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CronoDAS comments on New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people - Less Wrong
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The "interesting" thing about violence is that it's one of the few ways that a relatively small group of (politically) powerless people with no significant support can cause a big change in the world. However, the change rarely turns out the way the small group would hope; most attempts at political violence by individuals or small groups fail miserably at achieving the group's aims.
Non-violent action has a reasonable track record, considering how rarely it's been used in an organized way by the oppressed. The track record is particularly good in the first world, where people care about appearances.
I can't think of any cases. Can you give some specific examples?
Gandhi and Marting Luther King, Jr. are the headliners, as usual. Both used pacificism as a tool against regimes that, in the end, needed to think of themselves as decent people, and that had to bow to political pressure both at home and abroad. There's far more examples, though, that people don't think about - when you're looking for social change in the modern first world, non-violence is the default. Women's rights were secured without violence. Black civil rights in America were gained through non-violent activists like King and through the courts - there were violence groups like the Black Panthers, but in the end King's approach worked and violence... just didn't. Gay rights might be another example, although gays are marginalized, but not powerless, since they can show up anywhere - still, the gay rights movement has been well organized, never used violence, and has brought the first world to the point where full equality for homosexuals seems inevitable in about a generation.
Interesting. I've also seen analyses that argue that Gandhi and MLK were substantially helped by being backed by violent terrorist groups. Of course those analyses don't explain female and gay rights.
I don't have the history and poli sci qualifications to judge the factors involved, but thanks for your take.
How violent is violence? Stonewall was a throw-bricks-type riot, but there were no assassinations or the like. Also there were some violent feminists, but as you say, Black Panthers.
I'm not sure what you count as violence, but if you look at the history of the suffrage movement in Britain, you will find that while the movement started out as non-violent, it escalated to include campaigns of window-breaking, arson, and other destruction of property. (Women were also involved in many violent confrontations with police, but it looks like the police always initiated the violence. To what degree women responded in kind and whether that would make their movement violent is unclear to me.) The historians usually describe the vandalism campaigns as violent, militarism, or both, though maybe you meant to restrict attention to violence against persons. Of course, the women agitating for the vote suffered much more violence than they inflicted.