Why has the successful use of nonviolent strategies to take power not been more widely appreciated?
Because the news and entertainment media – through the decisions of editors, producers and reporters, and the opinion leaders whose views they mirror and ventilate – are preoccupied with violent incidents in what they air, write and talk about. That fosters the mistaken impression that history-making political changes require or entail violence. And that in turn reinforces the wrong belief that violence is the ultimate or even the exclusive form of power, in conflicts with dictators, invaders and other rights-violating rulers. Yet the truth is that over the last hundred years, bloody tyrants and even military forces have been neutralized and overcome through the use of strategic nonviolent conflict.
