Moderate Violence?

Looking at three marginalized peoples conflicts the Zaptistas rebellion, the gama Islamiya terrorist attacks of Southern Egypt and the Ogoni initially peaceful rebellion in Nigeria
Ironically the peaceful resistance didn’t make any difference despite being widely supported on the “international arena” it is really a sad story and in the end they are crushed by the Nigerian government

The Gama Islamiya or splinters from it were responsible for a series of violent terrorist attacks on the country which ended in 1997 where more than 40 tourists were killed by extremists (notice that I rarely use such words like extremists but in this case it is accurately descriptive) this marked the final blow to the group as the Egyptian Public opinion was crassly disgusted with the final incident. The government later cracked down upon them.

The Zaptistas however did use violence but “moderately” as we all agreed in class casualties did fall but still they maintained the sympathy of Mexicans and in the end they did achieve major changes in the political fabric of Mexico.

Of course it would be very simplistic to argue that the type of violence was what paved the way to success. But it is a factor that should be considered and perhaps compared to the success of violence used by such insurgency (or terrorists) …
well least this creates room for more comparitive studies between social movments


What was common between these three groups was that they all were motivated by religious convictions, they were all marginalized (economically, politically, culturally and geographically)(culturally as in qusai belonging to the nation state) , they all were stereotyped to be mentally lacking, uneducated farmer type peoples, and they stereotyped the other as lacking honor, a sense of shame and manliness.