It does make a big difference in the fight for hearts and minds.
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
I think people greatly overestimate the importance of respectability and majority approval in mass protest movements. The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
Nonviolent protest doesn't need to be respectable. It needs the moral high ground. That means you need to goad the enforcement to use violence against you.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
I think there is a world of difference between being "annoying" or not "respectable" and being threatening.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
My challenge to you is to take a successful movement from the past and really look into whether people were afraid of that movement. You might be surprised at what you find. People were effectively fearmongering about every movement.
> The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
That's great for the non Trump side!
If the 'theory of change' is we will protest peacefully, get the authorities to violently surpress us to get wide sympathy and show the wider world how horrible the government is. Then you want a trigger happy authority, so that the disproportionate response is as disproportionate as possible.
Yeah I think you're missing the point that even nonviolent protesters have the goal of causing escalation. They want you to see them being beaten by the police. They want to trick the powers that be into showing plainly the force of their raw hatred, which is normally hidden behind what appears to be regular soulless bureaucracy.
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.