Talk:Nonviolent revolution

Intent
This article represents a refactoring of information deemed not to fit into Color revolution, and will also maintain a distinction from nonviolent resistance in that it refers specifically to changes in government leadership, and a distinction from bloodless coup (hm, thought that would have existed) as well.

My intent is to have a broader focus beginning with Mahatma Gandhi and Indian independence and proceed chronologically through some of the revolutions and quasi-revolutions that were rejected as extraneous to the first article. There will, necessarily, be a summary section on color revolutions with a standard Main article: Color revolution notice. A second subtype will be People power, another name often used for non-violent revolutions.

After I've gotten the rough outline in place you're invited, if so inclined, to help me with that article. --Dhartung | Talk 20:24, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Name
I considered nonviolent but Google tells me that's used less commonly than non-violent, and I don't think it looks right anyway. I'll create a redirect with the other spelling. --Dhartung | Talk 20:35, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Revisions
Tweaked the structure, and removed the stuff that is already found in the color revolution article. --Humble Guy 04:24, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Um ... okay, thanks. I was working on that tonight, though! That's what the inuse template is for. --Dhartung | Talk 05:17, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Shucks!, pardon me, hope I didn't mess it for you. BTW, structure looks nice now. --Humble Guy 12:57, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * There was some editing I'd done that had to be scrapped, but generally I did approve of what you did, since I kept most of it (although personally I dislike leaving empty sections in articles, using an appropriate todo template is better). I'm very doubtful about the 'current revolutions' section, though (see below); it's one of the reasons I was taking so long with that edit! --Dhartung | Talk 19:04, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Examples of nonviolent revolutions are needed here; they don't warrant deletion! --NickDupree | Talk 20:00, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Current revolutions
I'm not sure what to do about this section. I actually think the problem is that few of the ones listed actually have articles of their own, otherwise I'd have no problem linking to them. It may be advisable to bring that up on the color revolution page, where people are maintaining that information. If each individual country's in-progress activity had its own article, even a stub, each would be easier to maintain and I'd feel happy linking to just the articles (they would be free to expand on the relationship between individual revolts and the color rev. movement). As it is, I see this article as more historical than current events, and lumping those together is a recipe for problems (just like we had in the other article). --Dhartung | Talk 19:04, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Iran's Green Revolution definitely deserves a mention here! --NickDupree | Talk 20:00, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Iran's Green Revolution which involves stone-throwing, molotovs and beatings of police and militia?
 * How does it belong on this page?
 * Wnjr (talk) 15:37, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Issues
I have a few issues with this page:
 * to advocate democracy, liberalism, and national independence - many non-violent revolutions do not fit this criteria
 * shepherded the people of India to independence - the Indian people were not sheep
 * The overview only addresses India and does not show change over time
 * The Tulip Revolution was not non-violent. People were dragged into the streets and beaten to death with baseball bats. Property was destroyed at random and public officials who did not flee were executed by gangs.

Please try to address these points. freestylefrappe 20:40, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you for contributing. Do note that this article was hastily cobbled together from the Color revolution article and as such represents a work in progress. I would like to write a more complete Overview section, naturally; my conception of the article is to cover the progress of the idea of non-violent revolution from 1947 India (and there may have been instances before that, although I can't recall any at the moment) to the important 1986 and 1989 revolutions in the Philippines and Czechoslovakia, respectively.
 * Considering whether to include revolutions where violence occurred is problematic. Sporadic violence seems to occur in many, at the very least. My view of the article, again, is that the organization of the revolution should be non-violent, but violence that occurs should be noted. In a sense these instances represent non-violent revolutions gone wrong, case studies of failure as it were. I think an honest appraisal would include them.
 * An important point is that this article is intended to be a broad catch-all precisely because the Color revolutions editing team is strongly wedded to a narrow categorization of that article. Non-violent revolution is in counterpoint to military revolution, especially of the guerrilla and civil war nature. As such, I'm inclined to retain Kyrgyzstan with appropriate commentary. --Dhartung | Talk 05:16, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I suppose it would not be sensible to rename this article "mostly non-violent revolutions" and russia did incite violence with undercover FSB guys (who worked together with the previous gov.) so i guess this is acceptable. However, if this is a catchall shouldnt we add the post wwII women's revolution? or the neolithic revolution? or the industrial revolution? This page is clearly distinct from the above three yet all three are nonviolent revolutions. Some sort of distinction should be amde in the title. freestylefrappe 22:24, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * Mostly non-violent revolutions? Saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this weekend, did we? ;-)
 * I don't intend it as a catch-all, of course. For one thing, it's limited to revolutions which change a government, or at least legitimately come close (Tiananmen). That's the primary (non-geometric) meaning of revolution. The word also distinguishes it from nonviolent resistance, which obviously takes in a much larger number of civil disobedience and protest movements. At the same time, I think we need to leave it a little vague in terms of how that happens, because sometimes there is a cordial legal transfer of sovereignty or power (India, Ukraine), and other times (Philippines) there is simply a de facto replacement of old faces with new, and some lingering rule of law questions. (Eventually I would hope this article could address that as a connected issue; I think it's overlooked.)
 * I did have the idea of aliasing this page to people power, but like color revolution that phrase is only used some of the time. (Right now both People Power and People Power Revolution are redirects to EDSA Revolution.) I'm inclined to avoid rarely-used terms such as citizens' revolution which smack of original research. I don't think there's an easy answer, since there isn't a single phrase which would suffice without creating some scope conflicts. Believe me, I've been thinking this one over!
 * I'm pondering the wording problem in the introduction which you kindly pointed out; for myself, I think it may be as simple as: frequently advocate democracy, liberalism, or national independence. That would relieve some of the pressure on the definition that you sense. --Dhartung | Talk 05:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Very sensible. I have yet to see it though I want to...it took me a second to realize what mostly harmless entity you were referrencing. freestylefrappe 21:18, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

US Involvement
I think it's worth making it clear that there is involvement by US government agencies and private neo-conservative organizations in most of the actual and attempted revolutions in former Soviet satellite states, but not in most of the others around the world.

There's a good argument that the distinction is actually politically/financially motivated (the US supports revolutions on behalf of factions that support free trade, neoliberal economics, and pro-US international policy, and opposes those that challenge governments with similar politics--see particularly Venezuela vs. Peru), but that might be original research.

What is not original research is to list the countries where USAID, USNDP, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and similar organizations have been involved in the revolutions.

The idea that the CIA or people like the Scaife family are deliberately attempting to stage coups d'etat in US-unfriendly nations is speculation (although it can be attributed to specific sources, ranging from The Guardian to some of the CIS governments), but the fact that these organizations have supported some of the recent popular revolutionary movements is itself indisputable.

The challenge is to write a section that sticks to the facts, and avoids presenting a POV slant.

Speaking of POV, it also might be worth mentioning that Soros, whose involvement in many of these movements (including some that the US has opposed) and funding of some of these same organizations is well-known, has been accused of being a US pawn by leftists, and a fanatical leftist by rightists. Avoiding POV will probably be even harder here, but still worth pursuing.

Unfortunately, I don't have references at hand, but I'll try to write a stub that someone else can fill in. --76.204.77.196 (talk) 10:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I know it was actual stated policy of the USA to work for the freedom of Soviet satellites (which was for most of the cold war, just talk). I noticed that the Color revolution article mentions Soros and the CIA, but doesn't really say how they were involved, just points out the controversy. 67.176.160.47 (talk) 17:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Iraq's "Purple Revolution"
Is it worth mentioning George W. Bush's attempt to characterize the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the recent elections as a "Purple Revolution," directly tying it to the nonviolent "color revolutions" in former Soviet states and satellites?

As far as I know, no one but neo-conservative commentators has gone along with this, but it's still probably notable.

It may also be notable that many leftist critics have pointed out that "purple" is a synonym for "imperial," tying this in with US imperalist involvement in these revolutions in general. (But it's probably not notable that "Purple Revolution" only makes me think of Prince....) --76.204.77.196 (talk) 10:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

it should be part of the article on color revolutions, but not in this article. 67.176.160.47 (talk) 08:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Nonviolent revolution in the GDR
Shouldn't the revolution in the GDR 1989 be mentioned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.141.248.124 (talk) 15:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

bloodless revolution
I know the Glorious Revolution wasn't really bloodless, but it is called that. shouldn't it be mentioned? 67.176.160.47 (talk) 08:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

bloodless vs. non-violence
I was thinking, and imho, there is a difference something being bloodless and something being non-violent. nonviolence, especially when used in association with Gandhi, implies using nonviolent tactics, which excludes even the threat of force. In fact. if a nonviolent revolutionary movement faces violent counterrevolutionaries, there may be blood, in what is considered a nonviolent revolution. Bloodless on the other hand means a lack of deaths, or other casualties. so I think bloodless coup should have it's own article. 67.176.160.47 (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Non-violent non-revolutions, and violent non-violent revolutions
How was the 'Salt Satyagraha' a revolution?

And the Bulldozer Revolution involved property damage and rioting, how was it non-violent? Wnjr (talk) 15:37, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you kidding?
The main theorist of nonviolent revolution, Gandhi, is not even mentioned. Also, he was an outspoken admirer of Lenin.

Speaking of which, Lenon and the 60' counterculture movement on the USA were probably the mst culturally influential movement for nonviolent revolution in the world.

Furthermore, this article reads like anti-communist propaganda from the header, based on these omissions and the emphasis it gives.

Even further, many of this so-called "revolutions" actually included looting, rioting, attack on security forces, and destruction of private and public property. And if we are to be coherent, the sometimes called Second October Revolution would belong there with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

If anything, this should be corrected at least to show a meager attempt at some neutrality, no? --190.173.248.89 (talk) 07:24, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Nonviolent revolution
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Nonviolent revolution's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "cnn": From Occupy Wall Street:  From List of Occupy movement protest locations: Beyond Wall Street: 'Occupy' protests go global. 7 October 2011. By Kevin Voigt. CNN. 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 21:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Bahrain
Please see Talk:Nonviolent_resistance. Thank you.  Mohamed CJ  (talk)  13:15, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

New draft articles: Pacifism in France, Germany + USA‎
Please add to newly created Draft:Pacifism in France, Draft:Pacifism in Germany, and Draft:Pacifism in the United States. Thanks. M2545 (talk) 12:46, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Consider adding Erica Chenoweth's work
I can't take the time to do it, but I think the article's authoritativeness and specificity would be improved by drawing upon, and including references to, the work of Erica Chenoweth. She's an academic with a background in military analysis who was converted to the superiority of nonviolent resistance by conducting over 100 case studies. A rigorously academic book she co-authored, Why Civil Reistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, has won several awards. Justmetwo2 (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I've added a reference to Chenoweth's work to a spot in the article that seemed to be making a claim related to her work. Will try and add more later if I have time ThraseaPaetus (talk) 20:56, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

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Updates needed
This article appears to be severely in need of updates. The Arab Spring is not mentioned except for the section on Bahrain, nor is the Euromaidan. The section on current movements also needs to be updated to remove protests such as the Occupy movement which are no longer happening and added new ones such as the resistance to the coup in Myanmar. - Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 03:11, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

France
Are you seriously putting the French revolution as the very first image for everyone to see on the "Bloodless coups" site

I get that it's there due to the series on "Revolution" but there could be a better image set for this specific page, or in addition and prior to the Series' mention

Seems kind of ironic to me

Maj Swag (talk) 05:59, 1 October 2021 (UTC)