Non-empirical 'commonsense' guesswork turns out to be wrong far more often than most people think. So it's great that the Chenoweth's of this world are curious enough to put their guesses to the test.
This seems especially true when the conclusions align closely with the incentives of people who have the power to get research friendly to their interests infront of you.
Assuming that everything that comes from the social sciences is politically motivated exhibits reasoning as flawed as assuming the opposite.
> Between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. Erica Chenoweth, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will talk about her research on the impressive historical record of civil resistance in the 20th century and discuss the promise of unarmed struggle in the 21st century. She will focus on the so-called “3.5% rule”—the notion that no government can withstand a challenge of 3.5% of its population without either accommodating the movement or (in extreme cases) disintegrating. In addition to explaining why nonviolent resistance has been so effective, she will also share some lessons learned about why it sometimes fails.
having done that I still do not have access.
How much due diligence did you do on the data before accepting the study's claims?
Unfortunately, we are still dealing with the fallout of Britain's abdication of responsibility.
Gene Sharp who pioneered studying non violent resistance wrote a book about it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_as_a_Political_Strategi...
Even the 'white man's burden' is viewed by many as a necessary endeavour. It's the number one criticism I have of my own country (and I have many).
It's nationalist propaganda that panders to exceptionalism and it seems to have worked on half of the electorate unfortunately.
The number of people who want the empire back though, I reckon you could count those on one hand.
I think it’s mainly that the UK, as the winner, got to write the history books.
(I’m not claiming that it cannot be partly racism — how many of “us” know about the Belgian Congo? — but mainly it’s “we are settlers, you are colonisers, they are invaders” and “our boys are heroes, your boys are soldiers, their boys are barbarians” in people’s minds).
For the record, I am not saying it's not skin color. Primarily it's race/nationality (=~ skin color), and thus british empire falls on the same side of West/Europe/Caucasian people. What other reason is there for the people of west to not treat the atrocities that colonial empires committed (towards brown/black/native people) the same as what Naizs did to white european jews? Especially given what the colonialists were an order of magnitude more cruel in both savagery and the number of people murdered?
As with any puritanism movement, there are other factors determining "purity". Aside from skin color, you have religious denomination.
I don’t understand what your point is here, I’m afraid — if the reason that the suffering of Jews is recognised is simply because they are part of the “us” group, despite multiple millennia of racial and religious discrimination, why would the Irish count as a “them”? It’s easy to forget how severely “othered” Jews used to be. The only explanation I have for the dichotomy is that the Jewish people were the enemy of the enemy, while conversely the Irish were… I’m not sure which time period to consider, but in my youth they were “terrorists”, which I guess made “them” a direct enemy in popular discourse at roughly the same time that Jews were unambiguously innocent victims. The same model also explains why communists killed in the holocaust are ignored in half the often quoted death statistics: communists were the enemy in this period, rather than the poor innocent victim of the brutal regime whose destruction was totally a pyrrhic victory (for the Empire) that had to be justified.
Jews were them until and during the WW2 (even now as per some section of western populace). Antisemitism was officially declared church doctrine in various denominations (even today Polish easter celebration happens with the effigy burning of a stereotypical jew). Antisemitism was not just in Nazi Germany. It was the norm all over the Europe. Jews suffering got recognized mainly because (IMO) it is a tool to highlight the Nazi horror - the bad guys as per the European lore.
My main point is that colonial Briton was worse than Nazi Germany, and Europeans fails to see that (or outright deny it) simply because colonial victims were not fellow whites (and may be tyranny of distance) and it doesn't fit into the Allied good guys vs the Axis bad guys WW2 narrative. My secondary point is that it was just bad guys vs the even worse guys, and the winners white washed their crimes highlighting the losers as the ultimate evil villains from whom they saved the humanity.
Between two and three million people died in the Bengal Famine of 1943. The extent to which the British regime was responsible is still debated, but it would seem that the Churchill government refused to supply food aid (or at least only supplied a fraction of that requested) and refused the local administration permission to import food themselves.
That's ill defined if you get to pick and choose whom you consider in the pool to establish "they're is no consensus amongst even Indian commentators". This seems more opinion than fact.
Even for the issue of smoking causes cancer I can easily constitute a pool who will contest that there isn't a convincing body of evidence that categorically shows that smoking causes cancer (not that I agree with a view).
The Britain and its sphere of influence has a skin in the game to deny that intentional harm was done.
> Referring to it as a deliberate killing millions of people to win the war is just plain wrong
Its not by magic that food disappeared from Bengal and ended up were the British wanted it. It was not a case of accidental misplacement of car keys. That qualifies for 'deliberate". They also weren't unaware of the famine related deaths, that came up in the British parliament multiple times. I am not sure which part of "deliberate killing millions" you are contesting.
That is opinion. Churchill's benchmark was if Gandhi was still alive it couldn't possibly a famine. That speaks for the general British position then.
You can kill by neglect. I don't think you can simply dismiss the accusation as "complete hyperbole".
I think this is because if Hemeti used full scale violence he wouldn't have a state to rule over. The non-violent protesters have enough support that a violent response would fracture the armed forces, militias, civilians, and government into non-governable chaos.
If you are an oppressive regime, you likely have the maximum capability for violence many times over in your region.
Hence violent civil resistance will start off with a bad footing in two ways: 1. People are not so keen to take up arms 2. For any amount of violence, the government will likely respond with an overwhelming amount of violence.
Non-violent strategies, on the other hand beat these two stepping stones: 1. Non violent strategies, if they are at all popular, are way less riskier for individual participants and due to their non violent nature are easier for people to copy 2. Government has a way harder time to respond to non-localized non-violent influence strategies, as their oppressive regime is likely specialized in fielding force projection troops to localized events
This is not as effective in so called "resource-cursed" countries. There, the government does not care whether the population works, so long as the oil keeps flowing. It's much harder for a nonviolent movement to disrupt the economy in that case, and hence oppressive regimes tend to thrive in resource-cursed countries.