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technopagan@lemmy.world

Mechanics and psychology behind protests and revolutions (lemmy.org)

submitted 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) by afayge@lemmy.org to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Whether it be Hong Kong or Iran, or well, in dictatorships. A lot of times I see a ton of people coming to the street and basically shouting stuff.

This by itself doesn't really do much, it doesn't do any work, and is solely reliant on if the entity you are protesting to listens or not.

As is often the case, they just get met with armed personnel, and beaten up, and that's that.

Which in cases like Iran went up to like 30k or more deaths.

But like, what is the exact mindset of this? If there are that many people willing to do stuff, in many cases, the majority of the population being in favor. Why don't they go rob/take over some police stations and places with weapons. Then basically force their demands one way or another? Like establishing your own gov, and beating anyone who disobeys you including the current gov?

Now I am aware, revolutions of this type also happen. But I am not exactly sure why this is just often not the case, and people just go and... shout pointlessly in streets? What is the deciding factor?

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[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

I watched quite a few videos and read some articles on this.

There are multiple things at play.

Protests make opinions known. This is basically what you outlined.
Protests make the government and / or the police blink. If a protests picks up enough steam, it puts governments and military and police on notice that any escalation might be dangerous. It signals volatility, and this is basically a dare against a government, and it creates rifts of dissent within government.
Protests signal power to a populace. Imagine you're at home, you hate the government but you feel unsure about making your opinion known. Some part of it is personal consequences, but some part is also just that you wanna know if others feel the same. Imagine a crowd of millions of people outside saying what you thought all along. Even if you're not joining, you sure as hell feel strengthened in every small thing you do against the government, even if it's just talking about it with your friends an family.

Especially if there's still such a crackdown on protests, the second and third point are valuable goals. The point of a protest is almost never immediate action but an intentional display of pressure. Everything suddenly becomes high stakes and another opinion enters the streets, disinfecting the halls of power one sun beam at a time.