History is littered with graveyards upon graveyards of violent struggles for independance that didn't end up so well. Meanwhile, in the modern times, peaceful protests can being down even nuclear armed superpowers as we've seen in the 80s. Take a look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebell...
And peaceful protestors can also be massacred and completely fail to bring about any change.
Peaceful protests can work sometimes. Other times they do nothing. Same with armed resistance. Declaring one or the other to be the only possible way to bring about change is in direct contradiction to the facts.
And protest movements don’t always need to be all violent or all peaceful. School children are taught about Nelson Mandela peacefully bringing down Apartheid. But there is a reason the logo of the ANC is a hand holding a spear and shield. Mandela co-founded the military arm of the ANC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe.
> And peaceful protestors can also be massacred and completely fail to bring about any change
Can you give an example? Every example I can think of right now that had a massacre of innocent protestors and no armed struggle either led to some change later down the road (eg. galvanizing the movement, reforms, or total collapse of the opressor), or became a major problem for the oppressor later down the track. A massacre is not that easily forgotten.
Just some random examples: The Polish protests of 1970, resulted in 42 people killed and protestors were overpowered by tanks and military, but the killings arguably accelerated the popularity of the movement. Look up the story of "Janek Wiśniewski" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janek_Wi%C5%9Bniewski
The aftermath of a massacre comes down to the government’s willingness and ability to control the narrative and suppress further dissent. Some governments can be quite successful at this. There’s absolutely no guarantee that a massacre of protestors results in anything beyond dead protestors.
Tiananmen Square still continues to be a major thorn for the CCP today, both internally and diplomatically, it's obvious that ramafications are continuing, and why Beijing just can't march in to Hong Kong.
What practical consequences did Tiananmen Square have? You say it’s why they can’t just march into Hong Kong, but I don’t believe that. They can’t just march into Hong Kong because of the international condemnation that would ensue, and because it would wreck an economically valuable city. Both of those would remain true if Tiananmen Square had never happened. You say it’s a “major thorn” for them today; how? Domestically, it’s like it never happened. Internationally, they happily ignore pressure to do better on human rights. I don’t see any consequences that vaguely resemble what the protestors wanted.
The Prague Spring’s reforms were quickly reversed and the country was communist business as usual for decades afterwards. Crediting it for the fall of communism in 1989 seems like quite a stretch; for any successful protest, there will be failed ones that came before and provided influence. Does that mean that all protests are successful by definition when you look at a long enough timeline? Seems like a highly pointless metric if so.
> What practical consequences did Tiananmen Square have?
CCP is still grappling with it.
Quote "As foundational as the crackdown at Tiananmen may have been to the CCP’s current strength, it remains largely invisible to the people. Despite claiming the moral high ground against what it calls a “counter-revolutionary” rebellion, the Party is still sensitive to the fact that its slaughter of students and laborers put a stain on its legitimacy."
That quote is vague fluff, not “practical consequences.” What actual change was brought about by those protests? As far as I can see, there was none: no democratization or other political liberalization happened, just a bunch of dead or disappeared people.
> What practical consequences did Tiananmen Square have?
It began the process of deterioration of relations between the PRC and the Western democracies, a process that has continued to the present day. People began to realize that China may not liberalize on its own the way Taiwan did—that the government of the PRC is often hostile to liberal democracy. One of the consequences of this realization is in fact these Hong Kong protests. There are numerous other consequences of this cooling in relations too—for example, protectionist tariffs against a country seen as hostile to Western values are easier to sell politically in the West. Tariffs obviously impact China.
Tiananmen didn't achieve what the protestors wanted, but it's clearly a significant historical event.
Your reading history backwards. You assume that while 1970 protest, leads to 1980 protest and that lead to the fall of the Soviet Union. However that is wrong way to look at it, the right way is that in 1970 the Soviet Union had the will do stop the protesters, but not later. Those things mostly have to do with the discussions and political institutions the elites were working in.
The protesters in late 1980 might have been larger and more popular, but if the Soviet unreleased it might, it would not have mattered.
Nope. Totally wrong. Those early protests, even though seemingly unsuccessful at the time, gave the people one important thing: hope.
Of course, the other motivating factor was that the economy went to shit. People were hungry and tired of waiting in long queues with shelves at the stores almost empty. Nothing to do with "discussions and political institutions the elites were working in" though.
You are totally fundamentally wrong. You are disagreeing with most scholarship on how revolutions happen in political science.
Hope doesn't work if there are tanks who shoot at you. The people in Poland were not braver then those in China or those in Hungary. The difference is that in those cases the political system had the will to oppose them with the force required.
Unarmed protestors simple can not win against an army. Its pure idealism to believe that.
- The 2014 "Umbrella Movement" was peaceful yet the only thing achieved was the incarceration of the student leaders.[0]
- On June 9th this year, a million people joined a peaceful march fighting this bill. Carrie Lam's response? Go ahead with the Second Reading anyway.[1]
Arguably, even if the 2014 "Umbrella Movement" didn't resolve anything immediately then, the repercussion are still continuing today so it's unfair to say it didn't do anything. It's too early to say.
So far, it seems like it helped to inspire the current protestors, and they're much better organized this time round.
This is the typical old and wrong view about both the end of the cold war and other situations.
Revolutions, specially non-violent once succeed if the political establishment does not have the will or tools to resist.
The protestors in Europe and China were probably equally as brave. While in the Soviet system the elites had already divided and paralyzed themselves, that was the fundamental condition that allowed protest to be successful in eastern Europe.
The people in China, were simply shot down and 30 years after the CCP is in control still. The exact same thing could have happened in the Soviet Union, if the elites had not already crippled themselves.
Governments with modern arms don't fall to rebellions unless some significant part of the elite is either at least passive or actively supporting the revolution.
