is violence... I self defence violence? Is the passive observation of a violent act violence? If we don't have a common definition of violence (And we don't) all this conversation is pointless...

[@noconsent]

Correct. Movements aren't done through the lens of violent or nonviolent. It doesn't make sense to call the civil rights movement nonviolent. But they have to in order to justify their premise.

[@devifoxe]

@@noconsent Yes exactly! Is the thread of violence, violence? Yes, obviously yes! even in a no-violence movement the thread of violence is there, (explicit or implicit) That alone make the idea of non-violence movement a paradox!

[@devifoxe]

Yes exactly! Is the threat of violence, violence? Yes, obviously yes! Even in a no-violence movement the thread of violence is there (explicit or implicit) That alone make the idea of non-violence a paradox.

[@sethtenrec]

Threat

[@devifoxe]

@@sethtenrec yea.. dyslexia! I will correct it. thenx!

[@Dr.Gehrig]

Glad you're starting to check out Malm's How to Blow Up a Pipeline. While I get you don't like doing the same topic over and over. I know I, and I imagine many others, would like to hear your thoughts on it once you're done. Especially in the context of the coming trump presidency and "extreme activism " in the health care space. Also, it's worth noting that the issue is not absolute. Malm's and I suspect many of the critics' conclusions is that BOTH peaceful and destructive (which i prefer to "violent" as it depends on one's definition of "violence") actions are needed for success. And yes, the bulk majority should be peaceful, but a destructive minority also seems to be needed for maximum efficacy. Defining ones data set as "mostly violent vs mostly peaceful" seems to miss the point that the mix is what makes a movement most effective.

[@pssurvivor]

i'm indian. i'm not aware of chenoweth's book and i must have missed your previous video on this but in colonial india, the civil disobedience movement was running concurrently with people mounting violent campaigns. not wars or anything, more like a 1000 paper cuts, an assassination here, two assassinations there, a train robbery to loot weapons and money, etc. I don't think one type would succeed with a parallel movement

[@neilbiggs1353]

In the case of India specifically, the colonial power was struggling economically with the debts accrued in fighting WW2, but I don't see anything in the research as presented that accounts for the strength of the controlling body. How many of the 'non-violent' resistances succeeded because the government was close to collapse anyway?

[@seazenbones6945]

Thanks!

[@geobus3307]

"This is why I fall down rabbit holes. This is why I am insufferable at parties." This is why I love Rebecca! 😂

[@kayakMike1000]

Blowing up oil pipelines makes the problem worse.

[@ladyangua1]

Rebecca, thank you for being the insufferable nerd that dives down rabbit holes so we don't have to, Merry Christmas.

[@RebeccaWatson]

🫡

[@tomiday66]

@@RebeccaWatson Wait a minute! I thought I was already in the rabbit hole with all you good people!

[@KevinGamin]

@@tomiday66So many rabbit holes, so little time.

[@brett8940]

Chenoweth is a pretty consistent scholar. Nothing is perfect, but her work is pretty transparent. I think people just want to overstate their conclusions.

[@Meow_Tse-Tung]

I'd like to think I'm naturally smart and perceptive, but your videos remind me that being intelligent is an active process. Thanks for keeping me and many others on their toes!

[@AdamGrandt]

I’m grateful you are willing to do and show your work. It’s a dirty job and we need more folks choosing to do it. We all have bind spots and times of (completely reasonable) stress & anxiety tend to make them worst. The cool thing about your approach is that it lets us reset, confront some biases and move on, if we so choose.

[@pixelblaze8284]

I often find the presence of misinformation or illogical arguments used to defend beliefs to be a very good indicator of soemthing else. The volume seems to be able to tell us a lot about how key these beliefs are to them. Either because they serve as a pivotal foundation for many other beliefs or because they offer some other benefit. In this case I often think the idea of a violent revolution is very cathartic for many people who are upset with how the world is. It gives them a quick solution to get excited about and makes them feel better and like they are doing something to make change. While nonviolent revolution is slow and hard to see as you do it, which often doesn't make it feel as good, as cathartic. So the potential loss of something that provides hope and relief is defended agressively. All to say, you can really tell what beliefs are important to people the more illogical the defense.

[@tube1971]

So the only metric is stability of the eventual regime? Protestors against violent regimes tend to "disappear". The people in that mass grave just outside of town don't get to enjoy your new stability.

[@fishcatch22]

I think the most important thing when determining resistance methods is "what action can I take that will limit the capability of the system I'm fighting against to continue, and sends a strong, specific message that encourages more people to join?" Most cases of violent revolutions that succeeded that also met those criteria were ones where power was held by a very small oligarchy that was already widely hated and seen as completely separate from the majority of the country, either from being an occupying power (E.G. Vietnam) or from an extreme oligarchy propped up from foreign benefactors (E.G. Cuba). I don't think the U.S. at this current time fits that definition. Our oligarchy is home-grown and blindly supported by almost half the country. EDIT: Since it's gonna come up, the UHC assassination *could* be the start of a movement to unify the working class against one enemy, but it's only a start and a bunch of work needs to be done to actually knit that movement together.

[@KingMob4313]

You are exceptionally patient and willing to play ball with people who are full of emotion (which I am regarding this subject) and people who just flatly get the facts wrong. I am in awe.

[@vistotutti6037]

Just to clarify: The Gremlins movie 1984 was not released in 3D. And not all Gremlins are violent. Just don;t get them wet, or feed them after midnight.

[@RebeccaWatson]

did someone do gremlins in 3d???

[@midnightsun5857]

I really appreciate this video and how dedicated you are to defending your recommendation both of the work and of the power of civil disobedience opposed to violence. I've just started taking my first steps into collective action and trying to work as a community to express my "discontent" with things happening I don't agree with. It's difficult to feel like non violent approaches will overcome issues when you don't trust the impartiality of those with the power to change things. Anyways, I've just started watching your videos post election and they just click in my head better than most I've tried. I have a little more hope in people to change things non violently from your explanation of the book and will try to read it. Thank you.

[@zotaninoron3548]

The researchers and academics aside, who are typically very specific about the language they use and what they mean by it, the general dialogue around what non-violence means tends to be pretty capricious and black and white depending on what the arguers are intending. People are often vague about their terms to make the case they want at the moment. And often non-violence will mean no types of violence and completely pacifist to liberals wanting to tone police revolutionary sentiment. I can understand some of the knee-jerk responses a bit as a hypersensitivity those that want to white wash the violent implications behind civil actions. At the end of the day, less violence is preferable. But, of course, to really change something institutions of power, some violence tends to be inevitable. Some things need to happen for change to occur. And some threat must compel the powerful to action, even if that threat is an implication of the loss of authority. Non-violent actions are very important in a lot of context to set up the justification for people to work together with the threat of violence. Often it is the fear response of authoritarians to non-violent actions, resulting in violence, that galvanizes very large numbers of people together prepared to do violence if their demands are not met.

[@dutyfreeadventures5924]

Because the work doesn't touch social campaigns and only matters of independence, leadership, sovereignty, and foreign occupations it's entirely irrelevant when it comes to enacting social change

[@georgesos]

If the people of Ireland didnt have kicked out of their streets the employees of the company which tried to privatize their water, today they d benpaying gold for water. They demonstrated peacefully, but the company didnt back off, it sent it's employees ( together with police) to installmits water meters. So, sure peaceful resistance until it reaches the point that you need to defend your life from the police and the corporate bullies.

[@phnompenhandy]

Really appreciate the depth of your research and fairness of your evaluation

[@JohnDoe-km9zd]

As someone who commented on your initial video to push back against the ideas that their research was being used to promote in a non-nuanced way (seemingly by you at first, and by others I’ve spoken to), I will admit I’ve never personally read it and appreciate the true nuanced perspective that your last video laid out about their work. Basically, I commented and elucidated a position that was essentially perfectly in line with them. As someone who is a pretty serious activist who has been involved in some spicy work on the ground, I can say definitively that violence is necessary sometimes, but minimizing it and keeping it limited to specific contexts is important, and when it expands beyond that it often fails as a tactic.

[@bazoo513]

As I see it, the take away is that in most cases nonviolent resistance is worth trying. No less, no more, but that's a valuable lesson.

[@MrDpool1]

It’s weird watching this considering I was in Chenoweth’s class at CU 17 years ago.

[@RebeccaWatson]

Ooh cool!

[@MrDpool1]

@ The last time I saw her was at a warm cookies event in Denver discussing peaceful protest. This was right around the time when Trump put low-yield nukes into production. She didn’t share my concern about Trump finding out that low yield warheads can be salted and then responding to a peaceful protest in a way that would make Hafez al-Assad blush.

[@justaname2422]

Really appreciate your thorough investigation of both your own opinions and research and just topics in general.

[@cerumen]

People have a pre-existing narrative, they jump to talking shit, then other people with the same narrative repeat it. Can’t count the number of times someone has said some shit online that I try and politely point out is verifiably not correct, almost invariably no one gives a fuck, or they react defensively. I got a bad impression of nonviolent movements, based on how shaky Roger Hallam’s research was for XR’s tactics. Doesn’t mean nonviolence is bunk though, just means that one guy is not a serious academic, though he does seem a genuinely motivated guy. Why are people incapable of just…being open to the idea that they might be wrong? Do they all have to be as depressed and self-doubting as I am? Because I probably wouldn’t be this depressed if this shit just wasn’t a thing.

[@wh44]

This. Everyone who takes the time to actually look stuff up seems to be a self-doubting depressive. Feeling like Cassandra all the time will do that to you.

[@cerumen]

It is concerning isn’t it? Maybe we just meet less reasonable non-depressed people because we’re isolated. And that’s the thing though - I’m not Cassandra. I’m not some magic…Know All the Shit guy. I’m just interested in the truth, and what works. Everyone thinking they’re always right is the problem. That one single good episode of Gatwa’s Dr Who had it.

[@wh44]

@@cerumen I don't mean the magically knowing everything either, I mean the knowing something important and being ignored for your trouble part. It's kind of worse in a way: you go to all the trouble to do the actual research, to crunch the numbers, look up original sources, look at sources critical of your standpoint, and people ignore you anyway for the shiny bauble some snake oil salesman is selling.

[@bhabbott]

Is it too much to ask that people do the research first and then draw conclusions, rather that just try to defend their preconceptions? Yes. You see, we only _think_ we are rational beings. In reality we are just animals like all the rest, stomachs on legs with a brain only to help the organism survive. Sorry if that was even more depressing...

[@francesconicoletti2547]

I suspect learning is part of growth and forming the new synapse connections, let alone the decrease in neurones, just gets harder as we age. Try learning a new language in your 30s rather than at 18 months. I think most people most of the time live off the information they got growing up because processing new information feels uncomfortable and hard.

[@SabsileT]

I remember my textbook for my introductory statistics class in college (for my Political Science degree) "Thinking Clearly with Data: A Guide to Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis" talked about some of the problems in violent vs non-violent resistance research, and how certain older research projects have a strong bias towards non-violent resistance and because of that make a lot of statistical errors or misinterpret their findings. I think this may be why newer research on non-violent resistance still gets a bad rep, because of the mistakes made in the past, even though researchers have obviously learned from that and great research has been published since then.

[@SciHeartJourney]

Sometimes I think Rebecca is reading my mind .... or controlling it. 🤣 For example, I ❤ to have an intelligent argument where I am proven WRONG. I learn NOTHING when I'm proving others wrong. Rebecca seems to agree that's how one grows. ✌️

[@RebeccaWatson]

Yes! 100%

[@mojrimibnharb4584]

This may be your best work yet. Honestly, sources are a drag and no one except nerds like you actually wants to play with spreadsheets. Much appreciated.

[@Cheekster15]

I remember growing up with a pacifist world view, with my professors pointing to this research about the effectiveness of nonviolence. It always seemed a little desperate, like we were struggling to hold onto a pacifist tradition in a sea of violent revolutionaries. They would have taught this to me regardless of the data, but it was nice to talk about post-USSR (counter) revolutions.

[@Storytelless]

As a person from Ukraine I can tell you: non-violence worked for 3 years max (2002-2005) until it didn't anymore. After that no real dictatorships were overthrown with non-violent methods. Belarus is the most sad example: whole country was against Lukashenko and he just said "umm. no. not going anywhere".

[@Cheekster15]

@@Storytelless Absolutely, there is no silver bullet. We cannot be dogmatically attached to a single strategy.

[@que6025]

"In order for non-violoence to work, your opponent must have a conscience." - Kwame Ture

[@Squeejee09]

After all these years watching a youtube skeptic prove someone wrong with their own source still hasn't gotten old for me.

[@ThePurityControl]

We've been heavily involved in anti-austerity & pro-NHS protest in the UK for about 10 years now and what we have to show for it is nothing. As recently as 2017 we could get upto 250k people out and for a while it felt like it was going somewhere, we were down to a fraction of that post lockdown, and this year it finally failed when we barely had 250, fundamentally because the public will to protest austerity is gone. Not going out to shoot anyone just yet but clearly this is a case where peaceful protest has failed. :(

[@BonusEggs4Sale]

Voting for change only works when the only viable parties isn't a right-wing vs a far right-wing party

[@engalo-vamart]

We only have two right wing parties in the US, our left wing is the world's center/center right.

[@hexlart8481]

When was voting for change brought up in this video? This is not a discussion about "voting for change" its a discussion about physical violence (attacking people) vs civil resistance which encompasses a large variety of resistance tactics much _much_ more impactful than voting. Destroying property, refusing to bend to power, anything and everything short of physically hurting a person.

[@Xteenrebel]

She talks about civil resistance, not JUST voting. Civil resistance can be voting, but also sit ins, jury nullification, occupations, law suits, graffiti, sabotage, media stunts to grab attention, anything to Agitate, Educate, and Organize. Civil resistance often involves violence, especially from the opposite side. That doesn't mean it's not Civil resistance, and it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

[@MCArt25]

very little of all nonviolent resistance has ever involved voting

[@spiralali]

Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into creating your content. I LOVE seeing how you questioned your conclusions, and the process you went through to verify what is actually said in the book, and the code in the data online. I'm thoroughly impressed by your due diligence, and wish more people were as thorough as you are. There are ways in life where I am this diligent as well, and it feels good to feel like I'm not the only one. You kick ass!!!! ❤

[@horrido666]

Eat the rich.

[@JayAshkevron]

Thank you Rebecca for not letting things go, and doing what you do. I appreciate you.

[@andrewwesterman7827]

Your process for dealing with the erroneous comments is awesome. However, the problem with any of this kind of research, whether the researchers acknowledge it or not, is that it attempts to make objective and measurable what is essentially a perception. "What?" I hear you ask. "Surely the death toll in a battle is quantifiable." Yes, it is. We tend to create data that is essentially "low hanging fruit" when it comes to violence. Sometimes this approaches absurdity, like a binary assessment of a revolution as violent or non-violent. In fact, violence often relates more to violation than physical harm. Take DV, for example. Coercive control is violence. Let me elaborate. The Stalinist era in the history of Russia / USSR is characterised as a typical example of violent suppression. Many assert that violent resistance to Stalin would have been justified. This can be simplistically explained as citizen violence (resistance) to meet (state) violence. But the truth is far more nuanced and problematic. A drunk Siberian peasant called Yelstin gifted the USSR's assets to a bunch of oligarchs who essentially formed a mafia. The Human Development Index for Russia over the next decade after an initial upturn in fortune sank dramatically and the life expectancy for Russian men sank 10 years in 10 years, the fastest that this has occurred in peace time in history, as the Russian economy went into free fall (noting that it had been healthy for decades) This raises the real question as to whether the state violence was a legitimate measure to prevent the collapse of the USSR and the resultant spiral as its economy 'westernised' (read the West fleeced Russia of assets). Is jailing a dissident protecting the society from vulnerability to western deceit or violence? It also begs the question as to whether the actions of the IMF and World Bank, which brought misery, economic ruin, suicides and preventable deaths can be considered to be violent - which, of course, they are, if we expand violence to include coercion or deprivation. Violence, in reality, is so complex and nuanced that it almost defies study. It seems to me as if Chenoweth et al are just fulfilling their academic curiosity, not wrestling with the real violence that permeates many wealthy societies. Thus, I feel disinclined to engage with any of their work in any depth as, if I was seeking the pleasure of an academic 'wank', I might look elsewhere.

[@MCArt25]

All state actions by their very nature carry the implicit threat of state violence. This is wildly different from civil resistance, which generally is not, and often cannot be, backed with that kind of violent power.

[@05Matz]

I found this very valuable, thanks for the follow-up! I suspect that a lot of us misread the data tables -- having a Boolean field with 1 as the absence of a phenomenon and 0 as its presence is unusual, but when trying to think of it as the researchers would, I guess they saw less-destructive campaigns as the phenomenon they were studying, and 'regular' bloody revolutions as the default (0).

[@RedBrite]

I read how nonviolence protects the state a couple years ago. I think that gelderloos had interesting examples of resistance groups that i ended up resding more about (like deacons for defense). As for his overall argument, i guess the only takeaway for me is just that you shoudlnt be dogmatically against certian resistance tactics. But, you already clearly acknowledged that multiple times.

[@ladders1]

He has also written a follow-up book called The Failure of Nonviolence which expands and comments on the previous book with more modern examples that have happened since.

[@juls_krsslr7908]

In the past, I have trusted the information that someone gave me, only to find out later that they were misinformed, confused or lying. Now, when I repeat what someone tells me, I say something like, "Someone told me this interesting thing, but I have not looked into it myself, so keep in mind this could be wrong." Even if I have looked into it, what I say is still my synthesis and interpretation of the accessible information, so I could still be wrong. It's weird to me when people make confident statements, like, "This book has this error," without offering an explanation for why they believe that. I would at least say, "I've _heard_ that this book has this error and I consider the source of this information generally trustworthy, but I haven't verified it myself."

[@AnEntropyFan]

Off the cuff, makes me wonder about a couple things. One, was the research adjusted in any way for the kind of state that is being resisted? After a point, authoritarianism is unlikely to budge to peaceful means, will resort to overt direct murderous violence in response, and then even peaceful resistance will go down the escalation ladder and take up arms (because anything else is suicide with extra steps). So, violence beyond the point of no return is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy with this type of a hostile system and then you are fighting a kind of regime that is way less likely to compromise; total military victory is your only likelly victory condition. Hence "this doesn't work" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in the aggregate, too - like concluding that wings don't work because you observed a flock of birds that flew into a tornado, and not a more moderate storm. Two, have the time scales been considered and accounted for? "Peaceful means" brought Mesopotamia down... or it was the whole thing with copper and tin and there being less tin to go around or whatever... As time goes on, a whole lot of external factors introduce signal noise. Did peaceful means of resistance really bring South African apartheid down, or was it in significant part unrelated external social progress in societies that had the power to stop it?

[@arthurcamargo8416]

This video is exactly why I am subscribed to the channel! Thank you for the science you put into your content!!

[@pjgoldstein6562]

Thank you for your sprinkle covered editions to the revolution.

[@daleperkins4901]

Rebecca, you never cease to astound me!!! Excellent piece.

[@archaeopteryx981]

I was inclined to agree with Peter Gelderloos’s book, How Nonviolence Protects the State, from the title alone. But then I read it and found the arguments to be awful, only convincing anyone who was looking for validation for their beliefs. I’m not a pacifist, and I find the way nonviolence is lionized by people who support the status quo to be telling. But Gelderloos simply wrote a bad book about a compelling subject.

[@newsjunkie7135]

Thank you for doing this research! This is exactly what I wanted to know!

[@BoogsterSugar]

Andreas Malm's book is really good and the movie is also nice! YES there is a movie!

[@AlphactoryAT]

I'm actually living for this third video. I got my hands on a copy of "This nonviolent stuff'll get you killed" and have started reading it, though I may concurrently go through the research here as well. Thanks for the rabbit hole report.

[@kalehsaar]

while i don't disagree with the study on facts, the very notion of it explicitly not being predictive (which is fair, cuz of all the confounding factors in every single case; real life is too messy for neat tables and rules) makes it kinda useless, no? probably still interesting through specifically historical lens, but not actually helpful in any meaningful way? because what's the ultimate conclusion here? sometimes violence works, sometimes it doesn't, it's all complicated? well, it's nice to have data to support it, but kinda.... duh? meanwhile the study is being paraded by establishment media as the "scientific proof" that you shouldn't do violent resistance ever - which isn't the research's fault per se, but what of value it actually accomplishes besides giving an additional talking point to people like this? ant that's what i think a lot of people are responding so negatively to. knowledge for the knowledge's sake is fine - good even - but what's the point being made here?

[@themightymcb7310]

"It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference." - George Orwell (Reflections on Gandhi) Orwell offers us something that this video and the data it references does not: actual political analysis.

[@Ketowski]

Thanks, nicely done! Looping back to the topic when there’s more time.

[@Al69BfR]

14:54 Civil resistance led to the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany. Just in the case someone needs another well known example in recent history.

[@AV-we6wo]

Yes, and if I remember 1989/1990 correctly, Romania was the only country where sth lika a violent revolution happened, while in most other Eastern European countries non-violent resistance movements managed to topple the dictatorial regimes. How can people so blatantly ignore the historic success of a peaceful multinational revolutionary movement?

[@BonusEggs4Sale]

nah that was a lot of CIA cold war fuckery and murder. and look at Germany now, the far right rising again

[@neilbiggs1353]

A counter point to that would be did the civil resistance win, or were there outside influences propping up the governments that failed, leading to those governments also failing? With the fail of the Iron Curtain, it's hard to not consider the break up/decline of the USSR at the same time

[@charlesparr1611]

The Cold War was a WAR, it was extremely violent, and it contributed greatly to the fall of the iron curtain. This cannot be reasonably claimed as an instance of purely nonviolent protest leading to a change. It just cannot.

[@charlesparr1611]

@@AV-we6wo Because the toppling of the Soviet Union and the revolutions that resulted thereby was the result of a thing called 'the Cold War' which was an incredibly violent succession of events and policies that assisted the revolutionaries enormously. Without the Cold War, the iron curtain never falls, totalitarian repression continues for much longer, probably forever.

[@MaximusStetich]

I bridled at your initial video, most likely because my greatest expertise in history tapers off in the eighteenth century, but I’ve been thinking about this issue for a month now - like you, it seems - so I’m looking forward getting my hands on this book and challenging my opinion and biases.

[@mngbennett]

I am happy to hear you go on and on about this topic.

[@paavohirn3728]

Wow! Impressive! Thank you for your work on clarifying and bringing this info to us! I will go back to your other videos on this as well but this is the first but I'm watching so I really appreciate that you went back to the topic.

[@cerumen]

I thought I saw the notification for this video like 3 days ago and wondered what the hell was going on It is too easy to make me think I’ve time traveled

[@RebeccaWatson]

haha sorry, I couldn't think of a good title to differentiate!

[@cerumen]

@@RebeccaWatson no dramas! happy to be here (and not in the recent past)

[@bcwbcw3741]

@@RebeccaWatson "Violence, Non-violence, and Misinformation: Attack of the Clones?"

[@KevinGamin]

@@bcwbcw3741” Violence, Nonviolence, and Misinformation 2: Skepchick Boogaloo” She’s back, and she’s done the research.

[@bazoo513]

Thank you, Rebecca. This video nicely illustrates how research is supposed to work.

[@smallthoughts513]

This is such a great example of sobriety. Thank you

[@AlexsGoogleAccount]

Thank you for this. I was skeptical of their findings as well and looking at that data and the key, my concerns were answered, such as tracking revolutions that started violent and shifted non-violent and breaking down individual campaigns rather than generalizing entire conflicts.

[@Swedishmafia101MemeCorporation]

It's getting hard for me to convince myself to be honest, when we can see how far you can get by lying...

[@cerumen]

Lying doesn’t inherently get you anywhere. Regularly lying as a regular person usually results in being gradually found out and increasingly penalised. It’s already having wealth and power that shields successful liars from the normal consequences of lying. If you’re going to make a habit of lying, it’s best to wait until you’re already so well off that there’s actually no longer any point in doing it. Most of the people discussed here are really only lying to themselves.

[@Rockyzach88]

What was the lie?

[@BryanTidwell-o6g]

There’s no such thing as violence against property. That’s why burglary is a non violent crime.

[@ernststravoblofeld]

How much research do we need to clearly see that non-violence is a valid tactic, but a shit strategy?

[@sethtenrec]

👍👍👍

[@christopherdelaney6263]

Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to post this video. Not only does it clear the air, but also that you really do a lot of reading and research to prove valid statements. I hope you find some time to disengage everyday so you can jump back into the fight every following day refreshed ;) Much love. \mL