Does Violent Protest Backfire? Testing a Theory of Public Reactions to Activist Violence

Abstract

How do people respond to violent political protest? The authors present a theory proposing that the use of violence leads the general public to view a protest group as less reasonable, a perception that reduces identification with the group. This reduced identification in turn reduces public support for the violent group. Furthermore, the authors argue that violence also leads to more support for groups that are perceived as opposing the violent group. The authors test this theory using a large ( n = 800) Internet-based survey experiment with a politically diverse sample. Participants responded to an experimental scenario based on recent violent confrontations between white nationalist protesters and antiracist counter-protesters, allowing the authors to study whether violent protest would reduce public support even when used against a widely reviled group. The authors found that the use of violence by an antiracist group against white nationalists led to decreased support for the antiracist group and increased support for the white nationalist group. Furthermore, the results were consistent with the theorized causal process: violence led to perceptions of unreasonableness, which reduced identification with and support for the protest group. Importantly, the results revealed a striking asymmetry: although acts of violence eroded support for an antiracist group, support for white nationalist groups was not reduced by the use of violence, perhaps because the public already perceives these groups as very unreasonable and identifies with them at low levels. Consistent with this interpretation, the authors found that self-identified Republicans, a subset of the sample that reported less extremely negative views of white nationalists, showed reduced support for white nationalists when they engaged in violence.

Beyond peaceful protest: When non-participants support violence against the police

“…A second reason to take into account Saavedra and collaborators' work is its conceptualization of protest violence as a variable and context-sensitive phenomenon. Thus, non-participants' support for protest violence follows a rationale centred in the specific perceived contextual conditions (i.e., government restrictions and police actions) where the protests take place, and Beyond peaceful protest 8 does not necessarily imply a dis-identification with protesters (see Feinberg, Willer, & Kovacheff, 2017) or attributing irrationality to those who use violence (see Orazani & Leidner, 2019a, 2019bSimpson, Willer, & Feinberg, 2018).…”

Message Received? The Role of Emotion, Race, and Politics in Social Movement Perceptions and Support

“…The impact of emotion across this member/bystander distinction is an opportunity for future work. From a methodological perspective, this study is part of a growing trend of research employing experimental methods to study social movements (see also Simpson et al 2018;Feinberg et al 2017). Experimental approaches are particularly useful for testing the dynamics that other researchers have uncovered using case studies or observational data.…”

“…Wasow (2017) found that, in the 1960s, areas in which violent civil rights protests occurred saw decreased Democratic vote share among whites, while areas with more nonviolent protests saw an increase in Democratic vote share. Most recently, Simpson, Willer, and Feinberg (2018) found that the use of violence not only led to decreased support for a movement's cause but can also increase support for opposition groups. There is thus strong prior evidence leading us to expect that extreme or violent tactics are demotivating for social movement support.…”

“…Many scholars now argue that nondisruptive, nonviolent social movement strategies are the most likely to garner popular support and engender change (e.g. Simpson, Willer, and Feinberg 2018;Feinberg, Willer, and Kovacheff 2017;King and Smith 2011;Rojas 2006). Yet emergent work suggests that the very perception of which social movements and tactics are considered "disruptive" is rooted in social histories.…”

Solidarity with those who hit the streets: Public opinion and support for protesters’ self-defence actions when the right to protest is restricted

“…Consequently, non-participants can disagree with protesters' violence when authorities guarantee people's right to protest, while violence against the police may be supported as self-defence actions when protesters need to confront authorities' restrictive measures concerning this right. Second, because its focus is on the perceived political context protesters' need to face, Saavedra and Drury's (2019a) work challenges some recent arguments about the backlash effects that protest violence might have on protest public image, such as public opinion's lack of support (see Feinberg, Willer, & Kovacheff, 2017;Simpson, Willer, & Feinberg, 2018).…”