Governments that crush nonviolent protestors reduce public authoritarianism

Evidence

Finally, I discovered that if a government brutally repressed nonviolent leftwing protestors, participants indicated they would become significantly less authoritarian. If inducing left-wing protestors to become violent is the “Nixon trap,” inducing a government to use violence against nonviolent protestors can be called the “‘Gandhi trap.” — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1182

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘Gandhi trap’ as the inverse of the ‘Nixon trap’ — an elegant named pairing worth remembering.
• SEED: An essay contrasting when state violence backfires (Gandhi trap) versus when it succeeds (Nixon trap) as tools of authoritarian escalation.
• XREF: connects to: In mature democracies contention turns nonviolent unless state agents block it — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 428