Comment by anigbrowl
13 hours ago
(2019)
Chenoweth has backed off her previous conclusions in recent years, observing that nonviolent protest strategies have dramatically declined in effectiveness as governments have adjusted their tactics of repression and messaging. See eg https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/erica-chenoweth-demo...
One current example of messaging can be seen in the reflexive dismissal by the current US government and its propagandists of any popular opposition as 'paid protesters'. Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign, any crowd protesting government policy is described as either a rioting or alleged to be financed by George Soros or some other boogeyman of the right. This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.
I think it's more of just Goodhart’s Law in play: 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'
In a case of relatively organic or somewhat spontaneous action, 3.5% of people doing something is huge. The reason is because in organic or spontaneous action, those 3.5% probably represent the views of vastly more than 3.5% of people. But as actions become more organized and less spontaneous, you reach a scenario where those 3.5% may represent fewer and fewer people other than themselves. At the extreme example of effective organization (where you get 100% participation rate), those 3.5% of people may represent nobody beside themselves.
I was perusing the dataset they used [1] for the '3.5% rule' and it seems that a more unifying theme is leaders losing the support of their own base. And it's easy to how that could strongly correlate with large organic protest since you've done things to the point of not only pissing off 'the other side' but also your own side.
I think Nixon is a good example of this. There were vastly larger protests against Nixon's involvement in Vietnam than there were for Watergate. Yet the Vietnam protests had no effect whatsoever, while he left office over Watergate. The difference is that he lost the confidence of his own party over Watergate. Had he not resigned, he would likely have been impeached and convicted. Had 3.5% of people protested Watergate, he would even be included on this list, which I think emphasizes that protests (or lack thereof) are mostly a tangential factor.
[1] - https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi...
> This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.
Even their own. Jan 6 for example. It was a guided tour given by FBI agitators apparently.
> This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.
That strategy is also typical of China. Whenever there's a protest (for example the HK protests), it's always financed by western interests. Even volunteers organically organising themselves to help victims of the Tai Po fire were deemed to be western interests trying to discredit China. It's a surprisingly effective tactic.
I just always wonder how we have so many people eating this up when the strategy is so blindingly obvious.
I can’t help but be a little depressed by this realization. But to take it a step further, while I think there are some people who are genuinely buying this propaganda, I expect that a chunk of the propaganda aligned side also don’t think there is any point correcting the misleading statements. They benefit from the overall control of their ‘side’ and so just go right along sliding toward the fanatical fringe extreme of their side. On the other ‘side’, many people seem to have decided there is no use attempting to counter message after seeing the failure to move any extremists from their positions (and a failure to get even a milk toast correction from the non fanatics who are aligned). I think that the end result of this pattern is a gradually accelerating move towards the far ends, leaving no one to have any reasonable discourse in the center.
I’m not saying I support the center positions, nor that I don’t support what is often called an extreme position, just that this seems to be a watershed moment globally.
Polarization leaves very little room for reasonable discourse at the poles too. Pure tribalism doesn't care about reason unless that reason is in service of the identity and ideology of the tribe.
What if political discourse was focused on policy not identity and couched in terms of mutual interest instead of party affiliation? There would still be tensions, trade-offs, conflicts and political strategy at play but the discourse would be infinitely more reasonable.
I think this is what we mean when we talk about "center positions": a "value-based realism" that recognizes that society is nothing but the mutual alignment of values and interests. I don't understand why "common sense" has become so unpopular.
> I just always wonder how we have so many people eating this up when the strategy is so blindingly obvious
It shouldn't be surprising considering how naive people are in general. People actually believe we live in democracies despite a century of evidence to the contrary. Propaganda and indoctrination are highly effective, and why wouldn't they be? I think it's the same reason we end up with so many unhinged people believing in reptilian conspiracy theories ir whatever: the media is always lying to them on a daily basis, so they can't trust it and without educations of their own have no way to distinguish truth from falsity anymore... why not just go with what sounds good or feels right. What other option do they have? Buy in, tune out or be lost. Those are the choices for 99% of people alive. Also, who has the energy anyway? Few are as privledged with time and energy as we are.
Thing is, someone is paying all these bills. Yes really. Trump gutting USAID funding brought a lot of this out in the open: many organizations that claimed to be independent turned out to be mouthpieces of the US government and closed down as soon as the funding dried up.
Can you please tell me which organizations are just mouthpieces because they closed down due to lack of funding vs just closed due to lack of funding?
It makes perfect sense that when an organization loses funding it ceases operations, why is this now evidence of cointelpro?
That's a misreading of Chenowith's argument which itself is heavily based on Timur Kuran's Revolutionary Thresholds concept.
The thesis is once mass mobilization of non-violent protesters occurs, it reduces the threshold for elite defection because there are multiple different veto groups within a selectorate, and some may choose to defect because they either view the incumbent as unstable or they disagree with the incumbent's policies.
I also recommend reading Chennowith's discussion paper clearing up the "3.5%" argument [0]. A lot of mass reporting was just sloppy.
Tl;Dr - "The 3.5% figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements. It is not necessarily a prescriptive one, and no one can see the future. Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future"
[0] - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2024-05/Eric...
> Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future
Goodhart's law
Are you aware of whether Chennowith ever discussed the presence, implied or actual, of more extreme resistance groups/factions operating in the same locations and time periods? I’ve seen some informal work discussing the ‘pressure’ on the incumbent power being supported and made more tenable in comparison to the potential for a more radical approach. I have seen anything widely popularized discussing this outside of ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ which does have some good references and particular examples.
Yes, and the result is negative.
Violent Action only incentivizes the selectorate to not defect. This is something Kuran pointed out decades ago as did Chennowith.
The reality is the only way to affect change is to incentivize elite defection, and that requires organized nonviolent action along with exogenous variables.
In many countries, it does work, and continues with some regularity:
2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
2018: https://www.occrp.org/en/project/a-murdered-journalists-last...
2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqBls-qpRM
2026: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-authorit... -- outcome TBD ?
The example of Ukraine is complicated, and that situation has become a nightmare With what followed - though in fairness to the Ukrainians, the west could have done a hell of a lot more, and still could.
The Arab Spring turned into The Arab Winter in a wave of repression. Some good has come out of it but the link you have provided says this:
Although the long-term effects of the Arab Spring have yet to be shown, its short-term consequences varied greatly across the Middle East and North Africa. In Tunisia and Egypt, where the existing regimes were ousted and replaced through a process of free and fair election, the revolutions were considered short-term successes.[337][338][339] This interpretation is, however, problematized by the subsequent political turmoil that emerged in Egypt and the autocracy that has formed in Tunisia. Elsewhere, most notably in the monarchies of Morocco and the Persian Gulf, existing regimes co-opted the Arab Spring movement and managed to maintain order without significant social change.[340][341] In other countries, particularly Syria and Libya, the apparent result of Arab Spring protests was a complete societal collapse.[337]
It's always ironic seeing Arab Spring in hindsight. I've seen western observers celebrating Arab countries society upheaval, when the very same thing will also happen to them in less than 10 years.
The tring that Ukraine and Arab Spring have in common - is that same folks that managed to bring Milošević down in Serbia (known as Resistance/Otpor), later went on to talk/teach protestors in Ukraine, Egypt ...etc.
Check out #Post Milošević; and #Legacy; sections on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor (couldn't figure out how to get deeplinks on mobile).
TL;DR: Besides Ukraine and Egypt, they went to a few more places, in some it worked, in others it didn't. And there were revelations of foreign (e.g. USAID) funding.
Yes. I am definitely no fan of regime change through revolution. It has an extremely bloody track record.
I am just pointing out that nonviolent protests usually get it done, especially after crackdowns.
I think the article talks about nonviolent protests - the first two were anything but.
The Slovakian incident worked, because Slovakia has a working representative democracy.
In a deeply flawed, or downright nondemocratic system, like Serbia or Georgia, it's very hard to drive change through nonviolent protests.
It also bears mentioning, that the key issue with protesting, is that it, legally speaking does nothing. Legal representatives are under no obligation to do anything in response to protests.
It in itself does nothing, but it is necessary to embolden anyone who can do something.
If nobody protests, people who have the choice to do something will see that nobody gives a shit... And why should they stick their necks out for a cause that nobody gives a shit about?
"Paid" demonstrators has been an accusation used by governments for several decades.
Edit: https://www.yourdictionary.com/rent-a-crowd (Rent a crowd/mob is often used to claim the protest is attended by people paid to be there, and was first coined in the mid 20th century, but apparently the actual accusation (though) is as old as demonstrations)
The usual boogie man.
Did you read that link? It’s hardly damming.
“Through a fund, the foundation issued a $3 million grant to the Indivisible Organization that was good for two years "to support the grantee's social welfare activities.” The grants were not specifically for the No Kings protests, the foundation said.”
If 7 million people protested, that 3 million over 2 years sure went a long way. They work for pennies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2025_No_Kings_protests
I'm not sure why you are attacking me, I am clearly replying to someone who is claiming that recent times the retort of "paid demonstrators" is effective, and I have pointed out that the claim of people being paid to demonstrate has been made for decades, if not centuries.
Thank you for articulating the accusation, giving me the opportunity to respond, but try to take your own advice and read what's actually being said.
3 replies →
There appears to be a few factors combining in the U.S. right now that make protests less effective than they once were.
1. Politics are religion more than ever before. There is a solid MAGA core that will not turn on Trump for any reason. When confronted by uncomfortable truth, they dismiss it as lies. When they can't dismiss it as a lie, they choose not to care. The Democrats have people like this too, but they haven't been hired and turned into a paramilitary goon squad the way ICE has. Yet. The "unreasonables" on both sides of the spectrum are not going anywhere. After Trump dies they could easily be harnessed by someone else. When so many people cannot be swayed, the impact of protests are dulled. The "unreasonables" aren't swayed when the other side protests, and the mushy middle will tend to dismiss many protests as products of people they view as extremists.
2. There is a ruling class (i.e. Billionaires) with a firm grip on power (through both parties) and complete insulation from the public. In his discourses on Livy, Machiavelli observed that Roman officials who protected themselves from those they ruled with forts or castles tended to rule in a more brutal and less productive manner than those who lived among the governed. If you want good government, those governing should feel vulnerable enough to behave reasonably. U.S. billionaires, and the politicians they own, are completely sealed off from public wrath. Minnesota could burn and none of them would get more than a warm fuzzy watching it on the news. If a protest doesn't scare billionaires it will have no impact on how the U.S. is governed.
3. "Flood the zone" is just one of the tactics being used to numb people and encourage them to switch off from politics. The nastiness of hyper-partisan politics is, at times, a distracting entertainment, but it's fatiguing the rest of the time. People rightly observe that both of the U.S.'s diametrically opposed parties tend to do similar things (e.g. tax breaks for the rich) and are funded by the same billionaires every election. If people will scream at you for picking a side in what looks like a sham of false choice, why not just stay home, plug in, and tune out? When a big protest happens, people who are numb and tuned out are just going to change the channel and consume some more billionaire-produced pap.
As a Canadian, what's going on in the U.S. has been terrifying to watch. We're so culturally similar that what happens in the U.S. could easily happen here. Even if it doesn't, we're still subject to the fallout. A classic pattern of authoritarian regimes is to lash out at allies and neighbours in order to give their people threats to fear more than their own government. Well, that's us. If MAGA isn't checked, Canada will likely be subjected to far more than tariff's and threats.
It's hard for Canadians to appreciate how nations elsewhere in the world can harbour such bitter and long-lived enmities against one another. We're now experiencing how they're created. It's not hatred yet, but the trust we once had for Americans is gone and won't return for generations. For the rest of my life, we'll always be four years or less away from what could be the next round of American insanity.
Well also the old school civil rights stuff didn't have supporters needing to engage in linguistic gymnastics in order to drum up support. Which makes just drawing attention to the issue rather more effective.
[flagged]
I think you are making assumptions that are not correct. And as a ‘normal person’ surrounded by ‘normal people’ at the last No Kings protest, I very much object to your framing.
There’s a big difference between funding organizing groups like Indivisible (which, yes, foundations linked to Soros do - although I suspect not at the magnitude you’re imagining), and directly paying protestors (which doesn’t happen to any notable degree)
Want to understand this? Go to a local Indivisible or Democratic Party meetup and you will see the normal people with your own eyes. Go to a big protest like ‘No Kings’, or a rally during campaign season and you’ll be surrounded by ‘normal people’.
I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment) - but what you’re saying is ridiculous, and it’s a worrying symptom of our current political climate that people can be so out of touch as to believe it.
>I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment)
Despite what the proponents of Citizen's United might have us believe, money != speech, and adding restrictions to political donations is perfectly compatible with the first amendment.
Would-be donors are allowed to advocate for political positions just the same as anybody else. Nobody is stopping them. That would still be the case with donation limits. They can still get on TV and argue their case.
There is already a precedent for limiting donations. Try donating money to ISIS or Hezbollah and see if the government considers that an exercise of your first amendment rights.
> No normal person engages in this stuff
On top of being false, that's kind of a non-statement. You probably don't see average people around you protesting because if the average person was engaging in this then that'd imply close to half the country protesting. But they're definitely out there even if a small minority.
The average person doesn't have the time to protest (because how do you protest when you need to go to a job to put food on the table and keep health insurance). Or they're doing fine with the current state of affairs even if they don't like what's happening. Protesting is naturally always going to be a fringe thing and you better hope for everyone's sake that it stays that way or else you end up with a coup or revolution like in less developed nations.
[flagged]
6 replies →
> No normal person engages in this stuff, it’s hyper activists part of organized groups with real financing
I guess I'm not a normal person then. I didn't realize that I was a hyper activist because I drew on some cardboard and that my group of friends was being financed. I better go demand for my Soros-check from them.
Are you planning on going to a Tesla dealership again to protest? This was top of my Reddit algorithm for several months, no one even mentions it anymore
20 replies →
What does it mean to "fund protests"? I'm also a "normal" person who has been to a couple No Kings protests, and no one paid me. Someone spent some money on fliers, I suppose.
The major No Kings events were in June and October last year. January is not a great time for outdoors protests in much of the country. Does it somehow make the protests inauthentic if focus has now shifted towards ICE?
I wasn’t aware that “ managing data and communications with participants” is considered to be funding the protests.
> No normal person […]
A form of:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
?
No really, I'm a normal person, and I went to the most recent No Kings protest. I've never protested anything before in my life, but now I've gone to two protests against Trump because he's just that bad and dangerous and my country is important to me.
I wasn't paid anything. I rode the bus downtown, thinking it'd be easier than driving / parking, which wasn't quite the brilliant strategy I thought it'd be. I marched down the street with literally tens of thousands of people.
There were definitely some people there who seemed to be the activist type (who find something to protest every weekend), but it was mostly normal people. I saw at least three people I know. I saw regular-looking men in cargo shorts and women in straw hats. It was during the football game, and I saw many people wearing team colors and one sign that said, "It's gotten so bad I'm missing football to protest." One guy was wearing a "Jesus is King" t-shirt. A woman was carrying a "Hicks Against Facism" sign. Another guy was carrying his vinyl copy of Rush's "A Farewell to Kings" as a protest sign.
So, not paid protesters carrying boilerplate signs supplied to them by some organization. Just regular people who are not OK with what's going on.
Many years of taking care in protests against rightwing politics and I haven’t received a single penny; meanwhile everyone else is getting paid, I really fucked up I guess…
Would you pay someone who does it for free? They aren't stupid they pay to astroturf something where the organic movement isn't strong enough or not guaranteed to draw enough people. It's also rather unlikely that they would pay people direly they rather pay for organization, transportation of people, legal fees and similar things.
2 replies →
> Where are all the new organic No Kings protests?
I see them regularly just driving around.
I've never been paid to attend a protest nor has anyone I've talked to at those protests. Most people make their own signs. No Kings was a bunch of regular citizens expressing their concern for the state of US Democracy. Why is that so hard to understand?
Incredible bait job lol. Lots of engagement.
[dead]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
IMHO, the value of the protest is to demonstrate a portion of the electorate does not agree with whatever they are protesting. There are a lot of people in a bubble that seem to think the majority always views things exactly the same as they do. Maybe you will always default do doubling down on the status quo, but some people will eventually inquire as to why someone is willing to inconvenience themselves to protest. Once someone starts to be curious about other people's motivations and reasoning, it often does impact their own opinions, for good or bad.
Assuming critics are just reflexively resistant is a convenient way to avoid asking whether the criticism has merit. "They'd get it if they were more curious" is unfalsifiable.
Everyone already knows dissent exists. Polls, social media, elections make that clear. The question is whether street protests add anything to that awareness, and whether the way they're conducted generates curiosity or just irritation. For a lot of people it's the latter, and waving that off doesn't make the problem disappear.
12 replies →
Don't underestimate the importance of the other reason protests are effective: as a politician, it's very, very scary to look out your window and see thousands of people that are mad enough at you to forgoe their day and instead come yell at you about it. It tends to make them a bit more amenable unless they have enough military power to guaranteed squash mass resistance (which is the case for any American politician).
1 reply →
Exactly. Piercing the bubble is the most important purpose of peacefully protesting in a day of internet silos and media monopolies.
A protest demonstrates a level of unhappiness with a group or policy. People may not believe what they see on the news, facebook, or youtube, but hopefully we have not reached a point where they refuse to believe what they see with their own eyes.
The point is to demonstrate "we are not alone in this feeling", that's it...
They didnt have to "force them to do what they want" just tip the balance of votes at the ballot box. For that aim protest seems like it could be quite effective.
In the age of centralized broadcasting where everyone watched the same TV channels ...
Those TV channels were virtually always (and to this day still are) controlled by "the government".
Meanwhile other TV channels, if there even were any, and if enough people even had chance to watch them (because limited frequency/transmission allocations, artificial limits on cable distribution ..etc) - were and still are labeled as "funded by foreign (state) actors that are trying to destabilize our independance/values/etc".
And it's more of the same online.
---
This reminds me of an old website that's an absolute gold mine.
Knock yourself out https://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/minority_inf...
> It was always naive to think 3.5% of the population could force the other 96.5%
This makes 100%, right. But how many actually care and act, what are the dynamics?
Regarding the end of centralized broadcasting, one could argue that social networks might actually act as amplifiers of "small" events.
I don't understand this comment. What protesting does is let other people know there is dissent, and some people are willing to take to the streets. Enough people do that and you have networking effects as other people are motivated to take a stand. It makes the mainstream media, and representatives feel pressure to address the issue. I've been to a number of protests over the last year, and I can tell you there are even more people honking in support who drive by.
The counter argument to that is in the age of the social media there is no need to take to the streets to show that there is dissent. Everyone the folks on the street could reach will know about the dissent anyway.
Motivating other people to take a stand -- I do not think this is true either. A fraction of the folks who would support the issue regardless may join the protest on the street. But that would be those who support the issue already.
Change comes from the ballot box. Enough people in the street might influence the next election (sometimes for the issue they are advocating; sometimes in the opposite direction). But 6+ months from the next election the effect I suspect is small. My 2c.
5 replies →
You're describing how protests energize people who already agree. I'm asking how they persuade people who don't. The honks are from your side. The people you need are either tuning out or getting annoyed. Visibility used to equal influence when everyone watched the same three channels. That's not the world we live in anymore.
5 replies →
I'm not sure it's an anomaly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqBls-qpRM
[dead]
> Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign
And then they lost and the odds of those people being paid actors seems less ridiculous.
I'd separate protestors from supporters.
It's a fact that Kamala burned through $1 billion in four months, including paying tens of millions on performances (Beyonce, Lady Gaga,...) and $1 million to Oprah to host an event. That attracted supporters indirectly even though they didn't get "paid". "Incentivized" is better?
well, aside from alleged riots there have been actual ones and those have unfortunate effect of making it easier to dismiss the cause
Am American "riot" is a European city after a football game.
Would that Americans use the term more accurately.
How often do people die during football riots?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests says $1-2B in damage and more than 19 deaths.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill... says 25 deaths.
1 reply →
Considering Americans get shot during riots, I would say you're wrong.
1 reply →