RE: Why I Don’t Believe Peaceful Protests Work Without A Fear Of Possible Violence
The problem with peaceful protests is that they have an "exploit". 2 of the photos you used are from Greece / 2011. Now the protests were working very well for a while because they were peaceful. Half a million people were outside the parliament, nearly on a daily basis, and this image was delegitimizing the parliament which was voting things against the public will. The politicians were cracking and they had to find something to do about it.
The "exploit" is that the establishment "plants" some "violent" protesters among the peaceful ones and then says "oh these protestors are just violent hooligans". They then proceed to break the protest with violence. They did just that in late june 2011 in our case (Athens).
So, violence, in unarmed populaces, doesn't work for "resisting" because the people are outgunned. It could be different in countries with an armed populace.
I think this is a huge problem with almost all peaceful protests. You always get a minority of extremists who ruin the view and the government uses that for an excuse to turn on you, like what happened during occupy Wall Street.
They are "planted" by the establishment:
They throw the firebomb on the ground (not the cops), then when the riot police tries to counter-attack, they are like "hey hey, not us man, we are undercover"... one even unmasks, and after the unmasking the riot police retreats ;) All theatrics.
(check it in full screen)