On June 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted aggressive raids in Los Angeles, sweeping up gainfully employed workers with no criminal record. This lead to demonstrations outside of the Los Angeles Federal Building. During these protests, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union California, was arrested alongside more than 100 others – leading to even larger demonstrations the next day.
Donald Trump responded on June 7th by sending federal troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests without any consultation with California governor Gavin Newsom and, in fact, in direct defiance of Newsom’s wishes. This dramatic federal response, paired with increasingly aggressive tactics by local police, lead to the protests growing larger and escalating in their intensity. They’ve begun spreading to other major cities too.
Cue the culture war.
On the right, the response was predictable: the federal clampdown was largely praised. Hyperbolic narratives about the protests and the protesters were uncritically amplified and affirmed. On the left, the response was no less predictable. There is a constellation of academic and media personalities who breathlessly root for all protests escalate into violent revolution while another faction claims to support all the causes in principle but somehow never encounters an actual protest movement that they outright support.
For my part, as I watched Waymo cars burning as Mexican flags fluttered in the foreground, I couldn’t help but be reminded of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In the documentary Sociology is a Martial Art, he emphasized, “I don’t think it’s a problem that young people are burning cars. I want them to be able to burn cars for a purpose.”
It is, indeed, possible for burning cars to serve a purpose. However, it matters immensely who is perceived to have lit the fuse.
Surveying the social science literature on social movements, violence and public perceptions, there are three core facts that stakeholders should bear in mind in trying to evaluate the efficacy of protests.
#1: Most successful social movements entail some form of violence or coercion — either carried out by the demonstrators, or on their behalf, or against the demonstrators (who often willfully sought to provoke this violence).
It’s uncomfortable to talk about, but all major successful social movements realized their goals with and through direct conflict. There’s never been a case where people just held hands and sang kumbaya while taking care to avoid breaking any rules or disrupting anything or threatening or coercing anyone — and those in power were inspired by this peaceful and civil disobedience, declared, “I never thought of it that way,” and made painful concessions of their own volition. This is a nonsense theory of social change.
Even pacifists are dependent upon violence in a number ways: aggression against protestors helps transform local demonstrations into mass movements, or to provoke external intervention on behalf of a cause. Public arrests and wrongful imprisonment of civil rights activists and leaders, powerful images or video of violence against protestors, and at times, even martyrdom (sometimes self-imposed)—spilled blood is the lifeblood of social movements.
Realities such as these were not lost on organizers such Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who often staged episodes of civil disobedience in the most hostile or dangerous areas, with the implicit intent of generating a heavy handed response from the authorities or local community in a highly-public and well-publicized setting—thereby advancing sympathy for, and awareness of, the cause. Pacifists gain moral high-ground precisely by refusing to return violence in kind—a feat which is impossible unless and until they are confronted with unreasonable force.
Critically, this restraint is often strictly limited to the political sphere. While many civil rights leaders were willing to lay down their lives for the cause, they also sought to avoid non-useful martyrdom – i.e. being killed when there were no cameras or reporters to help render their death impactful and meaningful. To minimize this risk, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other “non-violent” civil rights activists owned personal firearms which they used to protect themselves, their property and their loved ones outside the context of political demonstrations.
Moreover, non-violent movements become more effective at bargaining through contrast with violence committed by outliers sympathetic to the cause. Episodes of rioting or looting create a credible implicit threat: if pacifistic movements consistently come away empty-handed, their leaders may lose credibility—but the bourgeoisie stand to lose a lot more than that.
Mobilizing waves of the disenfranchised to assemble at seats of power underscores this threat further: right now, the angry mob at your doorstep is committed to non-violence. But should they grow disillusioned with pacifism, they may return with torches and pitchforks—and under the sway of revolutionaries who will not be placated with piecemeal reforms or patiently strive to accumulate small concessions, nor will they turn the other cheek in the face of repression. That is, it is violent movements (or other forms of coercion) which motivate elites to engage at all, even if progressives and pacifists are their preferred interlocutors.
And finally, for those movements aimed at legal reforms, the essential goal is to divert the coercive apparatus of the state for alternative means, to co-opt the state’s supposed monopoly on legitimate use of force. For instance, when schools were mandated to be integrated, police and National Guard were deployed to enforce the law. The very presence of these security personnel entails a threat of reciprocal violence–indicating that those who try to harm black students, or prevent them from attending white schools, will themselves face sanctions, imprisonment, injury or even death. While certainly justifiable (perhaps necessary) in this and many other instances, one should not deny the role of threats and coercion play even when trying to work “within the system.”
In light of these nuances, it may be misleading to call movements non-violent at all. It may be more accurate to say that progressives and pacifists enjoy a different relationship to violence than their revolutionary counterparts, or to the systems and institutions they are ostensibly resisting and seeking to reform. And they are often empowered to keep their own hands clean precisely because someone else’s are red.
In any event, although attempts at persuasion and coalition building are typically necessary for a social movement’s success, but they’re rarely sufficient. Actual or anticipated violence, destruction, and chaos also have their role to play. Leaders like MLK Jr. had an intuitive understanding of what empirical social science now affirms: what matters isn’t the presence or absence of violence but, rather, who gets blamed for any escalations that occur.
#2: The public tends to dislike *any* form of disruption or social protest, whether violent or not. Pretty much all social protests that are revered today were deeply unpopular at the time. They achieved their goals despite unpopularity, and became retroactively popular as a result of those successes. The popularity of a movement as it is occurring tells us nothing about its eventual impact.
Under most conditions, most stakeholders in society – elites and normies alike, and across ideological lines — would prefer to stick with the status quo (even one they view as suboptimal) rather than to embrace disruption in the service of an uncertain future state. So long as the status quo seems like a viable option, change is difficult.
This is one of the reasons why conflict is sometimes necessary: to convince people that it is not possible to go back to the status quo, and so it’s now a matter of deciding upon some alternative state of affairs.
The current anti-ICE protests have included clashes with police and occasional property damage. Melees, looting and destruction are perennially unpopular. But so are non-violent protests. For instance, the now-celebrated Civil Rights Era bus boycotts, diner sit-ins and marches were deeply unpopular at the time. In truth, the public rarely supports any form of social unrest.
Something similar holds for elite opinion makers. In the civil rights era, as now, many who claimed to support social justice causes also described virtually any disruptive action taken in the service of those causes as counterproductive, whether it was violent or not. As I describe in my book, civil rights leaders across the board described these “supporters” as the primary stumbling block for achieving equality.
In any event, due to this widespread impulse to prefer the status quo and frown upon disruption and disorder, most successful social movements are deeply unpopular until after their victory is apparent. Insofar as they notch successes, it is often in defiance of public opinion.
For instance, protests on U.S. campuses against Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza were deeply unpopular. However, for all their flaws and limitations, the demonstrations, and the broader cultural discussion around the protests, did get more people paying attention to what was happening in the Middle East. And as more people looked into Israel’s disastrous campaign in Gaza, American support plummeted. Among Democrats, Independents and Republicans alike, Israel’s favorability is significantly lower today than before October 7. These patterns were not just evident in the U.S. but also across Western Europe and beyond.
Palestinian author Omar el-Akkad notes that when atrocities become widely recognized, everyone belatedly claims to have always been against them — even if they actively facilitated or denied the crimes while they were being carried out. Successful social movements function the opposite way: once they succeed, everyone paints themselves as having always been for them, even if the movements in question were deeply unpopular at the time.
Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, was widely vilified towards the end of his life. Today, he has a federal holiday named after him. The lesson? Contemporaneous public polls about demonstrations tell us very little about the impact they’ll ultimately have. Successful social movements are often lauded in retrospect but are rarely beloved at the time they are being carried out.
#3: Although it can help under some circumstances, direct conflict can and often does undermine social movements too. The rule seems to be that whoever is perceived as having *initiated* violence loses in the eyes of the public. That is, what matters isn’t whether or not violence occurs but, rather, who the public ultimately *blames* for any chaos, destruction or bodily harm that takes place.
Conflict can help raise awareness and shift public opinion in favor of political causes, but it can also lead to blowback against those causes.
The rule seems to be that whoever is perceived to have initiated violence loses: If the protestors are seen as sparking violence, citizens sour on the cause and support state crackdowns. If the government is seen as having provoked chaos through inept or overly aggressive action, the public often grows more sympathetic to the protestors’ cause (even if they continue to hold negative opinions about the protestors and the protests themselves).
The 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles are an instructive example. They arose after King was unjustly beaten by law enforcement and the state failed to hold the perpetrators to account. In public opinion, the government was held liable for these legitimate grievances and outrage. As a result, the subsequent unrest seemed to generate further sympathy for police reform (even though most Americans frowned on the unrest itself).
Stonewall was a literal riot. However, it was also widely understood that the conflict was, itself, a response to law enforcement raids on gay bars. Gay and trans people were being aggressively surveilled and harassed by the state, and began pushing back more forcefully for respect, privacy and autonomy. The government was the perceived aggressor, and this worked to the benefit of the cause. Hence, today, the Stonewall uprising is celebrated as a pivotal moment in civil rights history despite being characterized in a uniformly negative fashion at the time.
This is not the way social movements always play out. If the protests come to be seen as being motivated primarily by animus, resentment or revenge (rather than positive or noble ideals), the public tends to grow more supportive of a crackdown against the movement. Likewise, if demonstrators seem pre-committed to violence, destruction and chaos, people who might otherwise be sympathetic to cause tend to rapidly disassociate with the protestors and their stated objectives.**
The January 6th 2021 raid on the Capitol building, for instance, led to lower levels of affiliation with the GOP. Politicians who subsequently justified the insurrection performed especially poorly in the 2022 midterms (with negative spillover effects to Republican peers).
The protests that followed George Floyd’s murder were a mixed bag: In areas where demonstrations did not spiral into chaos or violence, the protests increased support for many police reforms and, incidentally, the Democratic Party. In contexts where violence, looting, crime increases and extremist claims were more prevalent – where protesters seemed more focused on condemning, punishing or razing society rather than fixing it — trends moved the opposite direction.
Yet, although the Floyd-era protests themselves had an ambivalent effect on public support for criminal justice reform, the outcome of Trump’s clampdown on the demonstrations was unambiguous: it led to a rapid erosion in GOP support among whites – likely costing them the 2020 election. Why? Because the president came off as an aggressor.
Trump did not push for a crackdown reluctantly, after all other options were exhausted. He appeared to be hungry for conflict and eager to see the situation escalate. He seemed to relish norm violations and inflicting harm on his opponents. These perceptions were politically disastrous for him in 2020. They appear to be just as disastrous today.
With respect to the anti-ICE protests, right now it seems like the usual patterns are holding: the protest isn’t popular (they never are). However, the public does not view the protests as clearly violent, and so the crackdown against the protests is unpopular too.
At present, the public is split on whether the ongoing demonstrations in support of immigrants’ rights are peaceful. Yet, broadly, Americans disapprove of these protests, just as they disapprove of most others. Critically, however, most also disapprove of Trump’s decisions to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, and view the president’s actions as making the situation worse.
The federal agency at the heart of these protests, ICE, is not popular either. Americans broadly reject the agency’s tactics of conducting arrests in plain clothes, stuffing people in unmarked vehicles, and wearing masks to shield their identities. The public also disagrees with deporting undocumented migrants who were brought over as children, alongside policies that separate families, or actions that deny due process.
Employers, meanwhile, have lobbied the White House to revise its policies, which seem to primarily target longstanding and gainfully employed workers rather than criminals or people freeriding on government benefits – to the detriment of core U.S. industries.
Even before the protests began, there were signs that Americans were souring on Trump’s draconian approach to immigration, and public support has declined rapidly since the protests began on June 6. As this was his core issue — one of the only issues he was “above water” on — Trump’s broader net approval rating has predictably declined in tandem.
Whether the demonstrations ultimately lead to still more erosion of public support for Trump or continued declines in public support for immigrants will likely depend less on whether the demonstrations continue to escalate than who the public ultimately blames for any escalation that occurs.
At present, it’s not looking good for the White House.
**This dynamic is one of the main reasons terrorism campaigns typically fail to achieve their political objectives: even if the violence is motivated by legitimate grievances, indiscriminate destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure often leads to greater support for the state and reduced support for the terrorists and their cause. The perpetrators come to be seen as aggressors, not as victims responding to aggression by others.