A Teaching Moment: What Is Backfire?

If you've been following Donald Trump's attempts to quell peaceful protests against police killings of African-Americans, and if you are wondering how to make sense of it all, I'd like to offer a bit of assistance in explaining the dynamics of nonviolent civil resistance.  By the way, I am in no way an expert.  I've just read a lot of books over the last three and a half years ;)

So from time to time over the next three months, I'll be pointing out certain elements of what's going on in the United States right now, and I will be using and explaining terms from the literature on civil resistance.  Today's term is backfire.

What is backfire?  It is the phenomenon that occurs when an oppressor tries to crush a nonviolent movement by means of violent State repression only to find that the violence perpetrated by the State makes the citizens of the country even more disgusted with the oppressing government.  When an oppressor's repression backfires, three things happen:

• The oppressor's legitimacy in the eyes of the country's citizens decreases
• The nonviolent movement actually becomes stronger and bigger as people formerly on the margins join the movement as an expression of their disgust with the oppressive regime
• And the oppressor's pillars of support are further weakened.

Backfire works best when the civil resistance movement maintains strict nonviolent discipline, including abstaining from property destruction. Moreover, skillful nonviolent resisters are able to amplify backfire through a wise selection of tactics.

The backfire dynamic is strongly at work in the confrontations between Trump's Federal storm troopers and unarmed citizens in the Black Lives Matter protests.  Before Trump sent Federal agents to Portland, the BLM protests had been declining.  But Trump's move not only highlighted the brutality of the Federal thugs, but it also provoked a "Wall of Moms" who came out to protect their children from attack by forming a human shield.  That "Wall of Moms" has now been joined by a "Wall of Dads" armed with leaf blowers to combat tear gas fired by the Feds.  And there will soon be a "Wall of Vets".  Far from crushing the BLM protests, Trump has only made them grow bigger and more energized.  Moreover, these "Walls of Parents" are spreading rapidly to other cities.  And a Republican former Homeland Security director has openly criticized Trump for sending Federal troops uninvited to American cities that did not ask for these troops.  These developments show that Trump does not understand backfire.  They also show that neither he nor his current DHS secretary are exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Want to learn more about backfire?  Read Making Oppression Backfire by the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies.  You can download it for free.

By the way, please also read my two previous posts.  They contain some necessary criticism of the ICNC.