How to transform autocracy to democracy: Maintain fierce nonviolent discipline

During the Vietnam War many of the protests turned to violence, factions of the antiwar movement identified or fetishized Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, the Black Panthers, and even, God help us, Mao Tse Dong. This strand of the antiwar movement was pathetically easy for agents provocateurs to infiltrate and promote violence. 

Why would an agent of the police seek to convince a campaign to commit acts of violence?

Every time a campaign throws things at cops, or roughs up a corporate official of a war profiteering company, or tosses a brick through a war-voting politician's office, the media of course covers it. When the public sees such destructive actions they react in these understandable ways: 

·       They fear for their safety and decide not to participate in any public displays of opposition to the leaders or policies they don't like.

·       They begin to shift their point of view away from whatever the protesters advocate. 

·       They stop trusting the word of the protesters. 

·       They begin to shift toward understanding of, and even support for, the violent crackdown on the protesters. 

These reactions, of course, are exactly what hawkish politicians, war profiteers, and any police in league with them, want. This is how you destroy a campaign. It is how the Black Panthers were destroyed. It is how the peace movement failed for years to make progress to end the brutal slog of war in Vietnam. 

This is a predictable sequence of negative outcomes of campaign violence or what the public feels is violent.

My question to those who advocate violence is, "Since you should know that these are the actions conducted by agents provocateurs, why would you advocate for them?"

The late Rev. James Lawson referred to the Civil Rights Movement discipline as "fierce." He was America's first nonviolence trainer, and Dr. King called him the "architect" of the Civil Rights Movement. There is no substitute for that fierce discipline.