It feels like reading something like this may have mislead the Syrian rebels. Nonviolent resistance runs the risk that the other side presses the violence button.
Reminds me of a story where Gandhi tried using nonviolent resistance against Nazis. Didn’t work as expected, the Nazis just shrugged and said “makes throwing you into the ovens easier”.
Also, if the enemy propaganda is strong enough, it probably doesn’t matter that you didn’t use violence, because their TV will still report that you did. There needs to be some impartial observer to report on your actions.
Very true, although believing in the idea of an impartial observer feels a little old fashioned.
Nowadays the Resistance Channel would report that everybody is peaceful, regardless of the truth (anything that can’t be ignored is false flag), and the Regime Channel would report that the protests are an Orcish Uprising that wants to murder your kids.
Outside observers will just be taken to be Regime loyalists by Rebels, and Rebels by Regimes, since their narrative will disagree with one or the other propoganda storylines.
It feels like reading something like this may have mislead the Syrian rebels. Nonviolent resistance runs the risk that the other side presses the violence button.
Reminds me of a story where Gandhi tried using nonviolent resistance against Nazis. Didn’t work as expected, the Nazis just shrugged and said “makes throwing you into the ovens easier”.
Also, if the enemy propaganda is strong enough, it probably doesn’t matter that you didn’t use violence, because their TV will still report that you did. There needs to be some impartial observer to report on your actions.
Very true, although believing in the idea of an impartial observer feels a little old fashioned.
Nowadays the Resistance Channel would report that everybody is peaceful, regardless of the truth (anything that can’t be ignored is false flag), and the Regime Channel would report that the protests are an Orcish Uprising that wants to murder your kids.
Outside observers will just be taken to be Regime loyalists by Rebels, and Rebels by Regimes, since their narrative will disagree with one or the other propoganda storylines.