By Tom H. Hastings
Once we depose Trump and deport Musk we can laugh about their greedy corrupt behavior even as we tend to the disastrous damage they did. They will fail, if Americans rise up in massive nonviolent noncooperation.
That is a big IF.
But the women of Liberia, faced with years of a brutal war and a dictatorial rule, rose up in nonviolent noncooperation and stopped the war even as they gained democracy.
The people of Serbia rose up in massive nonviolent noncooperation in 2000 and deposed dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
The people of the Philippines rose up repeatedly, starting in 1986 when they poured into the streets to interdict a civil war about to launch, stopping the war and deposing dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
There are more examples, including some brilliant free streaming documentaries, of how others have saved or created democracy, almost never sustainably with arms, but much more sustainably–and with vastly fewer costs in blood, treasure, infrastructure, and pollution–using nonviolent noncooperation.
Each society, each time, each uprising, is unique. But there are some universal conceptual aspects to all of them.
Leadership, whether or not any particular charismatic person was part of it, agreed early on to insist on a nonviolent approach.
There were times during the struggle when people massed up in the streets and times when they engaged in low/no risk resistance (e.g., boycotts, slow work, sick-outs, payment withholding), depending on levels of repression.
What are other nonviolent “weapons”? (Hint: hundreds)
Humor. Maybe Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, or the Serb kids setting up a Barrel of Laughs action against Milosevic, or the over-the-top Sacha Baron Cohen mockery. A brilliant round-up of many examples came a dozen years ago in Foreign Policy, written by two of the Serbs who employed that biting humor in the successful 2000 struggle. From that article:
Revolutions are serious business. Just recall the grumpy faces of 20th-century revolutionaries like Lenin, Mao, Fidel, and Che. They could barely crack a smile. But fast-forward to the protests of the 21st century, and you see a new form of activism at work. The ominous scowls of revolutions past are replaced by humor and satire. Today’s non-violent activists are inciting a global shift in protest tactics away from anger, resentment, and rage towards a new, more incisive form of activism rooted in fun: “Laughtivism.”
Create security defections, sometimes called loyalty shifts. This might be convincing some police to stop arresting demonstrators, or soldiers to refuse to shoot nonviolent resisters. But it can be other officials as well. When judges have done nonviolent resistance themselves, for example, that is a show of unity beyond individual case rulings, which is what judges did to help bring back Poland from the brink of autocracy, as described by Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias.
For acts of omission, the least risky of them (sick-outs, boycotts like right now that have already caused Tesla stock to drop precipitously, etc.) will be far more effective if there is unity, creating pressure points rather than simple expressive, performative, and ineffective actions/lack of actions that are not mass-practiced. Right now, for example, coordinated actions by all major national groups involved in risking components of the DOGE debacle will impose discernible, effective costs.
Imposing costs using solely nonviolent methods will generate far less brutal repression. This applies increasingly as a campaign continues to practice nonviolent discipline even when provoked, even when a violent response would be justified by most ethical codes.
Self-defense by violent response, however, slams shut any sympathy gap that is produced when violence is visited upon nonviolent participants. That’s not fair! I hear you say.
True. If things were fair we wouldn’t need to be in the streets in the first place. Violent self-defense, however justified, also grants permission and provides justification for even greater levels of repression. Film of activists physically fighting back will silence most citizens who would otherwise tend to support the demonstrations, and those images will also reduce the numbers who feel marginally safe enough to join in the next one.
Winston Churchill once said that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest that have been tried. That’s still true. And nonviolence is the worst form of uprising and resistance, except for all the other methods that have been tried.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs at Portland State University. His views, however, are not those of any institution.
