Wie effektiv ist Protest? Laut Historikern und Politikwissenschaftlern: sehr
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/25/protests-effective-history-impact
Wie effektiv ist Protest? Laut Historikern und Politikwissenschaftlern: sehr
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/25/protests-effective-history-impact
28 Kommentare
Which is why it makes me so mad no kings is so infrequent. It needs to be once a month if not once a week
It needs to move the needle. To make the news…not small but big numbers…shutdown roadways peaceful but forceful
Yes. But usually with a simmering threat of violence in the background. But we just ignore that extremely important step 2.
We might need better signage, too.
Voting is more important. You don’t earn purity points by staying home.
Protesting occasionally is very effective as it also represents those who can’t participate. Much like contacting a business about something- sending either a compliment or fair criticism. They know for each person who does it represents something like 100-1,000 more.
Real people protesting (or contacting a business) is authentic too given the trouble they go through putting in personal time, effort, and any expense, (aside from a very very small number who aren’t genuine).
I think about this often. It’s important to speak up for things you care about. Takes effort to protest in person but it’s easy to voice your opinion online in support of a cause too.
If it weren’t effective, they wouldn’t be trying to use the _military and police_ to stop it. That said, I do feel that going beyond the 3.5% and having some kind of widespread strike would be even _more_ effective and cut the plutocrat enablers where it hurts
But I am told countless times we can’t do 24/7 protests or even try to protest in D.C. as a collective unit. All the time on this website which I am sure is not bad faither commentators/bots.
Anyways, we’ll wait for our bi-quarterly protest on a Saturday and that’ll shake this government in their boots!
(Seriously, we need to start PEACEFULLY mass protesting at politicians houses. It should not be this hard to do and yet we NEVER do this.)
So like, they may say that, but I’ve lost a lot of hope. When the Parkland shooting happened and the kids held mass protests, I thought for sure some sort of gun regulation would get passed. It didn’t.
When George Floyd was murdered and there were protests across the whole country for Floyd and Taylor and Rice and all the others who had died at the hands of police, I thought for sure some sort of reform would happened. And again, it didn’t.
Trump’s been protested against for two straight terms, and it looks as though the only thing that might stop him is the Epstein files, but even that might not result in removal from office.
The “3.5% rule” drops to like 10% success rate if you look at the last 20 years. Even the study author mentions it.
Protest is a complement to other action, not a substitute.
Protest’s reflect change that is already in motion. They are not the drivers of change.
Protesting is marginally effective in a democracy. Unfortunately, we are not in a democracy.
Yeah, people need to understand that voting is the bare minimum of participation. If you can’t protest or organize, writing your elected representatives is **incredibly** effective.
To quote Noam Chomsky, it’s common to see an official change stances on a significant issue after receiving just 5 letters.
Yeah, I find this argument extremely weak.
Historically violence and the threat of violence solved a lot of conflicts and protest comparatively less. See every war ever.
We can just go with the example the women’s March. Raise you hand it you can’t think of a single policy change that caused…yeah you can’t. Even they really can’t their supposive win was “a lot more women ran for office” that’s not exactly what I would call ‘very effective’ (not saying it a bad thing just find it lacking any real substantial change.)
And the same can be said for almost ever large protest in my lifetime.
The reasons protests were sometimes effective was because the world was differnt. When a mob of people are outside of your house you tend to pay a attention, when they are protesting at your office while you are not in country it is much less so. It’s practically ignored.
No Kings protest didn’t get anything done. It didn’t even have a realistic goal. No one actually thought Trump was going to be impeached by the end what other goal was there? And I don’t think the hundred years between freeing slaves and ending segregation is a good example of effectiveness either. (and remember MLk was shot.)
And it basically ignores that violence absolute was happening during most of these things.
Protesting doesn’t work if the protesters end plan is just to protest more. If who they are protesting know the next step was being drag out to the street and hanged…they tended to listen.
Real protesting maybe which requires repetition. One sizeable protest in a year, not so much.
Stand up to people in your daily life. Exercise the power you have in your sphere of influence. You don’t have to tolerate intolerance. They rail against cancel culture cause it effectively hurts them. You might not be able to reach Trump but you can hold his supporters accountable. You might not be able to reach musk but you can stand up to Tesla drivers. They bought their cars a a smug status symbol. Make sure it they know that it symbolizes that they are selfish, don’t let them play victims, they’ve chosen to support a Nazi. That has a huge effect.
Society went wrong when we decided we cannot must accept people who would do evil. Kick them out
As a political scientist and activist I think what people really need to understand is that protests are the tip of the ice berg in a cycle of organizing. As the article points out people who come to protests are more likely to be engaged in the slow boring less visible parts of movement building. A lot of people don’t understand that getting 500,000 is itself very hard but the long term work that transitions to a MeToo movement, and then to NY state opening the statue of limitations that allowed the prosecution of Diddy and other old cases take much more work.
I hope this is true. But we’re protesting against billionaires who own and control everything. This isn’t the same as crippling the Montgomery public transit system.
Remember, nobody ever voted out an authoritarian
As long as protests cause no inconveniences, have no specific message, and have minimal to none follow up actions they will not be effective.
No civil rights march got a public permit, they held up traffic and blocked bridges. They broke the law and knew that if someone decided to run them over no one would come to their rescue or persecute the perpetrator. They were not peaceful and that choice was not made by the protestors themselves even if it was pinned on them. The bus boycotts and freedom riders were carefully planned by action groups. Union dues payed for strike funds so people didn’t go hungry due to lack of pay, and they certainly did not earn their bosses beforehand or use planned vacation time to do so.
Protests are a threat, a show of numbers and persistence to demand change or else things will turn ugly. Nowadays they function like a pressure valve. If you go out to scream and wave your quippy sign, then going home and continuing to live your life as normal, you’re not protesting, you’re in a politically motivated urban hiking group.
As long as protests are done at the convenience of the systems we are protesting, the systems will never change.
Protests are only networking events for activists if they aren’t backed by the ability to interrupt production or stop the distribution of goods and services.
Protest either works or it doesn’t, the important part is understanding what happens next if protest doesn’t work… by all parties involved.
Obviously there is a lot to consider for how effective any one protest would be in any location, but I feel like protests in some countries typically imply striking as well (please correct me if I’m wrong), and I feel like that would make things much more effective. Maybe it’s that protests where I am just aren’t continuous enough? Organizers feel scared to plan for more than a weekend at once due to the fear of losing livelihoods.
Here in the US, I’ve been to more protests this year than any other point in my life yet the media doesn’t seem to want to cover them, and the country is so large that I have people tell me protests don’t happen when there are 3 major cities protesting that same day.
It just makes it hard for me to be hopeful sometimes.
It needs to be massive and it needs to be sustained and it needs to shut things down.
Otherwise it’s just a relief valve.
If you’re interested in effective protest, an excellent example of incrementalism is the abolishment of slavery in Europe, and America a little later. They are inextricably linked, but most of the big players were in Europe, communicating with people who followed their writings and letters in America – Ben Franklin was one of them – so they got there first. Behind The Bastards has a three part episode on this for this year’s Christmas reverse bastards. It’s an incredible story about some incredible people who took every small victory they got and turned it into something bigger
Incrementalism is often shut down, especially in leftist spaces, because people mistakenly think it’s ineffective; they think big change should be the immediate goal. It probably depends on the situation, but as far as I can tell, stacking small wins is much easier than quickly turning an entire culture or legal system on its head
Bots want you to believe all of your efforts aren’t helping.
The bots are wrong
We only remember the effective ones
Trump should be protested. Corporations should be protested. Anything truly inhumane should be protested.