Between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns, claims Erica Chenoweth, one of the world’s leading scholars on the topic. In this Ted talk (1), she gives a brief overview of what civil resistance is, and she explains that peaceful resistance against a dictatorship is usually much more successful to get the common people what they want and need – a democratic government, peace and civil rights, than an armed struggle.

To the naive, there may seem to be an unjustified romance to violence and bloodshed (3). However, the harsh reality is that in countries that are hit by civil war and violence, so much gets destroyed, and the dictators may not be the ones who suffer the most. If the people unite and rise up to get rid of dictators in a peaceful way, they really are a force to be reckoned with.

Nonviolent civil resistance has been studied extensively in the twentieth century (3), (4), (5), by a wide array of scholars (6).
Erica Chenoweth maintains a blog, rationalinsurgent (7).

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
(2) https://sameoldzen.blogspot.co....m/2020/12/civil-war-
(3) Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict – E. Chenoweth and M. Stephan, Columbia University Press, 2012
(4) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance - J. C. Scott, Yale University Press, 1987
(5) Nonviolence Unbound – Brian Martin, Irene Publishing, 2015
(6) https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/
(7) https://rationalinsurgent.wordpress.com/book/