In Order To Succeed, The Anti-Trump Movement Must Look To Its Predecessors

In Order To Succeed, The Anti-Trump Movement Must Look To Its Predecessors

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

While nearly twice as popular as its right-wing counterpart, the anti-Trump resistance movement pales in comparison to the amount of support needed to topple a dictator.

“Historical studies suggest that it takes 3.5 percent of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships,” Erica Chenoweth, coauthor of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict pointed out in a Guardian piece published last week.

“If that can be true in Chile under Gen. Pinochet and Serbia under Milosevic, a few million Americans could prevent their elected government from adopting inhumane, unfair, destructive, or oppressive policies—should such drastic measures ever be needed,” she added.

With a population of approximately 325 million, 3.5 percent is approximately 11 million people.

Eleven million people in the United States are undocumented immigrants.

Eleven million spend half their income on rent.

Eleven million were enrolled in Obamacare in mid-2016.

Of America’s 200 million registered voters, about 70 million voted against Donald Trump. According to the 3.5 percent rule, it’d take about 1 out of every 6 of those voters to topple the regime.

“Every single campaign that did surpass that 3.5 percent threshold was a nonviolent one,” Chenoweth advised. “In fact, campaigns that relied solely on nonviolent methods were on average four times larger than the average violent campaign.”

And they were often much more representative in terms of gender, age, race, political party, class, and urban-rural distinctions.

Chenoweth explained the psychology behind successful movements’ exponential growth in her September 2016 talk at TEDxBoulder.

“Say your neighbor comes to you and says, ‘We’re going to have a demonstration in the main square down the street at 8pm tonight. I hope you can make it.’ Now, I don’t know about you all, but I’m not the person who is going to show up at 7:55 to see what’s up. I’m going to wait until about 8:30 or so, check out my window, and see what’s going on,” she admitted. “If I see only six people assembling in the square, I’m probably going to sit this one out. But if I see 6,000 and more coming down the alleyway, I might join them.”

Watch: The success of nonviolent civil resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.

IMAGE: People gather for the Women’s March in Washington. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

American History Proves We Can Still Save Democracy From Trumpism

The Lincoln Memorial

Have you ever thought about the role guilt has played in our national life? It’s not omnipresent, it’s certainly not felt by everyone, most especially those sinned against, but I would say guilt rivals pride as the thing that has most motivated us. Think about it for a moment. The founding of this country wasn’t an immaculate birth – for one thing, there wasn’t a Founding Mother among all those long-heralded Founding Fathers, and one of the two greatest mistakes they made the day they came to an agreement on our founding document was what they left out. They didn’t award women full citizenship, and they failed to deal in any way with the sin of slavery.

Keep reading...Show less
How Fox Props Up The House Republicans' Impeachment Farce

Sean Hannity

Fox News propagandists are still eagerly shoveling Rep. James Comer’s (R-KY) slop to their viewers, nearly one year into the House Oversight Committee chair’s shambolic campaign to damage President Joe Biden’s political standing by focusing on his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}