Violent Conflict is Destructive. Nonviolent Conflict is Essential – BCB #129
The entire field of nonviolent conflict exists to help people make their point without firing a gun.
Calls for violence have been in the air this week. The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was met with a certain amount of cheering, and even some support for further murders. Then, after the dismissal of the manslaughter case against Daniel Penny (who was charged with killing Jordan Neely), a Black Lives Matter organizer responded by endorsing rioting.
We turn to violence when we think there are no other choices. In this issue we ask: how common is support for violence, really? And when you’re facing genuine repression, what actually are those “other choices”? Can meeting power with anything other than physical force really work?
Support for political violence is rare
Over the last week, a slew of mainstream outlets have covered the ways that many Americans feel angry and helpless while trying to navigate America’s healthcare system—and complaints many have with UnitedHealthcare specifically. But despite the outpouring of memes it seems most people don’t actually support the killing. Only 21% of Americans have a positive or somewhat positive view of the event.
Measuring genuine support for political violence is somewhat difficult precisely because it’s rare, and naive survey methods tend to produce overestimates. The best research we have suggests about 2 percent of us would support a murder to further our politics. We tend to imagine this number is far higher, especially when thinking about our political opponents—which is itself a problem, a misperception that could lead to escalation.
You could make the argument that the shooting of Thompson succeeded in drawing attention to the role that health insurers play in our broken health care system, which obviously affects a great many people. But if that’s your goal, there are other ways to get there that are better on both moral and pragmatic grounds.
The pragmatic problems with violence
Here at BCB we tend to have an optimistic, reconciliatory view of human nature. People can, and often do, find common ground and act generously in good faith. But there are also times when a stronger adversary uses their power to oppress. Every conflict mediator soon gets the question: but what if they refuse to play fair? Our answer is to meet power with power—but not with violence.
Completely aside from the moral issues of harming another human being, the more that violence has been studied the less good it looks. There are two problems with it. The first is obvious: it’s extremely destructive. Physically harming someone else’s body has immensely traumatic physical, psychological, and social consequences. One brutal act can all too easily lock whole groups into cycles of violence. Atrocities set up horrifying feedback loops. Escalation can be uncontrollable. Revolutions famously devour their own children.
And then there’s the question of efficacy. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth studied every attempted secession and regime change in the 20th and 21st centuries and found that nonviolent civil resistance is, statistically speaking, more successful than violent movements (or even movements with violent wings) at effecting lasting, positive change. It’s easier for more people to be involved in them, and they can use a wider variety of methods to try to bring about change. As they explained in a 2019 interview, non-violent campaigns are far more likely to lead to long-term improvements even when the movements themselves fail:
Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed. This is because even though they “failed” in the short term, the nonviolent campaigns tended to empower moderates or reformers within the ruling elites who gradually began to initiate changes and liberalize the polity.
Resorting to nonviolent methods doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be well-liked. How people respond to a movement depends greatly whether they agree with the cause (a phenomenon we’ve written about before). But when you resort to violence, you lose the moral high ground, which inevitably has political consequences. As politics professor Omar Wasow put it in 2020,
what we often see is that, when protesters engage in violence, often in a very understandable response to state repression, that tends to work against their cause and interests, and mobilizes or becomes fodder for the opposition to grow its coalition.
Wasow should know. His study of the protests following the assassination of MLK in 1968 found that violent protests moved the vote towards Republicans, while nonviolent protests moved the vote towards Democrats.
Conflict without violence
So how do you fight back without resorting to violence? The field of nonviolent conflict has evolved to answer this question. Crucially, nonviolent conflict isn’t just another name for pacifism. It’s all about figuring out how to apply force without physical violence.
This kind of civil resistance famously proved effective in India in the 1930s, when Gandhi and his followers boycotted and refused to cooperate with British rule, and when Black Americans took up the fight to desegregate the country in the 1950s and 1960s. Nonviolent movements like these make use of a wide array of methods and tactics, many of which were catalogued in political scientist Gene Sharp’s 1973 book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Sharp came up with a famous list of 198 methods of nonviolent action.
Some of these tactics are obvious (“public speeches”, “pickets”, and “letters of support”). Some rely on humor to ridicule authority (“mock awards”, “public disrobing”). Some are meant to harass (“rude gestures”, “haunting officials”). There are tactics of economic disruption (“consumer boycotts”, “withholding rent”, or just “staying at home”) and ways to fight institutional power (“reluctant and slow compliance”, “overloading of administrative systems”, and “quasi-legal evasions and delays”).
There’s no end to creative ways to make life difficult for those in power. Protesters in Tbilisi, Georgia recently took to displaying portraits of people beaten by police. And of course the original Occupy movement opened up an entirely new vocabulary of protest. Whatever you think of the politics behind such movements, there’s no question they reshaped the language of defiance.
Does this work? MLK and Gandhi are the big successes. But as the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict has documented, there are plenty of other less clichéd and equally compelling examples demonstrating the efficacy of nonviolent conflict. To name a few in recent history:
In 2000, Serbs ousted Slobodan Milosevic, after a nonviolent movement helped co-opt the police and military, thereby dividing his base of support.
In 2002, citizens in Madagascar organized nonviolently to enforce their presidential election results.
In 2003, Georgians used nonviolent action to expose fraud and enforce election results in their country, and in 2004, Ukrainians did the same.
In 2005, vast protests in Lebanon brought an end to Syrian military control.
In 2006, Nepalis used nonviolent methods to restore democratic rule to their country.
It’s worth mentioning that more than 150 protesters gathered outside the UnitedHealthcare headquarters in August to speak out about the health insurance company’s claim denials. Surely there were ways to build on that momentum to draw attention and disrupt business as usual without shooting the CEO. Granted, these actions require significant organizing. But we need that anyway; unless there is a movement in its wake to take on the sustained work of change, this killing will have produced nothing more than 15 minutes of fame for an atrocity.
Once again, this is the Better Conflict Bulletin, not the no-conflict bulletin. And non-violent conflict is surely better. But few know how to do it well—or even realize that it exists as a discipline with a long history and a track record of success.
Quote of the Week
(Murderer has ideas I disagree with): Awful. This discredits his whole disgraceful philosophy.
(Murderer has ideas I agree with): Look, I'm just saying, this is what happens if you don't listen to my ideas