Someone recommended I read this book, and Im still forming my thoughts on it. But it is definitely dunk-able, and if anyone has read it I'd like to hear their thoughts
Edit: the big picture complaint I have is that they separated movements into the false dichotomy of "violent" or "nonviolent"
If I remember right, the first half of How To Blow Up A Pipeline is spent dunking on this book in particular.
Non-violence tend to work a lot better if it also carries an implicit threat of ultra-violence, which is why the revisionism of indian independence is so infuriating. Because while Gandhi was bringing in massive crowds of people and doing civil disobedience, actual revolutionaries were also out committing acts of violence upon the british.
Everything has a class character, and of course political violence does too. Ignoring this results in only superficial moral grandstanding, historical revisionism, and opportunism.
A lot of what they classified as non-violent movements were really quite violent.
A ton of "Nonviolence" books from a somewhat neoliberal perspective can be found over at aeinstein.org (the one Gene Sharp created).
Some books out of there are good for tactics and overviews what existed, but one ought to not take them at face value and remember that their angle is not that of Marxists or class struggle focused people. There is also some critique that the CIA might've financed some of the non violent research to discredit the Marxist groups.
That said, the strategic aspects of campaign building in them are good to keep in mind for some. Also it is good to think about the reaction that will come and that too often is ignored by utopists.
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https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/gene-sharp-george-lakey-neoliberal-nonviolence
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/423870
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https://civilresistance.info/challenge/femcrit
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https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-machiavelli-of-nonviolence-gene-sharp-and-the-battle-against-corporate-rule
Many aspects in the writing of Helvey et. al. are more acute than the book OP quotes (even if it is an interesting read). Non violence works - as others in this thread pointed out - because of the specific situations and the threat of violence that might be. Also the type of campaign matters. Not the non violent protests lead to change in South Africa, it was a lot more and especially the militant actions which were combined with non violent ones, yet in talks about that often it is presented as violence free.
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