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Nonviolent resistance (NVR), or nonviolent action, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, or other methods, while being nonviolent. This type of action highlights the desires of an individual or group that feels that something needs to change to improve the current condition of the resisting person or group.
Nonviolent resistance is largely but wrongly taken as synonymous with civil disobedience. Each of these terms—nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience—has different connotations and commitments. Berel Lang argues against the conflation of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience on the grounds that the necessary conditions for an act instancing civil disobedience are: (1) that the act violates the law, (2) that the act is performed intentionally, and (3) that the actor anticipates and willingly accepts punitive measures made on the part of the state against him in retaliation for the act. Since acts of nonviolent political resistance need not satisfy any of these criteria, Lang argues that the two categories of action cannot be identified with one another. Furthermore, civil disobedience is a form of political action which necessarily aims at reform, rather than revolution. Its efforts are typically directed at the disputing of particular laws or groups of laws while conceding the authority of the government responsible for them. In contrast, political acts of nonviolent resistance can have revolutionary ends. According to Lang, civil disobedience need not be nonviolent, although the extent and intensity of the violence is limited by the non-revolutionary intentions of the persons engaging in civil disobedience. Lang argues the violent resistance by citizens being forcibly relocated to detentions, short of the use of lethal violence against representatives of the state, could plausibly count as civil disobedience but could not count as nonviolent resistance.
Mahatma Gandhi is the most popular figure related to this type of protest; United Nations celebrates Gandhi's birthday, October 2, as the International Day of Non-Violence. Other prominent advocates include Henry David Thoreau, Charles Stewart Parnell, Te Whiti o Rongomai, Tohu Kākahi, Leo Tolstoy, Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, James Bevel, Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Lech Wałęsa, Gene Sharp, Nelson Mandela, Jose Rizal, and many others. From 1966 to 1999, nonviolent civic resistance played a critical role in fifty of sixty-seven transitions from authoritarianism.
The Singing Revolution in Baltic states led to the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Recently, nonviolent resistance has led to the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Research shows that non-violent campaigns diffuse spatially. Information on non-violent resistance in one country could significantly affect non-violent activism in other countries.
Many movements which promote philosophies of nonviolence or pacifism have pragmatically adopted the methods of nonviolent action as an effective way to achieve social or political goals. They employ nonviolent resistance tactics such as: information warfare, picketing, marches, vigils, leafletting, samizdat, magnitizdat, satyagraha, protest art, protest music and poetry, community education and consciousness raising, lobbying, tax resistance, civil disobedience, boycotts or sanctions, legal/diplomatic wrestling, Underground Railroads, principled refusal of awards/honors, and general strikes. Current nonviolent resistance movements include: the Jeans Revolution in Belarus, the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, the fight of the Cuban dissidents, and internationally the Extinction Rebellion and School strike for climate.
Although protest movements can maintain broader public legitimacy by refraining from violence, some segments of society may perceive protest movements as being more violent than they really are when they disagree with the social goals of the movement. A great deal of work has addressed the factors that lead to violent mobilization, but less attention has been paid to understanding why disputes become violent or nonviolent, comparing these two as strategic choices relative to conventional politics.
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