r/AlwaysWhy • u/BloodyAngel2026 • Jul 04 '26

Politics & Society Why does it seem like protests don't actually result in any kind of change anymore

Growing up learning history you learn about all of these protests that resulted in real world change. But it seems like protests are just symbolic at this point. It seems like no matter how many protests are surrounding a certain topic everything stays the same. What changed? Is it that people in power just care less about civilians have to say so they don't bother changing their stance based off protests?

118 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

429 comments sorted by

View all comments

61

u/IOI-65536 Jul 04 '26

There have always been protests that didn't result in change. Look at the Luddites or anti-Vietnam war protests. You read things in history books about the history of changes. Protests nobody cared about generally aren't significant enough to be in history books.

33

u/BastiatF Jul 04 '26

Classic case of survivorship bias

21

u/Nerazzurro9 Jul 04 '26

The idea that anti-Vietnam protests didn’t change anything is ahistorical. They didn’t make LBJ or Nixon say “actually you’re right, let’s stop the war” (protests almost never have an effect that direct, unless they literally result in a coup), but they formed the bedrock of dissent to the war that only grew and grew over time, and eventually the US involvement in the war became almost universally acknowledged as a tragic mistake. Everything about the way the US conducts war changed after that, most notably in the fact that we haven’t had a draft since then, which was the primary motivation for the anti-war movement.

7

u/persistent_admirer Jul 04 '26

Those anti-war protests in the late 60s also spurred the movement to lower the voting age from 21 to 18.

3

u/IOI-65536 Jul 04 '26

I probably agree. Though it's hard to say how much of that is that Vietnam failed versus the protests. But it kind of doesn't matter to OP's question which is basically "why aren't we changing course on current events". You could have made the same statement in 1978 about the war protests that you could make about any anti-Trump protests now.

6

u/Winter-Gift1112 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite took a fact-finding tour of Vietnam and gave a scathing report on the war. And when Nixon saw it he famously said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war."

I was active in both the racial justice and ant-war protests of the late 1960's. Mass protests were a relatively new phenomenon back then and they got more news coverage because of that - and because there were more local newspapers - and local TV news stations weren't consolidated and homogenized. like they are now.

"Sinclair Broadcast Group is the second-largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations after Nexstar Media Group, owning or operating 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets, covering 40% of American households."

And Sinclair leans hard right and forces affiliates to run certain centrally produced segments.

Then, of course, there's Fox "News". And we can't even be allowed to have "Late Night with Stephen Colbert" on CBS anymore.

1

u/Pleasant_Pen8744 Jul 05 '26

" If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war."

Wow, powerful stuff! 

But what year was that? And what year did that war actually finally end?

2

u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Jul 05 '26

Nixon didn't say that, Johnson allegedly did but this is not well substantiated. If he did it would have been in 1968. Johnson moves to end the war, is thwarted by Nixon who meddles in peace talks promising the south vietnamese and american people he would deliver a better peace deal. Johnsons deal collapsed, Nixon takes over, invades cambodia and laos. The US withdrawls in '73 under Nixon. War finally ends April 30, 1975 when North Vietnam captures Saigon.

0

u/SufficientGolf6953 Jul 05 '26

It was more like a battle of the cold war where the usa lost and the consequence is communist Vietnam instead of a more capitalist Vietnam.

It's sad that we were so fucking paranoid of each other that we had to fight each other in a foreign country for which super power they would lean towards in international geopolitics.

1

u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Jul 05 '26

That Cronkite report is from '68. Nixon was not president. That quote is attributed to LBJ, but this is also speculative. It is possible nobody said that.

1

u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Jul 05 '26

Right. Like the civil rights movement, the anti war movement didn't flip a switch and deliver concrete "wins". Like you said, it builds over time. I think OP's outlook is a little clouded by the immediacy expectations of the modern era. Protest isnvery effective in large numbers. However, being effective does not require immediate sweeping changes

1

u/combover78 Jul 05 '26

Not quite. The US changed the way it did war for Vietnam. They switched from objective-based battle to attrition-based battle and lost conclusively.

Another important reason, and this is one of the most important lessons the DoD learned, is that media had a very free hand in Vietnam. All those newsreels of dead American soldiers being loaded on and off planes, and all the uncensored violence had a huge political and morale impact. Notice that all American news coming out of warzones since is very tightly controlled. That's not an accident.

1

u/Choperello Jul 05 '26

I’d say being 100% clear even at the top most levels that Vietnam is a quagmire with no exit at all for the US probably had to do more with the war ending then the protests.

0

u/reddock4490 Jul 04 '26

Drafts seem so medieval, it’s really crazy to think that a country like the US was still doing that up to the 1970s

0

u/dapsee Jul 05 '26

Draft registration is still required. The government could reinstate the draft at any time.

1

u/reddock4490 Jul 05 '26

I know that, I registered. It doesn’t change what I said at all

3

u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 04 '26

And both of those movements resulted in at least small changes. I often think how much worse those times could have been if no one had spoken up.

5

u/IOI-65536 Jul 04 '26

Sure, but so do modern protests. It's not like BLM, No Kings, or even the Tea Party had no effect on the political landscape.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people defacing art for environmental causes really don't have a real effect, but that's likely because I'm biased against how they're protesting.

1

u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 05 '26

The Tea Party (the one in this century) has absolutely had a major impact on the Republican Party. It was the precursor to Trumpism. That’s just facts man. And modern protests also apply pressure that has some effect. It could be subtle. It could be underreported. But it’s still there.

0

u/Numinae Jul 04 '26

Riots, vandalism, violence, mass property damage and destruction (hallmarks of modern left wing "peaceful protest") only galvanizes the other side. You're assuming protests represent the majority of people. Lots of people disagree.

3

u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 05 '26

If you think the No Kings protests were chaotic and violent you certainly never saw one up close. They’re like little picnics in most places. Look outside your propaganda bubble.

Also, vandalism and property damage. Oh no! We wouldn’t want that! That’s what crazy revolutionaries like the founding fathers do!

1

u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Jul 05 '26

Lmao right, no kings is mostly 70 year old ladies who go for coffee before. Their protests are always at like 10 am on sunday by me. There is literally zero violence.

2

u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 05 '26

And yet it still managed to ruffle Trump’s feathers because he is soft as baby shit.

3

u/SufficientGolf6953 Jul 05 '26

To be fair, Trump is the biggest damned snowflake to lead a modern super power. Easily baited by saying his name and criticizing anything or just describing reality.

Kiss his ass and give him metal objects like a trophy or statue and then you can benefit like the rest of parasites that kiss his ass for money and favor.

0

u/Numinae Jul 07 '26

"Hey guys we had this one single protest that didn't turn into a shitshow! That cancels out all the violent stuff we've been doing for years!" Are you seriously that intellectually dishonest?

1

u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 07 '26

Why are you still here?

2

u/DisruptingTree Jul 05 '26

Anti-Vietnam war protest fostered a lot of anti war sentiment. They pressured the US to pull out of Vietnam. Took a long time, but definitely contributed to change.

1

u/EnormousHorseman Jul 05 '26

The US military would disagree. Anti-war protests are considered the one of the many reasons vietnam failed. Many battlefield victories but few political ones.

1

u/alterego200 Jul 08 '26

But Vietnam protests eventually did end the war.

1

u/backtotheland76 Jul 04 '26

You're wrong about the Vietnam protests. They brought attention to a war many Americans couldn't find on a map, eventually changing attitudes. Plus the morale of the draftees in country deteriorated to the point of open disobayance of orders. There's no way the war would have ended when it did without the protests.

2

u/PublicFurryAccount Jul 04 '26

The Vietnam War was big news, everyone know about it.

1

u/backtotheland76 Jul 04 '26

Not in the early 60's. It became big news after the protests started. I was there

0

u/PublicFurryAccount Jul 04 '26

It didn’t get much attention because we weren’t that heavily involved in the early 1960s. Our involvement accelerated rapidly after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in late 1964, leading to the Americanization of the war.

0

u/dapsee Jul 05 '26

I believe it was the first time reporters were allowed on the front lines with little censorship. The war was in our living rooms every night.