Like other strategies for social change, non-violent resistance can appear in various forms and degrees. It may include information warss, protest art, lobbying, tax refusal, boycotts or sanctions, legal/diplomatic wrestling, material sabotage, underground railroads, principled refusal of awards/honours, picketing, vigiling, leafleting, and/or general strikes.
Gene Sharp has outlined tactics of non-violent resistance as a military strategy, designed to defend countries in the face of attempted takeover:
While Palestinian resistance often carries connotations of violent resistance and of suicide bombers in particular, efforts have also occurred to use non-violent resistance to oppose the Israeli occupation. The International Solidarity Movement have used a variety of non-violent methods for over two years, including its activists acting as human shields. In March 2003, Rachel Corrie became the first ISM member to die in these actions.
When the Wehrmacht invaded Denmark in 1940, the Danes saw that military confrontation would change nothing except the number of Danes left to be occupied. The Danish government therefore adopted a policy of official co-operation (and unofficial obstruction) they called "negotiation under protest."
On the industrial front, Danish workers subtly slowed all production that would feed the German war machine, sometimes to a perfect standstill. On the cultural front, Danes engaged in the symbolic defiance of organizing mass celebrations of their own history and traditions.
On the legislative front, the Danish government insisted that since they were officially co-operating with Germany, they had an ally's right to negotiate with Germany, and then proceeded to create bureaucratic quagmires which stalled or blocked German orders without having to refuse them outright. Denmark also proved to be conveniently inept at controlling the underground Danish resistance press, which at one point reached numbers equivalent to the entire adult population.
The Danish government also gave room (and even secret assistance) to underground groups involved in sabotage of machines and railway lines needed to extract Danish resources or to supply the Wehmacht. The classification of this kind of resistance as "non-violent" is debatable, but it certainly proved less "violent" than engaging in or supporting terrorism directed at taking life or health from the occupiers.
Even when their government was dissolved entirely, the Danes managed to block German goals without resorting to bloodshed. Underground groups smuggled over 7000 of Denmark's 8000 Jews temporarily into Sweden, at great personal risk. Workers (and even entire cities like Copenhagen) went on mass strikes, refusing to work for an occupier's benefit on an occupier's terms. After an initial response of greatly increased repression, the war-distracted Germans abandoned strike-breaking efforts in exasperation.
The Danish resistance against the Nazis proved highly effective, but it raises characteristic questions about the efficacy of non-violence. The Danes clearly lost very few lives, while annoying and draining their foreign occupiers. But people wonder if the Danish strategy might not have failed abysmally if applied in other occupied by Germany countries, ruled by naked terror. Eventually, nobody believes in possibility of defeating Nazis without using military violence.
It almost certainly would have proved a more painful strategy for Denmark in such a circumstance (as in the case of the successful but agonizing non-violent resistance to apartheid in South Africa), but like the Gandhian solution of perfect global surrender to the Nazis followed by perfect global non-cooperation with them, many questions of efficacy remain in the realm of the hypothetical. And due to the decentralized and various nature of non-violent advocacy, questions about possible compatibility with violent resitance, or even about precise definitions of "non-violent tactics" have no categorical answers.
In 1971, the French government announced their intention to extend the military camp on the Larzac plateau, an arid area in southern France where they claimed that "almost nobody lived". Local farmers strongly disagreed with this assessment and, inspired by the example of Lanza del Vasto (a philosopher and follower of Mahatma Gandhi who had gone on hunger strike for two weeks in their support), they embarked on a campaign of non-violent resistance.
In 1972 (?), the farmers' struggle attracted world-wide media coverage when they brought their sheep to graze on the lawn under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The issue became a famous cause among many groups, from ecologists to conscientious objectors, and in 1973 100,000 people attended a demonstration in Paris in support of the farmers of Larzac.
The fight lasted until 1981 when the new socialist government decided to abandon the project.
Non-violent resistance in colonial India
Non-violent resistance in communist Poland
Non-violent resistance in segregated US
Non-violent resistance in segregated South Africa
Non-violent resistance in occupied Palestine
Non-violent resistance in Denmark during World War II
Non-violent resistance of Larzac's farmers (France)
Pages to merge with?
Non-violent resistance against nuclear weapons
See also: Civil disobedience, Mohandas Gandhi, Non-violence, Pacifism, Religious Society of Friends, Non-violent direct action