How to Topple a Dictator (Peacefully)

By Tina Rosenberg
Fixes

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.

Several years ago, before their protest movement was co-opted by violence, a grouping of young Syrians looking for a fashion to topple President Bashar al-Assad traveled to an isolated beach resort outside Syria to take a weeklong form in revolution.

The teachers were Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic — leaders of Otpor, a student movement in Serbia that had been instrumental in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Subsequently then helping the successful commonwealth movements in Georgia and Ukraine, the two founded the Center for Applied Irenic Action and Strategies (Canvas), and have traveled the earth, grooming republic activists from 46 countries in Otpor'due south methods.

These ii Serbs start with the concepts of the American academic Gene Sharp, the Clausewitz of the nonviolent movement. But they accept refined and added to those ideas. In a new book, "Blueprint for Revolution," Popovic recounts Canvas's strategies and how people utilise them.

Srdja Popovic Darko Vojinovic/Associated Press

"Blueprint" strains a bit besides hard to exist funny, only the championship is no exaggeration. Otpor'southward methods and signature — a stylized graphic clenched fist — have been adopted by democracy movements around the globe. The Egyptian opposition used them to topple Hosni Mubarak. In Lebanon, the Serbs helped the Cedar Revolution extricate the country from Syrian control. In Maldives, their methods were the fundamental to overthrowing a dictator who had held ability for 30 years. In many other countries, people have used what Canvas teaches to accomplish other political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.

I met Popovic and Djinovic in Belgrade 5 years ago, wrote about Otpor in a volume and later met them in an Asian city to watch them train democracy activists from Burma.

I have lived in two dictatorships and seen dozens of democracy movements in action. But what the Serbs did was new. Popovic cheerfully blows upwards just near every idea almost people hold nearly nonviolent struggle. Here are some:

Myth: Nonviolence is synonymous with passivity.

No, irenic struggle is a strategic campaign to force a dictator to sacrifice ability by depriving him of his pillars of back up.

In the first hours of the Syrians' workshop, some participants announced that violence was the but mode to topple Assad. Every workshop begins this way, in part considering some people think the Serbs are going to teach them to look beatific and meditate. Popovic said out loud what many were thinking: "So you simply ask Assad to get away? Please, Mr. Assad, delight tin can you non be a murderer anymore?" Popovic whined. "It's not prissy."

Just the opposite, said Djinovic: "Nosotros're hither to programme a war." Nonviolent struggle, Djinovic explained, is a war — simply one fought with means other than weapons. It must be as carefully planned as a military entrada.

Over the side by side few days, the Serbs taught the immature Syrians the techniques they had adult for taking power: How do you grow a motion from a vanload of people to hundreds of thousands? How do y'all win to your side the groups whose support is propping up the dictator? How do you wage this war safely when whatever kind of gathering can hateful long prison house terms, torture or death? How do y'all break through people's fear to get them out into the street?

Myth: The most successful nonviolent movements arise and progress spontaneously.
No full general would leave a military campaign to hazard. A nonviolent war is no different.

Myth: Irenic struggle'due south major tactic is amassing large concentrations of people.
This idea is widespread considering the large protests are like the tip of an iceberg: the only thing visible from a altitude. Did it await similar the ousting of Mubarak started with a spontaneous mass gathering in Tahrir Square? Really, the occupation of Tahrir Square was carefully planned, and followed two years of piece of work. The Egyptian opposition waited until it knew it had the numbers. Mass concentrations of people aren't the beginning of a motion, Popovic writes. They're a victory lap.

In very harsh dictatorships, concentrating people in marches, rallies or protests is dangerous; your people will get arrested or shot. It's risky for other reasons. A sparsely attended march is a disaster. Or the protest tin can go perfectly, but someone — perhaps hired by the enemy — decides to throw rocks at the police. And that's what will lead the evening news. One failed protest can destroy a move.

So what do you lot do instead? You lot can start with tactics of dispersal, such every bit coordinated pot-banging, or traffic slowdowns in which anybody drives at one-half speed. These tactics show that y'all have widespread back up, they grow people'southward conviction, and they're rubber. Otpor, which went from 11 people to 70,000 in two years, initially grew like this: iii or four activists staged a humorous slice of anti-Milosevic street theater. People watched, smiled — then joined.

Myth: Nonviolence might exist morally superior, but it's useless against a brutal dictator.
Nonviolence is not merely the moral selection; it is near e'er the strategic choice. "My biggest objection to violence is the fact that it simply doesn't work," Popovic writes. Violence is what every dictator does best. If you're going to compete with David Beckham, Popovic says, why choose the soccer field? Better to choose the chessboard.

The Syrians who came to the workshop, needless to say, had little influence over the strategies that were subsequently chosen past other groups opposed to Assad. Violence eventually prevailed — with devastating results.

But that is Popovic'south point: violence often brings devastating results. The scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan analyzed campaigns of violent and nonviolent revolution in the last century (their volume, " Why Civil Resistance Works," uses Otpor'due south fist as its cover image) and constitute that nonviolence has double the success charge per unit of violence — and its gains have been more likely to terminal.

Just a handful of people will join a violent movement. Using violence throws abroad the support of millions — support yous could take won through nonviolence.

Milosevic's base of support was Serbia'due south senior citizens. Otpor won them over past provoking the regime into using violence. Once Otpor's leaders realized that its members who were arrested were ordinarily released after being held for a few hours, it staged actions for the purpose of getting large numbers of members detained. Grandparents didn't similar having their 16-year-old grandchildren arrested, or the regime's hysterical accusations that these high school students were terrorists and spies. Old people switched sides, condign a cardinal pillar of the Otpor movement. If there had been whatever truth to the accusations that Otpor used violence, the grandparents would accept stayed with Milosevic.

Myth: Politics is serious business organization.

According to the Pixar philosopher James P. Sullivan, laughter is 10 times more powerful than scream. Nothing breaks people'southward fear and punctures a dictator's aura of invincibility like mockery — Popovic calls it "laughtivism." Otpor'due south guiding spirit was Monty Python'southward Flying Circus, a television prove its members had grown upwards watching, and its deportment were unremarkably pranks.

Popovic writes about a protest in Ankara later the Turkish regime reacted with alarm to a couple kissing in the subway. Protesters could take called to march. Instead, they kissed – 100 people gathered in the subway station in pairs, kissing with great slobber and noise. You are a policeman. You have grooming in how to bargain with an anti-government protest. But what do you lot do now?

Myth: You motivate people by exposing human rights violations.
Virtually people don't intendance nearly human rights. They intendance near having electricity that works, teachers in every school and affordable habitation loans. They will support an opposition with a vision of the future that promises to brand their lives better.

Focusing on these mundane, important things is not simply more effective; information technology's safer. In their Canvas workshop, the Burmese knew it was too risky to organize for political goals — but decided they could organize to get the Yangon city government to collect garbage. Gandhi wisely began his campaign of mass civil disobedience by focusing on Britain's prohibition on collecting or selling salt. Harvey Milk failed in several campaigns for the San Francisco City Council. He won when he campaigned not on gay rights, but to rid the city'southward parks of canis familiaris poop. A benefit of such campaigns is that their goals are doable. Movements grow with pocket-size victory after small victory.

Talking about the miseries of life under a dictator is also a bad strategy for mobilizing activists. People already know — and they react past condign cynical, fearful, atomized and passive. They might exist angry, simply they're not going to act on it. Anger is not a motivator.

This was Otpor's biggest obstacle. Virtually Serbs wanted Milosevic out. But the vast majority believed that was incommunicable to reach, and too perilous to effort.

Otpor got people into the streets by making the movement about their ain identity. Young people flocked to Otpor because it made them feel cool and important. They had neat music and not bad T-shirts, adorned with the fist. Boys competed to rack upward the almost arrests. Young Serbs stopped feeling similar passive victims and started feeling like daring heroes.

Myth: Nonviolent movements require charismatic leaders who give inspiring speeches.
Otpor had no speeches, ever. And while its strategies were meticulously planned, the people who did the planning were behind the scenes. Its spokesperson changed every two weeks, only information technology was unremarkably a 17-year-quondam girl. ("Terrorists? Us?")

In a traditional party, fifty-fifty parties in opposition to the dictator, the leaders' job is to make speeches, and their followers mind and applaud. Not Otpor. Its messages were tested in focus groups, and its strategies carefully planned. It was not at all anarchic on the strategic level. But on a tactical level, decentralization was critical. Otpor had only two rules: You had to be anti-Milosevic and absolutely nonviolent. Follow those rules, and you could do anything and call yourself Otpor. This kept activists feeling busy, useful and important.

Myth: Law, security forces and the pro-regime business community are the enemy.

Maybe, but information technology's smarter to care for them like allies-in-waiting. Otpor never taunted or threw stones at the police. Its members cheered them and brought flowers and homemade cookies to the law station. Even the interrogations after abort were an opportunity to fraternize and demonstrate Otpor's commitment to nonviolence.

It paid off. The law knew that if the opposition won, Otpor would make certain they were treated fairly. During the terminal battle, police officers walked away from the barricades when the opposition asked them to. A dictator who tin't be certain his repressive orders volition exist obeyed is finished.

I lived in Chile when the opposition to Augusto Pinochet made mistake after mistake; advice from Otpor might have shortened the dictatorship by years. Had the Occupy motility in the United States adopted these tactics, it might however be a relevant force.

But zero is more than tragic than contemplating what Syria could have been now, had the nonviolent activists in the opposition movement prevailed — and followed Popovic's blueprint..

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Tina Rosenberg

Tina Rosenberg won a Pulitzer Prize for her volume "The Haunted State: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism." She is a onetime editorial writer for The Times and the author, most recently, of "Bring together the Club: How Peer Pressure level Can Transform the World" and the World War Ii spy story e-volume "D for Deception." She is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.