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The gold standard method of deëscalation used by unarmed civilian protection teams around the world is the CLARA[1]method. This acronym breaks down into Calm, Listen, Affirm, Respond, and Add information.
How is this germane to managing Trump, to managing his Make America Great Again MAGA followers, many of whom are violent? How can a deëscalation method be used to reduce the harms from Trump's ICE, his Homeland Security officials such as Kristi Noem, notoriously noteworthy for having shot her young dog because it didn't respond to her training as she wished?
On an individual basis, the CLARA method, while not a guarantee of success every time (nothing is), is recognized by those working to protect civilians in hot conflict zones as the most likely to succeed. Just as a Gazan who wished to survive does not scream or even argue with an Israeli Defense Force member, dealing with an ICE agent in the US is best done with some finesse, not hurling epithets or even making accusations based on a legal or moral argument.
In the literature on civil resistance we find a key to dismantling Trump's bizarre grip on America: security defections based on loyalty shifts (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). This is unlikely to occur with military or law enforcement when they are under actual attack, even with nonlethal violence arising from the passions of the moment--a thrown stone, or a shove in the chest--but also when they are vilified and met with scorn and rage. However natural and understandable that outrage may be, expressing it to the armed agents of the state will not generally do much except cause them to close ranks and jack up repression.
Part of how to bolster such needed defections is the strategic use of humor, especially humor that mocks only the leader, not law enforcement, not military, and not his mass of supporters. This was one of the key elements of the success led by young people in Serbia to overthrow dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The components of that strategic strand of their resistance included exactly those admonitions from the core leadership of university students as they led the group Otpor!, the Serb word for resistance; they told the growing number of Otpor! chapters throughout the country to poke fun only at Milosevic, not anyone else. This helped lead to a fissure between the autocrat and those who had been loyal to him.
Activists err when they regard law enforcement as a monolithic block of oppressors; recent research drawn from interviews in Germany on police attitudes about authority, compliance, and enforcement vary considerably by individual, concluding:
"current ideas on authority are reflexive, meaning that they are not solely determined by police culture or formal rules, but are individually reconsidered, questioned and reconstructed, allowing room for maneuver and can be shaped by different contexts, internal and external to the police" (Weber & Schophaus, 2024, p. 169).
It is axiomatic in the field of Conflict Transformation that one universal for humans is that all cultures highly value being respected as an extremely important factor in the process and progress of managing conflict. When any person or any group is convinced that they are held in contempt by others, conflict with those others is much more likely to escalate and become destructive. When, on the other hand, the very same issues are at stake but a party feels respected, the chances for that conflict to be constructive, even productive, generally rise.
Some worry that mocking Trump by infantilizing him might by extension diminish the reality of the harm that Trump does by his behavior that seems stuck in the most narcissistic stage of normal human life, a period during infancy. "President Trump’s critics come by their rhetorical infantilizations quite honestly. He emotes like a child. He lashes out against resistance and criticism. He is, by many standards, mischievous and untrustworthy" (Gilbert, 2021, p. 333). Pairing characterizations of Trump's petty, grotesquely immature behavior with the disastrous results is one key to making that humor more effective.
The other danger in overuse of some targeted humor is the sense that the resisters are discourteous and petty themselves. The balance may not be easy to achieve, so many nonviolent leaders stress simple constant respect for all, even those who may not be worthy of it at times, to keep the image of the resistance spotless.
For example, when Gandhi advised the Dalits (Untouchables) in India who wished to pray in the temple, he told them to be respectful of all, to not curse at those who oppressed them, but to show nonviolent courage under all circumstances. They did so, setting up a human blockade on the road to the Vykom temple, and did so for months, even during the monsoon season, sometimes standing resolutely in chest-deep waters. In the end, after such a display, the temple opened its doors to them, acknowledging the devotion with which the resisters kept their presence, a devotion that wore down those who were in charge of the temple (Bondurant, 1965).
With any nonviolent campaign, leadership is best done with many tested methods, including what some term adaptive management, that is, constant openness to assessment and reassessment, reset and adjustment. What worked 40 years ago may not find fertile soil so easily now. What works in Guatemala may flop in Hong Kong. Being alive to the signs and signals and being able to quickly evolve is part of the art of resistance, an art to which no strongman is impervious.
One of the many paradoxes of strategic nonviolence is that deëscalation of many situations enables the escalation of resistance. When we held an Easter day gathering at a remote thermonuclear command base in Chequamegon National Forest, there was a lot of singing and a musician named Glen Walker Johnson circulated amongst the crowd--which included armed forces personnel and law enforcement officials and officers--playing a soothing hand-held harp, smiling. Meanwhile, we had brought saplings with us and digging tools, we pickaxed holes in the gravel road right in front of the base gates, and planted trees while the military commander, local sheriff, and deputies observed. I had talked to the base commander the day before to tell him of our plans. He had said, "You will be hurt worse than you can imagine." But after digging up the road, we concluded our demonstration without any arrests and, as we were walking out, I lingered to make sure everyone was safe and found myself strolling with the base commander and the sheriff. I thanked the commander for not making good on his threat. "Y'all behaved yourselves," he said. Even though we had just done serious property damage, I knew what he meant. We showed no disrespect to anyone, we sang instead of chanted at them,[2] and when we broke bread during our ceremonies, we had offered them some. We continued our deëscalation of all who had seemed to support the evil of nuclear weapons while we continued to escalate our campaign to shut down that base. It worked. We won. The base is completely dismantled and returned to nature in the national forest.
Bondurant, Joan V. (1965). Conquest of violence: The Gandhian philosophy of conflict. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
Chenoweth, Erica, & Stephan, Maria J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Gilbert, C. J. (2021). The diapered Donald: Comic infantilizations of a U.S. American president. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 107(3), 328–353. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/00335630.2021.1945132
Weber, M., & Schophaus, M. (2024). Personal theories of police officers about authority. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 27(2), 168-181. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1177/14613557241293588 (Original work published 2025)
[1] https://nonviolentpeaceforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CLARA.pdf
[2] Music seems invitational and inclusive; chanting can seem confrontational and exclusionary. In one Peruvian study, researchers found that, "in general, exposure to music and dance improves levels of intergroup empathy, reduces social dominance, and fosters a greater positive stereotype toward the Andean social group, producing greater emotions and positive attitudes toward the artistic expressions of this group in comparison to the control group. It is concluded that music and dance, as cultural expressions, can be elements that help improve the stereotypical representation and appreciation of other groups and their members, thus establishing a path toward building a culture of peace" (Espinosa, Pacheco & Janos, 2023, p. 203).
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