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The 3.5% rule is a concept in political science that states that when 3.5% of the population of a country protest nonviolently against a government, that government is likely to fall from power. The rule was formulated by Erica Chenoweth in 2013. It arose out of insights originally published by political scientist Mark Lichbach in 1995 in his book The Rebel's Dilemma: Economics, Cognition, and Society.
Non-Violent
I'm well aware of it. sorry but basically every instance of a government falling from power have substantial violent elements operating simultaneously with the non-violent. just quoting 'if we 3.5% of the population' gets you no where. we already have 3.5% of the population against trump/gop. the problem is you twits dont know how to protest effectively.
It's funny that in 2025 people still think that just saying shit on the internet means anything.
Sources, or stfu dude.
Sources for over 3.5%: see the 2023 election results. 60 million people were willing to vote for a genocidal prick over trump.
Sources for ineffective protests: please attend any no kings protest and you'll see what i mean. Words words words, and not a single action being promoted.
Sources for violence: pick a movement. Will find the violent aspects. But lets use gandhi as an initial example
If you think just having 3.5% of the populations support is sufficient you're an idiot. You need that support to be willing to do something that negatively impacts society, strikes, sit ins, property damage, etc.
You'll note the distinct lack of actual activity against trump. People are more interested in waving signs and listening to people talk than actuall doing anything.
Then you twats run around screeching 3.5% is all we need! God you're all idiots. At least start fucking striking. Someones notices a numerical value and you twits think the number is magical all on its own completely disassociating it from actual context.
This is the point I am discussing in this thread.
I, personally, did not come up with the 3.5% number. Rather, I read what was written by people who publish their findings and rationale. I've provided sources that informed my opinion. My opinion could be wrong. If so I look forward to changing it, and thank you for taking the time to inform me better.
To the point: I don't see how quoting election figures counters the 3.5% number regarding protests. 'Election' and 'protest' are not synonymous, and the relationship between them are not as simplistic as you infer.
To clarify, and to the (certainly unintentional) strawman-ing of some of what I have posted:
because you and these protests are quoting 3.5% as if its a fact. its a magnitude without a vector. the vector is the important aspect, not the magnitude. if your vector is 'run around city limits with pithy signage' (our current protests) I assure you, nothing will change even if you had 50% of the population doing it.
historically its when the vector hits around 3.5% that matters. if you have the wrong vector the magnitude is completely unrelated and you'll end up in a different location than you expected. Notice that around aspect of 3.5% because guess what: it actually isnt a value that matters much. its the vector that actually institutes change.
the population against the GOP and Trump already exceeds 3.5% they just dont know how to effectively protest and the people running these protests have nfc what they are doing when it comes to leading such activities. that was the point of the voting numbers.
my point is quoting that number as if its a magical threshold we need to reach without anything else is actually counter productive to actually getting change.
the problem with you being an idiot and spouting this nonsense is hilariously exemplified by your assertion that reading papers and books somehow gives you insights without actually putting that information into its proper context which you clearly havent, nor have the people running these protests.
if you want these protests to be effective you need to do a few things:
anything outside of those 3 aspects in just noise. I'll simply point you to luigi as a wonderful counter point to the 'nonviolence' aspect of that 3.5% number tossed around. His actions where highly supported by the population, used violence effectively, and it did effect change however small. if you look at basically every successful movement there is always violence involved. which people like the author try to ignore. take gandhi's movement against the british, widely lauded as non-violent, however if you take a wider perspective beyond that movement itself you'll learn there was violence involved. by other groups at the same time you can't decouple those two groups from the outcome. they both play roles in the result and thats exactly what the paper where the 3.5% number comes from. ignored the activities of the groups operating at the same time as the peaceful ones.
And then there is the question of what actually constitutes violence. did they consider property damage as violence? how about economic blockades? I consider both to be violence and effective agents of change.