Chenoweth has backed off her previous conclusions in recent years, observing that nonviolent protest strategies have dramatically declined in effectiveness as governments have adjusted their tactics of repression and messaging. See eg https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/erica-chenoweth-demo...
One current example of messaging can be seen in the reflexive dismissal by the current US government and its propagandists of any popular opposition as 'paid protesters'. Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign, any crowd protesting government policy is described as either a rioting or alleged to be financed by George Soros or some other boogeyman of the right. This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.
Successful protest movements are typically successful because they are organized and/or leveraged by a counter elite or foreign actor. One example is the CIA orchestrating protests to topple the PM of Iran in 1953.
Protest movements lacking elite or foreign state sponsorship (like the yellow vests in France, Occupy Wall St, or the Canada truckers) tend to wither away by attrition, get infiltrated and redirected, or else are dispersed by force.
If you have 2+ groups with opposing views, each 3.5%+ it's pretty clear that at least one of the 3.5%+ groups will fail.
Others here note it's really "3.5% if there's no one seriously opposing their objectives" but in my opinion that's a meaningless rule. Of course in those cases non-conflict resolves the issue.
This rule was obviously silly (and Chenoweth herself didn't suggest it was a hard rule) given that we know e.g. Mississippi had an engaged, vocal opposition in active protest, and that opposition was far larger than 3.5% of the population. And yet, the authoritarianism there persisted for nearly a century.
Related: "The Most Intolerant Wins" (2016). The idea is that a small, determined group of people can change how everyone behaves because when the group won’t compromise, it’s often easier to adapt than to work around them.
This is plausible. Non violent groups will often have wider public support (because most people would prefer not to support violence) and if those in power use violence against the non-violent it increases public sympathy for them.
Pretty sure more than 3.5% of the people in Hong Kong was protesting a couple weeks after the article came out. It took the CCP about two years and a COVID lockdown to get things under control.
In Nepal, on Sep 8, teenagers and GenZ organized peaceful protests. They were there on school uniform -- but 21+ were killed on a single day of peaceful protest. The next day, all 3 branches of the government were burned -- the legislative, the executive and the judiciary too. Even the Fox News equivalent (Kantipur) was burned.
I think people always opt for peaceful protest at first, but when that is made impossible, people go for the violent one. MLK was successful because there was the threat of Malcolm X. Same thing with Gandhi.
in a world where getting 3 people to show up to dinner is a challenge, a coherent, organized group large enough to be visible as a percentage of the population is an exceedingly rare and powerful entity. but history shows that such an entity is usually either 1) stable and peaceful, but actively decaying due to its position of hegemony or 2) unstable and violent, using conflict to sharply define its boundaries and growing by dividing the rest of society into "insiders" and "outsiders". some days i feel like we're microbes stuck in microbiological cycles. but if we make it past this rut, we will have all that we need to lay down an even stronger foundation, to codify systems and organizations designed to scatter and suppress hate and intolerance.
Well, if you define any change as success, I guess that's true.
But the reality is that the change that happened is rarely what was requested, nor what was needed.
Power just shifts hands, and small concessions are made to keep appearances.
Real change doesn't come from protest but from generalized behavioral change.
Some protests are successful because they bring an issue to enough people that they change behavior with enough volume that it ends up making a difference.
> Regarding the “3.5% rule”, she points out that while 3.5% is a small minority, such a level of active participation probably means many more people tacitly agree with the cause.
The more effective you are at getting people to participate, the less effective that participation will appear to be. Because it's just a proxy for what actually matters.
I would recommend anyone interest in the topic to check out the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn. The author covers (in depth) a solid analysis of the failures to enact long term change across several major "revolutionary" movements over the last couple year (including the Arab Spring and Occupy among others). I think his analysis is quite good and points at significant issues in organizational leadership, co-opting, and other structural failures (or adaptations by governments) that illustrate classic approaches to mass protest are more difficult to achieve desired goals in modern times. Worth a read if you have the time.
Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci's book Twitter and Teargas explains why, for protest movements to be successful they should have charismatic leaders and decentralized mass protest movements have a much harder time succeeding: https://www.twitterandteargas.org
Despite whatever the NRA says, governments have a near-monopoly on violence. They've got all the good weapons - Google "Neal Brennan Has a Plan to Test the 2nd Amendment" for a humorous take on this.
That leaves non-violence, which is perhaps a misnomer - there's often plenty of violence, but it's used by the government, not its opponents. When non-violence works, it's typically because those working for the government start refusing to kill their fellow countrymen - they defect, in non-violence scholar-speak.
There's an authoritarian playbook for countering this - you recruit your forces from ethnic minorities, often rural, who already hate the people who are protesting. Thus you see ICE recruits from the Deep South and National Guard troops from Texas being sent into Northern cities.
Iran proved it wrong (the regime mobilized roughly 1% of the country's population to crack down on protesters) with regards to Single Party Regimes, and knowing people at the Ash Center, they are pessimistic about this as well.
Not even 35% of regular people cannot change anything if they are inorganised. But much less than 3.5, namely politician, billionaires and some more can make a great difference. The only case that a small minority can bring a change is the undecided group at elections.
while the non violent protests may not be as effective anymore, i think the point is that if those 3.5% are "organised and coordinated" they will be effective. can you think of any other organised minorities trying to change the world right now? ahem ahem... also explains why govts and businesses are afraid of this and why we have things like mass surveillance and union breakers.
Keith McHenry of "Food Not Bombs" made an argument for nonviolent resistance in his version of "The Anarchist Cookbook," available for free download https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html He also included a choice selection of some of the most milquetoast, boring, American-coded vegan recipes I've ever seen in my life.
His argument was not really a neoliberal "just protest bro trust me bro fascists are so scared of protests" one and more an argument against armed uprising by leftists, thinking they can establish communism or anarchism with this method. He pointed to other attempts to do so in history and how even when these attempts succeeded in overthrowing the establishment, it inevitably established a system of rule predicated on violence. A famous example can be the successful communist revolution in what became the PRC, that degraded into the cultural revolution and police state, and resulted in a bourgeoisie state with spicy capitalism.
Andreas Malm also took a relatively anti violent perspective in "How to Blow Up a Pipeline," though he analyzed the usefulness of a small subset of incredibly violent people functioning as a contrast to the vast majority of dissidents who then look much more reasonable. He also spent a lot of time arguing for the importance of having a mind for marketing - no, Extinction Rebellion, you have not done praxis if the most visible outcome of your Action is a photo of a white protestor in a suit kicking a black blue collar worker off a ladder.
I can't really argue with McHenry's chops as a praxis anarchist, he after all does more in a week than I've done in my life, feeding people constantly and helping to organize the global Food Not Bombs movement and all its spinoffs. I also agree logically with his arguments that bringing violence to dissident movements invited hyper violent state suppression applied as a blanket against all dissidents, violent or otherwise, so basically nonconsensually subjects everyone to violence. That said, in his own words, it took two decades of being super duper polite to the SFPD before they finally, and only occasionally, backed his group up by neglecting to enforce orders to disperse their food giveaways. Other than that, there's been no establishment of any Food Not Bombs autonomous zones, no reliable farm to mouths food supply chain, no syndicalizion, no significant political organization. I doubt many here have even heard of Food Not Bombs despite them being founded in the heart of Silicon Valley. Their immediate mutual aid effects: undeniably some of the most widespread in the world in the last few decades. Their long term impact? More doubtful, imo.
See also: no communist revolution with any teeth in the last 70 years. The only anarchist breakaway with any success is the Kurds who aren't really even anarchists or communists (but are very interesting to study), and in the last two decades plenty of successful examples of utterly suppressed mostly nonviolent resistance: Hong Kong, the PRC bank run protests and COVID protests, all Palestinian resistance bombed to oblivion, Venezuela's failed resistance to Maduro's election fraud. An exception I'm aware of is the student uprising in Taiwan known as the "Sunflower Protests" which completely halted the government's attempt to sell itself to the PRC. But one decade later a similar protest occured which failed to prevent the KMT from seizing a ton of new extra legislative power so, win some, lose some.
I feel like we can always learn from the past, but the methods of States to persist themselves is evolving, and so dissidents need to evolve as well. I emailed Cory Doctorow about this because his "Walkaway" novel illustrated a method to me that seems the most viable in the modern era: basically techno-anarchism, leveraging technology to establish post scarcity zones where "the right to well-being, well-being for all" is established and State incursions are repelled by highly targeted appeals to the family and friends of gestapo agents found through facial recognition. It's a good bit of speculative fiction with other fun technology, strong recommend to nerds. Anyway, he suggested the same general advice: solidarity first, then methodology.
> Broadly: find groups that are bound together by solidarity and join them. Then, if you think they're not doing effective things, work with those people, in solidarity, to do more effective things. Mutual aid groups. DSA. Anti-ICE patrols. Unions. Solidarity first, tactics second. Solidarity will get you through times of bad tactics better than good tactics will get you through times of no solidarity. Your spectacular lone actions will get you nowhere if no one is willing to post your bail or de-arrest you at a protest. Getting from small groups that are bonded by solidarity to a profound change in the American system is hard, and a lot of work, which is why we need to start now.
So lacking any other ideas, I continue to do this, but I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for new strategies. As much as I'm interested in highly impactful things individuals can do (like making fake Lockheed Martin verified Twitter accounts and posting things that wipe billions off their stock value), it's seeming more and more to me that the most valuable skill any individual can acquire in service of resisting oppressive governments is rhetoric (which includes e.g. marketing ability).
I guess BBC has never heard of Iran. They easily passed the 3.5%, so the government “reduced the percentage”. BBC, you are completely disconnected from reality.
The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (2019)
(bbc.com)312 points by choult 25 January 2026 | 226 comments
Comments
Chenoweth has backed off her previous conclusions in recent years, observing that nonviolent protest strategies have dramatically declined in effectiveness as governments have adjusted their tactics of repression and messaging. See eg https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/erica-chenoweth-demo...
One current example of messaging can be seen in the reflexive dismissal by the current US government and its propagandists of any popular opposition as 'paid protesters'. Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign, any crowd protesting government policy is described as either a rioting or alleged to be financed by George Soros or some other boogeyman of the right. This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.
Protest movements lacking elite or foreign state sponsorship (like the yellow vests in France, Occupy Wall St, or the Canada truckers) tend to wither away by attrition, get infiltrated and redirected, or else are dispersed by force.
Others here note it's really "3.5% if there's no one seriously opposing their objectives" but in my opinion that's a meaningless rule. Of course in those cases non-conflict resolves the issue.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Pretty sure more than 3.5% of the people in Hong Kong was protesting a couple weeks after the article came out. It took the CCP about two years and a COVID lockdown to get things under control.
I think people always opt for peaceful protest at first, but when that is made impossible, people go for the violent one. MLK was successful because there was the threat of Malcolm X. Same thing with Gandhi.
Outside of that, I'm really skeptical.
The more effective you are at getting people to participate, the less effective that participation will appear to be. Because it's just a proxy for what actually matters.
Governments apparently learned how to assimilate protests and burn people down without any apparent violence, but still destroying their causes.
Not only progress, sadly, but almost any change. Those who care are few and far between, and this is why they wield outsized power.
3.5% might work sometimes. At other times, it achieves as much as pissing into the wind.
That leaves non-violence, which is perhaps a misnomer - there's often plenty of violence, but it's used by the government, not its opponents. When non-violence works, it's typically because those working for the government start refusing to kill their fellow countrymen - they defect, in non-violence scholar-speak.
There's an authoritarian playbook for countering this - you recruit your forces from ethnic minorities, often rural, who already hate the people who are protesting. Thus you see ICE recruits from the Deep South and National Guard troops from Texas being sent into Northern cities.
3.5% of that: 12 million
No Kings protest attendance, Oct 18 2025: ~7 million
Some previous discussion:
2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40378867
2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32458241
This isn't actual science, it's tabloid news.
His argument was not really a neoliberal "just protest bro trust me bro fascists are so scared of protests" one and more an argument against armed uprising by leftists, thinking they can establish communism or anarchism with this method. He pointed to other attempts to do so in history and how even when these attempts succeeded in overthrowing the establishment, it inevitably established a system of rule predicated on violence. A famous example can be the successful communist revolution in what became the PRC, that degraded into the cultural revolution and police state, and resulted in a bourgeoisie state with spicy capitalism.
Andreas Malm also took a relatively anti violent perspective in "How to Blow Up a Pipeline," though he analyzed the usefulness of a small subset of incredibly violent people functioning as a contrast to the vast majority of dissidents who then look much more reasonable. He also spent a lot of time arguing for the importance of having a mind for marketing - no, Extinction Rebellion, you have not done praxis if the most visible outcome of your Action is a photo of a white protestor in a suit kicking a black blue collar worker off a ladder.
I can't really argue with McHenry's chops as a praxis anarchist, he after all does more in a week than I've done in my life, feeding people constantly and helping to organize the global Food Not Bombs movement and all its spinoffs. I also agree logically with his arguments that bringing violence to dissident movements invited hyper violent state suppression applied as a blanket against all dissidents, violent or otherwise, so basically nonconsensually subjects everyone to violence. That said, in his own words, it took two decades of being super duper polite to the SFPD before they finally, and only occasionally, backed his group up by neglecting to enforce orders to disperse their food giveaways. Other than that, there's been no establishment of any Food Not Bombs autonomous zones, no reliable farm to mouths food supply chain, no syndicalizion, no significant political organization. I doubt many here have even heard of Food Not Bombs despite them being founded in the heart of Silicon Valley. Their immediate mutual aid effects: undeniably some of the most widespread in the world in the last few decades. Their long term impact? More doubtful, imo.
See also: no communist revolution with any teeth in the last 70 years. The only anarchist breakaway with any success is the Kurds who aren't really even anarchists or communists (but are very interesting to study), and in the last two decades plenty of successful examples of utterly suppressed mostly nonviolent resistance: Hong Kong, the PRC bank run protests and COVID protests, all Palestinian resistance bombed to oblivion, Venezuela's failed resistance to Maduro's election fraud. An exception I'm aware of is the student uprising in Taiwan known as the "Sunflower Protests" which completely halted the government's attempt to sell itself to the PRC. But one decade later a similar protest occured which failed to prevent the KMT from seizing a ton of new extra legislative power so, win some, lose some.
I feel like we can always learn from the past, but the methods of States to persist themselves is evolving, and so dissidents need to evolve as well. I emailed Cory Doctorow about this because his "Walkaway" novel illustrated a method to me that seems the most viable in the modern era: basically techno-anarchism, leveraging technology to establish post scarcity zones where "the right to well-being, well-being for all" is established and State incursions are repelled by highly targeted appeals to the family and friends of gestapo agents found through facial recognition. It's a good bit of speculative fiction with other fun technology, strong recommend to nerds. Anyway, he suggested the same general advice: solidarity first, then methodology.
> Broadly: find groups that are bound together by solidarity and join them. Then, if you think they're not doing effective things, work with those people, in solidarity, to do more effective things. Mutual aid groups. DSA. Anti-ICE patrols. Unions. Solidarity first, tactics second. Solidarity will get you through times of bad tactics better than good tactics will get you through times of no solidarity. Your spectacular lone actions will get you nowhere if no one is willing to post your bail or de-arrest you at a protest. Getting from small groups that are bonded by solidarity to a profound change in the American system is hard, and a lot of work, which is why we need to start now.
So lacking any other ideas, I continue to do this, but I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for new strategies. As much as I'm interested in highly impactful things individuals can do (like making fake Lockheed Martin verified Twitter accounts and posting things that wipe billions off their stock value), it's seeming more and more to me that the most valuable skill any individual can acquire in service of resisting oppressive governments is rhetoric (which includes e.g. marketing ability).