What's the difference between a German in the 1930s who said "I don't support Hitler's stance on Jewish people but he promised to make the economy great again so I'm voting for the Nazis" and a German who said "I fully support Hitler and I'm voting for the Nazis"?
What's the difference between a German who said "I don't support the regime's actions but this job at the weapons factory pays the bills" and a German who said "I'm fulling my patriotic duty building weapons for the Nazis who I fully support"?
What's the difference between a German solider who said "I don't agree with the regime but I'm just following orders" and a German solider who said "I'm doing this because I support the regime"?
The answer is not very much. Their actions accomplish the same end result and they're judged by history to be almost no different. The Nazis were in part comprised of millions of people who unintentionally or intentionally supported the regime with their small daily actions.
This time around things must be different. Make ensuring your actions don't support the Trump regime your mission. Be bold and speak out whenever you can. Teach others that silence is tacit consent in the regime's actions. Don't worry about imperfection, your actions no matter how small will make a difference. You could be grain of rice that tips the scale.
I read the same 3.5% article, but I don't see where you're quoting it and am not sure what "democracy movement" means in this context. Could you explain?
I'm honestly not sure about this 3.5% number anymore - there are a lot somewhat subjective qualifiers there. But the point is that the study was conducted based on protest in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. And - all over the board - the non-violent movements were noticeably more sucesful sucesful than violent one. Yes, idea that 3.5% means guaranteed success is wrong. But solution to protest being squashed ramians the same - more protests.
I'm not a history buff, but what I remember about the successful violent ones is that they tended to end up little better than what they replaced. So, point for non-violent ones.
Circumstances are important, though. For non-violent protests to be successful, the oppressors have to see the protesters as human. A theory I believe which has weight is that Ghandi didn't understand that the British may have thought Indians were lesser, but they didn't systemically dehumanize them, and were generally reluctant to treat them as animals, and so protests could have an effect. The Nazis made an effort to dehumanize Jews (and other minorities), and had fewer reservations about wholesale slaughtering. Uprisings were squashed by the sheer expediency of mowing down entire crowds.
What concerns me is the same rhetoric used on the far Right to dehumanize the Left and minorities. The real danger is the precedent of training people to see the opposition not as people, but as animals.
I'm sidestepping the fact that humans are animals; the science doesn't matter, the important thing is the desensitizing and moral rationalization.
That's exactlyn the risk with violent ones. They make it easier to paint you as extremist or unreasonable radical. The big part of the effecivness of the non-violent one is that they are more sucesful at making people deflect to the right side.