1/ What are the long term effects of violent protest? This is a topic that I have personally researched.
2/ Being upfront: I am antiwar and anti-violence in general. So take that as you will in the following analysis.
3/ Social scientists who have studied protest have long asked: does violence get you political concessions?
4/ You can always cherry pick examples where violence gets/does not get what you want. Instead, what you need is a collection of cases of protest and see if violence is linked with movement success (e.g., getting what you asked for).
5/ William Gamson did this in the 1975 book, The Strategy of Social Protest. He argued that it did help (this tweet corrects a previous version) since violence draws attention to your issue. amazon.com/Strategy-Socia…
6/ Then, later analyses sought to improve the analysis with better data and better statistical technique and the answer drifted toward "no" in many cases.
7/ For example, in my 2006 study of Black political activism on campus, I found that disruptive and violent events were less likely to lead to getting what the movement wanted. mypage.iu.edu/~frojas/pdf-so…
8/ Other scholars have reinforced this point. For example, @owasow's forthcoming article in the APSR on Black protest in the late 1960s shows that violent protest is associated with an increase in the Nixon vote - the opposite of what people wanted. cambridge.org/core/journals/…
8/ So why does the new consensus on the negative impact of violence on movement outcomes depart from Gamson's initial evaluation?
9/ Violence allows people to say, "these people are crazy! Don't listen." The movement loses out.
10/ 9/ In my book on Black Power/Studies on campus, I saw this in the historical record. Wildly disruptive and violent activists got on the news, but Black studies was mainly conceded to non-violent protesters. amazon.com/Black-Power-St…
11 / Bottom line: The anger is justified, but the tactic may be counter productive.
