3.5% rule: How a small percentage of authoritarians can change society for the worse...

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According to a peer-reviewed study, protests can potentially change society if they reach a threshold of 3.5%. This article presents this as a good thing and - yeah it is a pretty good thing for protests looking for positive change. I have already written about how hard protests are and how difficult it is for them to succeed even in the modern world (with only 26% of violent revolutions succeeding and only 53% of peaceful protests succeeding). With these odds, it shows to people who still want to make a positive change that they do not have to convince too many people to potentially succeed and make a difference...

That being said, I also realized this works the other way around and shows how authoritarians with a cult of personality can control everything even if they are widely hated or disdained by most of the population. While this 3.5% rule allows people to make a positive change to change society for the better starting with a small number of people, it also shows how a group of power-hungry people or totalitarians can take control with a large enough cult to make things worse for people.

Basically, with a smart enough power-hungry person, you can change things to increase your own power even if the number of people who follow you is less than five percent of the population. 3.5% is a little less than 4% or one in twenty-five people. While that might sound like a lot, it is not that much for a popular controlling person or people trying to steal power for themselves. Plus, as pointed out before, it kind of reminds us that the common myth that authoritarians need the majority's approval to stay in power is a myth! All they need is a small cult to potentially take stay in power & once they are in power, the odds of a peaceful power taking them down is almost a literal coin toss and the chance of a violent protest succeeding is slightly more than one in four!