Though their ends may be different, the origins and means of youth movements are often similar. In his 2007 book, The Time of the Rebels, Matthew Collin defines the democratic revolutions of the late 90s and early 00s as “a tiny faction of disaffected students which grew into a subversive network spanning the entire country.” Despite these modest beginnings, the success of any revolution relies on numbers. “To really have a successful movement you need young people,” Bryan Farrell, a journalist, activist, and the editor of the website Waging Nonviolence, says. “You need their energy to make it a fun, enjoyable experience. You need to make your campaign the place to be, essentially.” What Otpor did, and other youth groups have done since, is innovate to wrangle them in."Otpor had a ripple effect not just through neighboring countries in the former Soviet Union at the time, but through the spirit of anti-authoritarian activism pretty much everywhere. They provided a blueprint for youth movements in their wake to adopt or adapt, which is exactly what’s been happening over the past two decades, with varying degrees of success."
Historical research has shown that campaigns of nonviolent resistance are more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts. In their 2012 book Why Civil Resistance Works, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan studied campaigns between 1900 and 2006 and found that nonviolence leads to higher levels of participation because “the barriers to participation are lower.” This leads to enhanced resilience and a greater chance of achieving a more stable democracy in the long run. They also found that no campaigns failed once they’d achieved the active and sustained involvement of just 3.5 percent of the population, but those that did surpass the 3.5 percent threshold were all nonviolent. Using Otpor’s model to gain that support, then, is a guaranteed route to success. “When campaigns are able to prepare, train, and remain resilient, they often succeed regardless of whether the government uses violence against them,” Chenoweth writes.Many nonviolent resistance actions in recent years have been unsuccessful because the protests weren’t significant enough (as with Belarus’ Denim Revolution in 2006) or their central organization fell apart (as with the Arab Spring). The April 6 Youth Movement splintered into two groups, both of which were banned in Egypt in 2014 following accusations of espionage and defamation of the state. The government held fast through Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution and the protests didn’t dent the economy in the way they’d hoped, and the students who led them were jailed until democracy activists won an appeal to have their sentences overturned in February 2018. The student-led protests at Maidan Square in Ukraine in 2013 against government corruption under president Viktor Yanukovych began much in the spirit of the successful 2004–2005 revolution—with music, speakers, and performance art. But, despite beginning as the largest peaceful protests since Pora’s previous efforts almost a decade prior, the Euromaidan Revolution, as it became known, turned incredibly violent. Government snipers, police officers, and mercenary agents killed more than 100 protesters and injured thousands more. There was indeed an overhaul in parliament after Yanukovych fled the country, but some positions of power were given to members of far right parties—not exactly the change demonstrators had in mind.“A nonviolent movement, especially now, needs to know how to brand itself and how to make itself popular. It’s not all about the content of the political campaigns anymore but about how they present themselves to the public,” says the author Janjira Sombatpoonsiri.
Designed to disrupt basic services and provoke an over-the-top response, the peaceful campaign has its roots in the Otpor school of thought. This time, although students played their typically large role, the original impetus came from an opposition party. It was a rallying cry against corruption—something Popović calls a “bread-and-butter nonpolitical issue.” If somebody from the government is misusing taxpayers’ money, the majority of people feel more personally about it than they would about fighting for a less tangible issue like democracy or human rights. Still, it was coordinated nonviolent action with a clear goal. The movement captured the spirit of the nation and accomplished what several former Soviet Union states have done in the past: the peaceful removal of a long-sitting leader. On the eleventh day of the protests, Sargsyan resigned. What the movement hasn’t been able to do yet, however, is bring about real systemic change. As is the case with Egypt and Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring, they may have removed the head of the Hydra, but the beast isn’t dead.In 2018, a time when political divisions have never been greater or more apparent, effecting change rests just as heavily on youth involvement as ever. Whether it’s high school students in Florida organizing the Never Again movement to advocate for gun control in the wake of the Parkland shooting, or the indigenous-youth-driven protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, nonviolent civil resistance—in the US, at least—feels deeply personal and visibly young right now. But Popović says it’s important to understand that this new generation isn’t standing alone.“When Otpor was created, the first branch after the student branch and the high school branch was the so-called ‘resistance mothers,’” Popović tells me. “These are the mothers of the activists, who were supporting events, standing in front of the police and baking cakes—all that kind of stuff. Student protesters have never brought political change alone, not even in [the protests of] 1968. To have a successful movement you need diversity. You need to build across the constituencies. Your goals, your objectives, and your tactics should be ones that take the movement from the minority into the larger majority—from the extreme into the mainstream.”Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.“In democracy you have options and referendums,” Popović continues. “In autocracies it’s the government exercising control and misusing the pillars of the state to stay in power. Suppressing people, controlling media, preventing opposition from running in elections—it’s a different game.”