State-led Atrocities and Nonviolent Resistance: Why Peaceful Protest Isn’t Always Safe

Abstract Nonviolent resistance is often considered among the safest forms of protest. Yet, evidence underpinning this claim stems from inquiries on aggregated annual data on resistance campaigns which tend to get compared to insurgencies and armed conflict. Classifications have also relied on the problematic binary of nonviolence and violence and have distorted the complexity inherent to dissent. This study draws on event-based data and statistically analyzes 169 events of severe repression (1800–2022) along with different protest strategies. Results reveal that while cases featuring armed resistance are positively correlated with repression severity and have experienced higher fatality rates, there are no significant differences in fatality rates in cases where activists adopted nonviolent, scattered violent, and unarmed violent protests. These findings challenge conventional wisdom that nonviolent resistance is safer than other strategies. Case studies of the 1972 Derry massacre and the 1989 Tbilisi massacre are drawn on to elucidate the complex nature of state responses to threats to political status quos.