[Santosh83]

May not work these days. The British were half decent and still they killed thousands of people before they left India. If the protestors continue non-violently, we'll simply see them shot with rubber bullets and carted off, or barricaded and starved out. Countries these days are willing to escalate into violence since every major country has more than enough blood on its hands and prefers tacitly looking the other way unless there is something in it for them.

[nabla9]

It may not work, but if the government is willing to escalate without limit other strategies don't work either.

[wavefunction]

One wonders if the British were even half decent when you consider their long history of colonial and imperial oppression. One might conclude they were fully indecent, in fact.

[Mvandenbergh]

The key is that they believed themselves to be decent, whether they actually were is hardly relevant to the effectiveness of the tactic. The genius of Indian resistance against British rule is that it forced the British to confront the gap between their stated values and what it took to maintain imperial control over India.

[SuddsMcDuff]

Do you think these protests would be happening if the British had kept hold of their former colony HK?

Do you think it's strange that some of the HK protestors have been waving the flag of their former colonial masters?

[khc]

Not strange at all https://twitter.com/kahingcheung/status/1146092771003867136?...

[cevn]

Half decent? Has the GP heard of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, or how Churchill starved 3m in Bengal?

[nabla9]

Becoming shamed requires some amount of decency.

Amritsar caused outrage in Britain and changed the whole narrative. It took time, but within a decade British government had lost all moral ground and British attitudes had shifted.

[kjeetgill]

I don't think the point was about half decent vs. a quarter decent.

As evil/bad as the situation was; non-violence only helps if someone loses more than they gain by just killing you. In this case it was by losing the moral high-ground that was valued by some British people at least. Sure it probably wasn't decent people among the perpetrators, but the pearl clutchers back home.

[objektif]

How is this even related to the discussion?? You dont think there are some decent Chinese somewhere?

[kjeetgill]

Mainly just clarifying to the parent what Santosh83 meant. I think it's not about x% decent but rather x% decent able to sway ruling class decisions based on the optics of attacking non-violent dissidents.

[kortilla]

Yep, “fully”. There are no shades of grey around these parts. Just the bucket of countries that contain people and then the bucket that doesn’t.

[objektif]

Brits were half decent? Hmmm thats breaking news to me knowing their history.