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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (2019)
ndkap wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
In Nepal, on Sep 8, teenagers and GenZ organized peaceful protests.
They were there on school uniform -- but 21+ were killed on a single
day of peaceful protest. The next day, all 3 branches of the government
were burned -- the legislative, the executive and the judiciary too.
Even the Fox News equivalent (Kantipur) was burned.
I think people always opt for peaceful protest at first, but when that
is made impossible, people go for the violent one. MLK was successful
because there was the threat of Malcolm X. Same thing with Gandhi.
pjdesno wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
Despite whatever the NRA says, governments have a near-monopoly on
violence. They've got all the good weapons - Google "Neal Brennan Has a
Plan to Test the 2nd Amendment" for a humorous take on this.
That leaves non-violence, which is perhaps a misnomer - there's often
plenty of violence, but it's used by the government, not its opponents.
When non-violence works, it's typically because those working for the
government start refusing to kill their fellow countrymen - they
defect, in non-violence scholar-speak.
There's an authoritarian playbook for countering this - you recruit
your forces from ethnic minorities, often rural, who already hate the
people who are protesting. Thus you see ICE recruits from the Deep
South and National Guard troops from Texas being sent into Northern
cities.
tbrownaw wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
> Regarding the â3.5% ruleâ, she points out that while 3.5% is a
small minority, such a level of active participation probably means
many more people tacitly agree with the cause.
The more effective you are at getting people to participate, the less
effective that participation will appear to be. Because it's just a
proxy for what actually matters.
surume wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
I guess BBC has never heard of Iran. They easily passed the 3.5%, so
the government âreduced the percentageâ. BBC, you are completely
disconnected from reality.
aeternum wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
Yet another "trust the science" statistic.
This isn't actual science, it's tabloid news.
Jun8 wrote 11 hours 28 min ago:
Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci's book Twitter and Teargas explains why, for
protest movements to be successful they should have charismatic leaders
and decentralized mass protest movements have a much harder time
succeeding:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.twitterandteargas.org
selecsosi wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
I would recommend anyone interest in the topic to check out the book
[1] . The author covers (in depth) a solid analysis of the failures to
enact long term change across several major "revolutionary" movements
over the last couple year (including the Arab Spring and Occupy among
others). I think his analysis is quite good and points at significant
issues in organizational leadership, co-opting, and other structural
failures (or adaptations by governments) that illustrate classic
approaches to mass protest are more difficult to achieve desired goals
in modern times. Worth a read if you have the time.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn
mizzao wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
Current US population: 348 million
3.5% of that: 12 million
No Kings protest attendance, Oct 18 2025: ~7 million
globalnode wrote 11 hours 51 min ago:
while the non violent protests may not be as effective anymore, i think
the point is that if those 3.5% are "organised and coordinated" they
will be effective. can you think of any other organised minorities
trying to change the world right now? ahem ahem... also explains why
govts and businesses are afraid of this and why we have things like
mass surveillance and union breakers.
intalentive wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
Successful protest movements are typically successful because they are
organized and/or leveraged by a counter elite or foreign actor. One
example is the CIA orchestrating protests to topple the PM of Iran in
1953.
Protest movements lacking elite or foreign state sponsorship (like the
yellow vests in France, Occupy Wall St, or the Canada truckers) tend to
wither away by attrition, get infiltrated and redirected, or else are
dispersed by force.
EdNutting wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
Written by the BBC in the years shortly after Brexit, the article had
homegrown counter-evidence to its basic premise.
3.5% might work sometimes. At other times, it achieves as much as
pissing into the wind.
komali2 wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
Keith McHenry of "Food Not Bombs" made an argument for nonviolent
resistance in his version of "The Anarchist Cookbook," available for
free download [1] He also included a choice selection of some of the
most milquetoast, boring, American-coded vegan recipes I've ever seen
in my life.
His argument was not really a neoliberal "just protest bro trust me bro
fascists are so scared of protests" one and more an argument against
armed uprising by leftists, thinking they can establish communism or
anarchism with this method. He pointed to other attempts to do so in
history and how even when these attempts succeeded in overthrowing the
establishment, it inevitably established a system of rule predicated on
violence. A famous example can be the successful communist revolution
in what became the PRC, that degraded into the cultural revolution and
police state, and resulted in a bourgeoisie state with spicy
capitalism.
Andreas Malm also took a relatively anti violent perspective in "How to
Blow Up a Pipeline," though he analyzed the usefulness of a small
subset of incredibly violent people functioning as a contrast to the
vast majority of dissidents who then look much more reasonable. He also
spent a lot of time arguing for the importance of having a mind for
marketing - no, Extinction Rebellion, you have not done praxis if the
most visible outcome of your Action is a photo of a white protestor in
a suit kicking a black blue collar worker off a ladder.
I can't really argue with McHenry's chops as a praxis anarchist, he
after all does more in a week than I've done in my life, feeding people
constantly and helping to organize the global Food Not Bombs movement
and all its spinoffs. I also agree logically with his arguments that
bringing violence to dissident movements invited hyper violent state
suppression applied as a blanket against all dissidents, violent or
otherwise, so basically nonconsensually subjects everyone to violence.
That said, in his own words, it took two decades of being super duper
polite to the SFPD before they finally, and only occasionally, backed
his group up by neglecting to enforce orders to disperse their food
giveaways. Other than that, there's been no establishment of any Food
Not Bombs autonomous zones, no reliable farm to mouths food supply
chain, no syndicalizion, no significant political organization. I doubt
many here have even heard of Food Not Bombs despite them being founded
in the heart of Silicon Valley. Their immediate mutual aid effects:
undeniably some of the most widespread in the world in the last few
decades. Their long term impact? More doubtful, imo.
See also: no communist revolution with any teeth in the last 70 years.
The only anarchist breakaway with any success is the Kurds who aren't
really even anarchists or communists (but are very interesting to
study), and in the last two decades plenty of successful examples of
utterly suppressed mostly nonviolent resistance: Hong Kong, the PRC
bank run protests and COVID protests, all Palestinian resistance bombed
to oblivion, Venezuela's failed resistance to Maduro's election fraud.
An exception I'm aware of is the student uprising in Taiwan known as
the "Sunflower Protests" which completely halted the government's
attempt to sell itself to the PRC. But one decade later a similar
protest occured which failed to prevent the KMT from seizing a ton of
new extra legislative power so, win some, lose some.
I feel like we can always learn from the past, but the methods of
States to persist themselves is evolving, and so dissidents need to
evolve as well. I emailed Cory Doctorow about this because his
"Walkaway" novel illustrated a method to me that seems the most viable
in the modern era: basically techno-anarchism, leveraging technology to
establish post scarcity zones where "the right to well-being,
well-being for all" is established and State incursions are repelled by
highly targeted appeals to the family and friends of gestapo agents
found through facial recognition. It's a good bit of speculative
fiction with other fun technology, strong recommend to nerds. Anyway,
he suggested the same general advice: solidarity first, then
methodology.
> Broadly: find groups that are bound together by solidarity and join
them. Then, if you think they're not doing effective things, work with
those people, in solidarity, to do more effective things. Mutual aid
groups. DSA. Anti-ICE patrols. Unions. Solidarity first, tactics
second. Solidarity will get you through times of bad tactics better
than good tactics will get you through times of no solidarity. Your
spectacular lone actions will get you nowhere if no one is willing to
post your bail or de-arrest you at a protest. Getting from small groups
that are bonded by solidarity to a profound change in the American
system is hard, and a lot of work, which is why we need to start now.
So lacking any other ideas, I continue to do this, but I'm always
keeping my eyes peeled for new strategies. As much as I'm interested in
highly impactful things individuals can do (like making fake Lockheed
Martin verified Twitter accounts and posting things that wipe billions
off their stock value), it's seeming more and more to me that the most
valuable skill any individual can acquire in service of resisting
oppressive governments is rhetoric (which includes e.g. marketing
ability).
(HTM) [1]: https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html
mothballed wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
Rojava was pretty much wiped out in the last week. BTW I lived there
briefly, outside of certain communist and brainwashing in YPG and
some farm communes, if you observe the markets they are thoroughly
capitalist with also massive wealth disparity. I would say, they are
closer to ancaps (extremely low government burden + strong respect of
property rights), the mustache jesus/ Apo stuff is more symbolic than
praxis.
CGMthrowaway wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
Related: "The Most Intolerant Wins" (2016). The idea is that a small,
determined group of people can change how everyone behaves because when
the group wonât compromise, itâs often easier to adapt than to work
around them.
(HTM) [1]: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictat...
quercus wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
* Except when the 3.5% is entirely geriatric women.
zeckalpha wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
The right has their version of this meme:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Percenters
ppqqrr wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
anyone who has to look that far back in history for examples of
righteous resistance⦠is serious about neither history or
resistance.
ppqqrr wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
in a world where getting 3 people to show up to dinner is a challenge,
a coherent, organized group large enough to be visible as a percentage
of the population is an exceedingly rare and powerful entity. but
history shows that such an entity is usually either 1) stable and
peaceful, but actively decaying due to its position of hegemony or 2)
unstable and violent, using conflict to sharply define its boundaries
and growing by dividing the rest of society into "insiders" and
"outsiders". some days i feel like we're microbes stuck in
microbiological cycles. but if we make it past this rut, we will have
all that we need to lay down an even stronger foundation, to codify
systems and organizations designed to scatter and suppress hate and
intolerance.
dyauspitr wrote 14 hours 41 min ago:
3.5% have to go the the streets, stay on the streets and start causing
enough disruption for long enough. It also needs to have barbs.
nine_k wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
"All progress depends on the unreasonable man", by definition a
minority.
Not only progress, sadly, but almost any change. Those who care are few
and far between, and this is why they wield outsized power.
tstrimple wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
The largest voting group in the US are non-voters. As bad as
conservatives are, the non-voters are complicit in letting it happen.
Hope they enjoy their taste of "both sides are the same".
nine_k wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
The US political system badly needs a reasonable third side. Both
sides have gone really bad, and arguably lost their contact with
the majority of voters.
tstrimple wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
Fundamentals of the electoral system make this almost impossible.
See spoiler effects where your campaign and your next closest
competitor are split, and your polar opposite claims the win. The
majority wanted one of the two more popular options, but the
person with only a fraction of overall support gets the win.
There are plenty of better voting systems but entrenched powers
and "American Exceptionalism" means nothing will ever change.
I'd love to abandon the Democratic party. They have proven
themselves to be useless in all the decades of my voting life.
But they aren't blatantly evil and corrupt like Republicans.
Democrats are at best a feeble foil to Republican bullshit, but
they are literally the only foil that exists to choose from.
nine_k wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
Exactly. A third party would only be possible by altering the
system, ideally by introduction of preferential voting.
komali2 wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
Completely agree since both sides in the USA is two conservative
parties. Luckily there seems to be an actual opposition finally
arriving in the form of the Social Democrats.
runako wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
This rule was obviously silly (and Chenoweth herself didn't suggest it
was a hard rule) given that we know e.g. Mississippi had an engaged,
vocal opposition in active protest, and that opposition was far larger
than 3.5% of the population. And yet, the authoritarianism there
persisted for nearly a century.
rayiner wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
This seems anti democratic. How can we prevent small minorities from
hassling everyone until they get their way?
justsomehnguy wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
You declare what this is democratic. Declaring the same by a country
from the other side of the planet also helps. Worked fine for a
certain democratic country in 2014.
fedeb95 wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
seems is the key word. 3.5% - or any other % - actively engaging
doesn't mean that if you cast a vote, 3.5% would support. Probably an
order of magnitude more. People tend to be inert, even when they
agree with something.
However, sometimes it is true that small minorities can hassle
everyone until they get their way. This usually happens through
lobbying, corruption and misinformation though, way easier than a
peaceful protest if you are a small minority; with the added benefit
of appearing to have a big majority of the population in your favor.
See what populist far right movements are doing right now throughout
the world.
Conscat wrote 13 hours 5 min ago:
In the big picture, culture progresses towards equality over time,
although it see-saws and moves very slowly relative to a human
lifespan. Small minorities of hate groups, for example KKK, are not
able to influence society in the long-run because their message is
antithetical to this natural imperative. Whereas advocacy for racial
minorities, gender minorities, and feminism progresses over time.
tbrownaw wrote 6 hours 21 min ago:
> natural imperative
It happens because trust me bro.
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
I think that might be wishful thinking.
It is privileging 200 of history verses several thousand years of
human history.
komali2 wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
Several thousand years of human history in fact argues for their
point of tendency towards equality being a natural imperative,
and artificially enforced caste systems being unnatural and
instinctively distasteful to people.
See Graber's last book before he died:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything?wpr...
hellgas00 wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
Nothing says "instinctively distasteful caste systems" like the
ongoing meat grinder in Gaza. Truly the pinnacle of humanity's
natural drift toward equality.
komali2 wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
The majority of people are horrified when they become aware
of what's happening in Gaza. Personally I think a large
majority of those that support it are sheltered from the
reality of it, e.g. avoid seeing images of assassinated
children.
sabellito wrote 13 hours 37 min ago:
What if the small minority is being oppressed and killed? There are
so many reasons why a small minority might need to protest within a
democracy. "This seems anti democratic" is a bizarre take.
lingrush4 wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
3.5% forcing their preferences on all the others is obviously
anti-democratic.
Unless you don't know what democracy means
sabellito wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
It seems that it's you who needs more education on the topic.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
Jtsummers wrote 13 hours 51 min ago:
In the US? You'd probably need to repeal the first amendment. Good
luck with that.
ChrisArchitect wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
(2019)
Some previous discussion:
2024 [1] 2022
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40378867
(HTM) [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32458241
WalterBright wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
Individuals can change the world, too. Lee Harvey Oswald, for one. Elon
Musk, for another (in a totally different way). And Fritz Haber. Plenty
more.
komali2 wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
Assassination is fascinating for its ability to abruptly change a
paradigm and the fact that it can be done by a single person, but it
is extremely rare for a reason - murder is bad and instinctively
despicable to most humans. [1] An assassination is also an
acknowledgement of the magical power of one individual, which I think
is counter to the goals of most revolutionaries, who want to instead
demonstrate to the general population that power is within the
capital p People, and communities, and organized resistance.
Assassination is saying "actually this one person is so powerful that
it'll solve a lot of our problems if they're dead." Which I don't
believe can be true since to be true that would mean that one person
would basically have to be a wizard with supernatural powers. In
reality anybody with a lot of political power derives that power from
people's willingness to comply with that person's wishes. A system
like a government may have made people used to the idea of obeying
authority, but the reality remains such that if everyone suddenly
decided to stop holding up the system of government, the power
vanishes into thin air.
Thus a despot's power is able to be nullified by anyone able to
convince a lot of people to refuse to implement the despot's desires.
(HTM) [1]: https://voicesofvr.com/1182-recreating-philosophical-moral-d...
marcosdumay wrote 15 hours 28 min ago:
The world seems to have changed since the events that led to this
conclusion (that were mostly way before 2019).
Governments apparently learned how to assimilate protests and burn
people down without any apparent violence, but still destroying their
causes.
andrepd wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
Occupy Wall Street was a turning point for me. It's staggering how
many things today follow directly from the 2008 gfc and its
disastrous aftermath.
Animats wrote 15 hours 8 min ago:
The primary legacy of Occupy Wall Street is that "the 1%" became a
meme. Enough so that policies are still evaluated on how they
affect "the 1%" vs the rest of the population. The concentration of
wealth in the US became much better known. It did not, however,
reduce that concentration of wealth.
hrdwdmrbl wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
Hong Kong proved this wrong too...
Klaster_1 wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
Belarus too.
anigbrowl wrote 15 hours 34 min 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 [1] 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.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/erica-chenoweth-democr...
a_conservative wrote 1 hour 44 min ago:
Note that you aren't providing evidence either :)
Providing evidence is tricky, because most evidence hints rather than
proves, so it's very subject to confirmation bias and is easily
dismissed by those who disagree.
There are large filter bubbles right now that make it hard to agree
on basic facts. I don't think any of us really knows for sure what's
organic and what's synthetic right now.
CTDOCodebases wrote 6 hours 23 min ago:
> 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.
lazide wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
It all makes sense if you think of it in the form of emotions, and
not rationality.
Unless there is some concrete penalty (and even then!) why
wouldnât they believe the thing that makes them feel justified
and righteous.
somenameforme wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
I think it's more of just Goodhartâs 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] -
(HTM) [1]: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi...
sersi wrote 7 hours 13 min ago:
> 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.
guerrilla wrote 3 hours 29 min ago:
> 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.
temp8830 wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
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.
jonway wrote 4 hours 10 min ago:
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?
throwaway17_17 wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
I canât 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 donât think there is any point
correcting the misleading statements. They benefit from the overall
control of their âsideâ and so just go right along sliding
toward the fanatical fringe extreme of their side. On the other
âsideâ, 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.
Iâm not saying I support the center positions, nor that I donât
support what is often called an extreme position, just that this
seems to be a watershed moment globally.
notarobot123 wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
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.
M95D wrote 33 min ago:
> I don't understand why "common sense" has become so
unpopular.
IMHO, that's exactly it. You named it. Common sense is actually
missing from more and more people. Why that is? I don't know -
lack of basic common sense education, family, primary school,
too much facebook, tiktok, common sense defined by YT shorts?
It's going to get far worse once the AI generation grows up.
beloch wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
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.
tbrownaw wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
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.
PunchyHamster wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
well, aside from alleged riots there have been actual ones and those
have unfortunate effect of making it easier to dismiss the cause
komali2 wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
Am American "riot" is a European city after a football game.
Would that Americans use the term more accurately.
anamax wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
How often do people die during football riots? [1] says $1-2B in
damage and more than 19 deaths. [2] says 25 deaths.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests
(HTM) [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-...
komali2 wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
Now look up Romanian or Israeli football hooligan incidents.
throwawayq3423 wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
Considering Americans get shot during riots, I would say you're
wrong.
hansvm wrote 10 hours 39 min ago:
Even the Rodney King riots didn't have as many deaths (gunshots
or otherwise) as the worst EU football events. Guns are scary
or whatever, and the US should definitely handle them better or
ban them or something, but I still think I'd rather take my
chances in an average US riot (give or take recent ICE murders)
than something heated in the EU.
buckle8017 wrote 14 hours 24 min ago:
> 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.
caminante wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
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?
EGreg wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
In many countries, it does work, and continues with some regularity:
2011: [1] 2013: [2] 2018: [3] 2025: [4] 2026: [5] -- outcome TBD ?
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
(HTM) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
(HTM) [3]: https://www.occrp.org/en/project/a-murdered-journalists-last...
(HTM) [4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqBls-qpRM
(HTM) [5]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-authorit...
torginus wrote 12 hours 57 min ago:
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.
vkou wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
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?
lostlogin wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
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]
techcode wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
The tring that Ukraine and Arab Spring have in common - is that
same folks that managed to bring MiloÅ¡eviÄ down in Serbia
(known as Resistance/Otpor), later went on to talk/teach
protestors in Ukraine, Egypt ...etc.
Check out #Post MiloÅ¡eviÄ; and #Legacy; sections on [1]
(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.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor
mcmoor wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
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.
EGreg wrote 13 hours 26 min ago:
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.
awesome_dude wrote 15 hours 10 min ago:
"Paid" demonstrators has been an accusation used by governments for
several decades.
Edit: [1] (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)
(HTM) [1]: https://www.yourdictionary.com/rent-a-crowd
lostlogin wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
The usual boogie man.
Did you read that link? Itâs hardly damming.
âThrough 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.â The grants were not
specifically for the No Kings protests, the foundation said.â
If 7 million people protested, that 3 million over 2 years sure
went a long way. They work for pennies.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2025_No_Kings_protes...
awesome_dude wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
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.
lostlogin wrote 9 hours 14 min ago:
You appear to have edited your comment after I replied.
When I replied to you, the link in your comment was the below
one.
(HTM) [1]: https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/no-kings-...
awesome_dude wrote 9 hours 6 min ago:
Uhh - My client is showing that my comment was up for a
couple of hours before you replied
That's around the maximum time allowed to edit a comment on
Hacker News.
For the level of attack you injected in your previous
comment, and now a claim of dishonesty, I would need to see
some actual evidence of your claims (I know that I never
posted that link, and am confused why you would try such a
bizarre claim)
alephnerd wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
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] -
(HTM) [1]: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2024-05/Eric...
throwaway17_17 wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
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? Iâve seen some
informal work discussing the âpressureâ 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 âHow to Blow Up a
Pipelineâ which does have some good references and particular
examples.
alephnerd wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
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.
pinnochio wrote 9 hours 17 min ago:
> Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public
constituency does not guarantee success in the future
Goodhart's law
tomjakubowski wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictat...
AnotherGoodName wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
If you have 2+ groups with opposing views, each 3.5%+ it's pretty clear
that at least one of the 3.5%+ groups will fail.
Others here note it's really "3.5% if there's no one seriously opposing
their objectives" but in my opinion that's a meaningless rule. Of
course in those cases non-conflict resolves the issue.
roenxi wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
Yeah but that probably isn't going to what the original research is
saying. Society is basically run by a tiny fraction of people (1-5%
of the population range) and the rest are just along for the ride.
Democracy is a major innovation where the majority has to nod along
every few years or there is a mix up in who in the upper class gets
to sit at the top of the tree.
From that perspective it becomes clearer what a 3.5% rule is getting
at - 3.5% of the population mobilised is enough to overwhelm any
ruling class that isn't on top of its game, especially if mass
shooting of people is still of the table or if the 3.5% includes a
lot of people from the upper classes. It isn't about whether an issue
is supported by 3.5% of the population or more, it is a question of
whether that fraction of society is actively trying to topple a
government system.
mihaic wrote 15 hours 8 min ago:
Success doesn't have to mean getting your way, but rather making a
meaningful change in your direction. Even opposing groups often can
find a way so that both get a better situation. For instance, taxes
can overall be lowered while teacher salaries can increase on average
at the same time, if excess money is taken from other activities.
vog wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
This is far from meaningless, because if you are too far below those
3.5%, you'll fail to make a change for the better, despite having a
good cause with no real opposition.
Those 3.5% are encouraging for all social movements, who suffer
(and/or have friends/family who suffer) from some issue in the
system, have perhaps developed a good plan out of it, but think they
are too small to make a difference.
alephnerd wrote 15 hours 48 min ago:
Iran proved it wrong (the regime mobilized roughly 1% of the country's
population to crack down on protesters) with regards to Single Party
Regimes, and knowing people at the Ash Center, they are pessimistic
about this as well.
jfengel wrote 15 hours 53 min ago:
(2019)
graemep wrote 15 hours 54 min ago:
This is plausible. Non violent groups will often have wider public
support (because most people would prefer not to support violence) and
if those in power use violence against the non-violent it increases
public sympathy for them.
tstrimple wrote 10 hours 47 min ago:
Non-violence only works when there's an alternative that includes
lots of violence. MLK Jr's messages only resonate thanks to the Black
Panthers. Today we've got one explicitly violent political party and
one who keeps writing letters politely asking them to stop the
violence. Unfortunately the only language conservatives seem to
understand is violence, and that is the response they deserve for
their actions.
input_sh wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
> and if those in power use violence against the non-violent it
increases public sympathy for them.
Even then there's like a fine balancing line where some level of
state violence is "acceptable", as in it crushes the spirits of those
out on the streets before they manage to organise enough, and yet
doesn't get nearly enough attention or wide-enough condemnation (both
within and outside of the country). This buys the regime some time
even when they're nowhere near 50% of support, and then the very next
elections become even more of a sham than they were before. The
regime still magically gets as close to 50% of the votes as possible,
while still winning with a wide-enough margin that you have no legal
recourse to challenge the elections, which only crushes people's
spirits even further.
For post-2019 examples, see Georgia (ruling party won with 53.93% in
2024) and Serbia (has yet to have an election, despite largest
protests in its history calling for early elections for the past 15
months).
My point being, to overthrow such a regime via a ballot box, 55%
against just doesn't cut it. At the very least you need 70%.
puppion wrote 15 hours 56 min ago:
This rule didn't hold in Israel in the last 3 years. Well over 3.5%
went to the streets and the government remains in tact.
csomar wrote 6 hours 21 min ago:
In my opinion, 3.5% can affect change if (and only if) the
middle-class approve of such a change. The middle-class being the
productive power of the country and that includes the military.
sam_lowry_ wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
Also Belarus in 2020.
midlander wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
The rule doesnât really make sense in a small country with
proportional representation. The government can stay in power as long
as a majority of the country wants it to stay in power.
M95D wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
Do you vote your governement in your country? I only vote president
and parlament here, and until elections AFAIK there is no way for a
majority of citizens to remove either.
alephnerd wrote 15 hours 34 min ago:
> This rule didn't hold in Israel [...]
It did (ie. Revolutionary thresholds) until 10/7 and Hezbollah's
shelling of the north changed the calculus.
There was increased pressure from senior IDF careerists, industry
titans, and intelligence alums (oftentimes the 3 were the same)
against the government's judicial reforms which was about to reach
the tip over point (eg. threats of capital outflows, leaking dirty
laundry, corporate shutdowns/wildcat strikes, and resignations of
extremely senior careerists), but then 10/7 happened along with the
mass evacuation of the North, which led everyone to set aside their
differences.
Israel is a small country (same population and size as the Bay Area)
so everyone either knows someone or was personally affected by the
southern massacre or the northern evacuation.
eli_gottlieb wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
More to the point, despite your downvoters, the judicial reform did
not pass as proposed.
alephnerd wrote 14 hours 28 min ago:
> despite your downvoters
It's because I called 10/7 a massacre, which it was.
> the judicial reform did not pass as proposed.
Yep. Exactly.
WaxProlix wrote 7 hours 38 min ago:
Was operation cast lead a massacre?
conception wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
Paper says non-violent is ~50/50 vs one in four for violent. So not a
sure thing.
erxam wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
The problem is defining 'non-violent'. Is it just showing up to a
protest from 5pm to 6pm with a sign? Is it a general strike that
will undoubtedly harm the economy? Is it demonstrating that you
could respond to violence effectively and daring them to up the
scales?
stevenwoo wrote 15 hours 27 min ago:
So there were 323 events investigated but there's some criteria
that should be taken into account for violent resistances that is
not - for instance zero of the resistances to the Nazi occupations
during World War 2 succeeded by their definition, and off the top
of my head only the Yugoslavian resistance really put up a
substantial dent in the occupation and still required the Soviet
army invasion to kick the Nazis out.
terminalshort wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
What do you mean by "went to the streets?" If it's just show up at a
protest and wave a sign on Saturday and Sunday, and go back to work
on Monday, that's not enough. That's not civil resistance. People
seriously underestimate the commitment levels necessary to actually
matter.
eli_gottlieb wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
Blocking highways, labor strikes, conscription refusal, and other
civil-disobedience tactics were used.
gverrilla wrote 10 hours 4 min ago:
Sorry but not enough.
worthless-trash wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
I agree annoying the population, not those in power does
nothing.
I am so tired of middle east protests ( on both sides) in my
city i'd be happy if every protester was destroyed and traffic
returned to normal.
Their actions don't influence any behaviour from australia,
especially the locations where they protest.
pastage wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
How are you going to get stuff done unless you try to get
your opinion heard?
I feel we should ban social media and phones, it is a
mistake. People stop caring about the things that happens
near them.
smallerize wrote 15 hours 45 min ago:
It doesn't work if the opposition is also organized. For example, a
March 2003 Gallup poll showed that 5% of the US population had made a
public opposition to the Iraq war, but 21% had made a public display
to support the war. Small minorities can't go directly against more
popular movements.
rightbyte wrote 4 hours 28 min ago:
I don't think those happely going with whatever the elite says
counts the same way?
In political parties there are always these members that vote with
the leadership. You usually need way more than 50% support among
members to go against them. Dunno how much. In the long term to
share is probably closer to 60% but in the short term it might be
like 90%. (Made up numbers)
smallerize wrote 46 min ago:
Yeah there were way more people on each side who "supported" them
and would have voted for them or something. But the demonstrators
against the Iraq war were above the 3.5% threshold which the
article says "has never failed to bring about change".
AnotherGoodName wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
I agree that's what it's saying but it does make the whole
statement a bit meaningless.
Essentially the statement is 3.5% succeed unless there's meaningful
opposition.
xboxnolifes wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
It's not meaningless, as there is a difference between opposition
and status quo.
pedalpete wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
I have no idea how many Iranians have been involved in the protests,
but it seems like they're getting past the 3.5% number as well..
steve-atx-7600 wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
Peaceful protests do not work when the government that you are
opposing shoots protesters in the street and/or jails & tortures
them. Didnât work so well in Syria either. Only the government
has guns in Iran and theyâd rather rule over a hellish cesspool
of their own countrymen starving and drying than lose power.
eli_gottlieb wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
And quite relevantly to the analogy, in Iran, the regime controls
most of the economic links to the outside world, including the
ability to convert the rial to dollars or euros.
stevenwoo wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
So far, if estimates are accurate, neither in Iran with 90 million
population, more than five percent turned out.
(DIR) <- back to front page