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How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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Why do those in charge get so upset about protesting?
Does it make them look bad? Yes. Does it raise awareness about an issue they would rather stay quiet about? Yes. Does it garner sympathy from like minded individuals and groups? Sure does! Does it get in the way of their plans and cause a scene? You got it! Does it generate news coverage, spreading the word of what's going on far and wide? Often.
Boy, all that sure sounds pretty ineffective to me! If they don't want you to do the perfectly legal thing, it's because it is effective against them.
So when do the protests force them out of office and stop them from having influence and power?
Weird, it should have happened over night? I mean, that's what all the history books say happen.
It should have happened ever
Idk what year or decade you are expecting Nazis to give up and go home because people stood outside of their town hall for a couple hrs every month or so on a weekend day.
Personally i don't think the Nazis are going to give up and it requires we remove them by force just like every other fascist government ever.
You don't move the government, you move the populace. If the government feel a move will get them unelected, they are less likely to do so. Protesting is documented to have worked countless times, so maybe read a book or something?
Non violent protest often turns to violence when it is not respected. You don't have Nazis, you have Magats. They are also white supremacists, but they aren't from 1940s Germany, they are from 2020s amerikkka. They are dollar store Nazis.
This is all assuming we have free and fair elections which we absolutely don't anymore, from gerrymandering to the electoral college to shoddy infrastructure, to rouge poll workers who were told to occupy the positions by a sitting president.
With the peaceful protests I've been to or that have happened at my university, most of the time they haven't tried to stop anything aside from cops being stationed waiting for it to deescalate, then the protest eventually fizzles out and people forget it happened. There are a couple exceptions to these though:
One protest happened at the same time as a bunch of other protests on different campuses, and a large number of troopers and other law enforcement with weapons shut it down and arrested dozens of people for refusing to leave an area. There was a lot of shady (and illegal) actions happening between the university admin and Texas government, where even Zionist Reddit shitlibs thought it was extreme. There was an investigation going on led by a student-run newspaper since then, not sure if it's still happening. As far as why they did this, my guess is: (1) fear of property damage based on actions in other protests and (2) governor Abbott wanting to put on a political show by exercising his power, but I highly doubt it was because it posed a real threat to their power.
The official student newspaper reporting on pro-Palestine topics painting the university in a negative light, eventually leading the university to fire the entire newspaper. Probably due to a fear of reputational damage so they wanted to impose additional obstacles (which of course backfired).
Overall these didn't result in any actual policy changes so there wasn't much of an outcome. It did cause some reputational damage, where even FIRE thought our admin was too fascist and ranked us almost last. It's probably impacting their enrollment and hiring faculty at least a little bit (but there are a lot of other factors negatively impacting this as well). Also resulted in more financial burdens for the protesters involving bail fees and needing to fund their new independent newspaper in different ways.
There was another (non-peaceful) protest I heard of in the area involving an ICE agent being hospitalized and protestors facing terrorism charges. This also didn't result in any policy changes, but did have some real-world harm to fascists and threat to their security, but also larger financial burdens and a lot more difficult to build popular support over.