And you can measure their influence how?

I just finished a video game called 1000xResist this afternoon. There's a lot going on, to say the least - a sci-fi story involving an alien virus, intergenerational trauma, what it's like to be an outsider. It's a hell of a ride, one where certain moments resonated in a way I'll think about for a long time to come.

One of the dynamics is that a character's parents, both of whom protested in Hong Kong during the Umbrella Movement, left for Canada in the wake of the crackdowns wanting to start a family. At a moment when both of the parents are tired and feeling regret, one of them asks why they left, why they bothered to protest, and if those actions had any meaning if the PRC wound up winning control anyway. The other says this:

> ...if we stayed silent? Didn't stand up for ourselves? They would say this is how it always was. They would say this is what the people wanted. But no. They can't say that. Because it has gone down in history that we resisted fiercely. That we fought for a different future until we couldn't.

I admit: ultimately, that statement doesn't mean anything quantifiable - in fact, it kind of states the exact opposite, which is not the most convincing on a site like this. Still, I think there is truth in it: even if the protests don't have a quantifiable number associated with them, people see them, and know that they happened.

Ultimately that may or may not matter; it may just be a sentiment lost in the wind, or papered over by the victors. But it's still _something_.

Midterms

Measuring the influence of any mass protest movement is hard because they don’t have a formal role in the political system. We’ll never be able to know a counterfactual of what would have happened had they not taken place. If someone wants to take the position that No Kings, yellow vests, Occupy Wall Street, etc. were all equally pointless, I don’t think I have a strong counterargument to that.

What I see much more often is people who think only the latter two movements were good. And I’m not sure what heuristic could possibly get you there other than generalized opposition to normies.