Outside of typical remarks from Donald Trump, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and a Fox News report, party stayed mum
Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.
Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.
It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.
Apparently 5m people. Which is great, but we need 12.5m to make change, so the country needs to get like 700% worse
There’s not going to be a magic number of protestors that defeats fascism
Wish I could upvote twice, people keep thinking the number is magic
3.5% is the magic number decided by people smarter than you and me. Let’s just run with that and stop making excuses for coming short.
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan are absolutely smarter than me but I still think it’s a red herring. Focusing on a number like that risks missing sight of the ultimate goal of overthrowing fascism, regardless of what it takes. Plus the math is not settled, it’s a complicated number and every situation is unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule
And to quote an especially important part about one of the Author’s views from that Wikipedia article:
(emphasis added)
To quote even more from this publication, also by one of the authors. (emphasis also added)
The key point is this:
The very people who publicized this theory in the first place have been repeatedly, publicly trying to clarify that this is descriptive, not prescriptive, yet if you ran with the wording of 50501 and other related movements, you’d think that 3.5% is a magical number that if you pass, the administration instantly backs down. (source: 50501 - Hands Off protest statement: “History shows that when just 3.5% of the population engages in sustained peaceful resistance – transformative change is inevitable.”, emphasis added ofc)
Another factor is how deeply entrenched the fascists you are trying to dislodge are.
The more levers of power they control (and the longer they control them), the stronger and more sustained the pressure against them needs to be.
People want to think if we just get to this. Umber it well change but it isn’t true. Also a protest once every couple of months don’t even think counts as a protest.
It counts as protest, but not sustained protest, which is usually a decisive factor for if a protest will succeed in affecting anything. Even if every employee of a company left for a day, if they all came back the next day and resumed working, it wouldn’t be hard for the business to get back up and running, then just put systems in place to account for that in the future, but if those employees strike for months, suddenly all the business’s systems begin to fail without maintenance, customers leave because of no service, and the business goes bankrupt.
I’m smarter than them and I can assure you the magic number is 2.4% not 3.5%
Pretty sure 100% ist a magic number
3.5% is a well established number. You can choose to argue over it, but please do it with someone else.
No it isn’t. Read what the authors say. One protest had 6% and it didn’t work. So no it isn’t a magical number and they have other things that are more important and have worked with less people. Also they say protests both violent and peaceful seem to be working less and less.
Which protest had 21,000,000 all at once?
The author also said its a rule of thumb and not any sort of magic number that automatically triggers change.
No one actually thinks that the moment we pass the exact 3.499999999% of the population that the entire system will just switch over automatically. I can’t tell if your pedantry is spectrum or dopamine based.
It’s an observation not a hard and fast rule. It’s also rooted in data from the pre-information-age, many rules have changed.
I agree the rules have changed. It will only be harder at this point. So that 3.5% is old news and needs to go up
I’m gonna bet it goes up. It did the last several times I saw early estimates for these events.
This IS an estimate you already read. Dude’s likely using Gemeni or ChatGPT for this data. Don’t trust it.
7m is what the organizers said but that’s probably including people who signed up and didn’t show up
Source: googled “no kings” and clicked abc news or something
But I showed up and didn’t sign up so who’s the real number?
Same I’m just being conservative (number wise, not politically) since there’s no 3rd party source yet
You are
Bullshit 5m people. Who told you that, an LLM? 5m was the prediction last time, and it was waaaay, way, off.
The news told me. Then they got updated numbers. Chill out. Talk your meds.
If you’re not willing to show up armed, massively disrupt, or even create mild inconvenience it doesn’t matter how many people are in your cute little self-congratulatory parade.
Fuck you, fascist. Trump wants this right now. If you want it, then you’re with him.
But but we have posters and inflatable frog suits!!!
When they report on the violence Trump is quelling, they can’t use any of this. That’s the point.
Pay attention instead of shoving your foot into your esophagus.
So all you’ve done is redeemed your own reputation as acceptable members of the broader normie society. You could have stayed home and accomplished that.
lol. Enjoy your fascism!