A resistance movement is an organized group of people that tries to resist the government or an occupying power, causing disruption and unrest in civil order and stability. Such a movement may seek to achieve its goals through either the use of violent or nonviolent resistance (sometimes called civil resistance), or the use of force, whether armed or unarmed. In many cases, as for example in the United States during the American Revolution,^[1] or in Norway in the Second World War, a resistance movement may employ both violent and non-violent methods, usually operating under different organizations and acting in different phases or geographical areas within a country.^[2]

Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary records use of the word "resistance" in the sense of organised opposition to an invader from 1862.^[3] The modern usage of the term "Resistance" became widespread from the self-designation of many movements during World War II, especially the French Resistance. The term is still strongly linked to the context of the events of 1939–45, and particularly to opposition movements in Axis-occupied countries. Using the term "resistance" to designate a movement meeting the definition prior to World War II might be considered by some to be an anachronism. However, such movements existed prior to World War II (albeit often called by different names), and there have been many after it – for example in struggles against colonialism and foreign military occupations. "Resistance" has become^[when?] a generic term that has been used to designate underground resistance movements in any country.

Background

Resistance movements can include any irregular armed force that rises up against an enforced or established authority, government, or administration. This frequently includes groups that consider themselves to be resisting tyranny or dictatorship. Some resistance movements are underground organizations engaged in a struggle for national liberation in a country under military occupation or totalitarian domination. Tactics of resistance movements against a constituted authority range from nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, to guerrilla warfare and terrorism, or even conventional warfare if the resistance movement is powerful enough. Any government facing violent acts from a resistance movement usually condemns such acts as terrorism, even when such attacks target only the military or security forces. Resistance during World War II was mainly dedicated to fighting the Axis occupiers. Germany itself also had an anti-Nazi Hitler, German resistance movement in this period. Although the United Kingdom did not suffer invasion in World War II, preparations were made for a British resistance movement in the event of a German invasion (see Auxiliary Units).

Geographies of resistance

When geographies of resistance are discussed, it is often taken for granted that resistance takes place where domination, power, or oppression occurs and so resistance is often understood as something that always opposes to power or domination. However, some scholars believe and argue that looking at resistance in relation to only power and domination does not provide a full understanding of the actual nature of resistance. Not all power, domination, or oppression leads to resistance, and not all cases of resistance are against or to oppose what is categorized as "power". In fact, they believe that resistance has its own characteristics and spatialities. In Steve Pile's (1997) "Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces of Resistance", geographies of resistance show:

That people are positioned differently in unequal and multiple power relationships, that more or less powerful people are active in the constitution of unfolding relationships of authority, meaning and identity, that these activities are contingent, ambiguous and awkwardly situated, but that resistance seeks to occupy, deploy and create alternative spatialities from those defined through oppression and exploitation. From this perspective, assumptions about the domination/resistance couplet become questionable.

— Steve Pile, 1996: 3

We can better understand resistance by accounting different perspectives and by breaking the presumptions that resistance is always against power. In fact, resistance should be understood not only in relations to domination and authority, but also through other experiences, such as "desire and anger, capacity and ability, happiness and fear, dreaming and forgetting",^[4] meaning that resistance is not always about the dominated versus the dominator, the exploited versus the exploiter, or the oppressed versus the oppressor. There are various forms of resistance for various reasons, which then can be, again, classified as violent and nonviolent resistance (and "other" which is unclear).

Different geographical spaces can also make different forms of resistance possible or impossible and more effective or less effective. Furthermore, in order to understand any resistance – its capacity to achieve its objective effectively, its success or failure – we need to take closely into account many variables, such as political identities, cultural identities, class, race, gender and so on. The reason is that these variations can define the nature and outcome of resistance. Harvey (1993),^{[citation needed]} who looked at resistance in relations to capitalist economic exploitation, took on a fire accident happened in the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina in 1991, in which 20 of 200 workers were killed and 56 were injured due to poor working conditions and protections. He compared this accident with a similar fire accident at Triangle Shirtwaist Company, New York, 1911, killing 146 workers, which caused a labor resistance by 100,000 people.^[5] He argued that no resistance took place in response to the fire accident in Hamlet because most of the people who died there were black and women workers, and he believed that not only class but also other identities such as race, gender, and sexuality were important factors in understanding nature and outcome of resistance. For an effective resistance, he proposed that four tasks should be undertaken:

First, social justice must be defined from the perspective of the oppressed; second, a hierarchy of the oppressions has to be defined…..; third, political actions need to be understood and undertaken in terms of their situatedness and position in dynamic power relations: and finally, an epistemology capable of telling the difference between different differences has to be developed.

There are many forms of resistance in relations to different power dominations and actors. Some resistance takes place in order to oppose, change, or reform the exploitation of the capitalist economic systems and the capitals, while other resistance takes place against the state or authority in power. Moreover, some other resistance takes place in order to resist or question the social/culture norms or discourse or in order to challenge a global trend called "globalization". For example, LGBT social movements is an example of resistance that challenges and tries to reform the existing cultural norms in many societies. Resistance can also be mapped in various scales ranging from local to national to regional and to global spaces. We can look at a big-scale resistance movement such as anti-globalization movement that tries to resist the global trend of capitalist economic system. Or we can look at the internal resistance to apartheid, which took place at national level. Most, if not all, social movements can be considered as some forms of resistance.

Not all resistance takes place in physical spaces or geographies but in "other spaces" as well. Some resistance happens in the form of Protest Art or in the form of music. Music can be used and has been used as a tool or space to resist certain oppression or domination. Gray-Rosendale, L. (2001) put it this way:^[6]

Music acts as a rhetorical force that sanctions the construction of the boys' new black urban subjectivities that both challenge urban experience and yet give voice to it...music contributes a way to avoid physical and psychological immobility and to resist economic and cultural adaptation...and challenges the social injustice prevalent within the Northern economy.

— Gray-Rosendale, 2001: 154–56

In the age of advanced IT and mass consumption of social media, resistance can also occur in the cyberspace.The Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of NSW's Tobacco Resistance and Control (A-TRAC) team created a Facebook page to help promote anti-smoking campaign and rise awareness for its members.^[7] Sometimes, resistance takes place in people's minds and ideology or in people's "inner spaces". For example, sometimes people have to struggle within or fight against their inner spaces, with their consciousness and, sometimes, with their fear before they can resist in the physical spaces. In other cases, people sometimes simply resist to certain ideology, belief, or culture norms within their minds. These kinds of resistance are less visible but very fundamental parts of all forms of resistance.

Controversy regarding definition

On the lawfulness of armed resistance movements in international law, there has been a dispute between states since at least 1899, when the first major codification of the laws of war in the form of a series of international treaties took place. In the Preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention II on Land War, the Martens Clause was introduced as a compromise wording for the dispute between the Great Powers who considered francs-tireurs to be unlawful combatants subject to execution on capture and smaller states who maintained that they should be considered lawful combatants.^[8][9]

More recently the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, referred in Article 1. Paragraph 4 to armed conflicts "... in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes..." This phraseology, according USA that refused to ratify the Protocol, contains many ambiguities that cloud the issue of who is or is not a legitimate combatant:^[10] ultimately, in US Government opinion the distinction is just a political judgment.

Some definitions of resistance movement have proved controversial. Hence depending on the perspective of a state's government, a resistance movement may or may not be labelled a terrorist group based on whether the members of a resistance movement are considered lawful or unlawful combatants and whether they are recognized as having a right to resist occupation.^[11]

According to Joint Publication 1-02, the United States Department of Defense defines a resistance movement as "an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to resist the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability". In strict military terminology, a resistance movement is simply that; it seeks to resist (change) the policies of a government or occupying power. This may be accomplished through violent or non-violent means. In this view, a resistance movement is specifically limited to changing the nature of current power, not to overthrow it; and the correct^{[according to whom?]} military term for removing or overthrowing a government is an insurgency. However, in reality many resistance movements have aimed to displace a particular ruler, especially if that ruler has gained or retained power illegally.

Freedom fighter

Freedom fighter is another term for those engaged in a struggle to achieve political freedom for themselves or obtain freedom for others.^[12] Though the literal meaning of the words could include "anyone who fights for the cause of freedom", in common use it may be restricted to those who are actively involved in an armed rebellion, rather than those who campaign for freedom by peaceful means, or those who fight violently for the freedom of others outside the context of an uprising (though this title may be applied in its literal sense)

Generally speaking, freedom fighters are people who use physical force to cause a change in the political and or social order to achieve free rights for their people. Notable examples include Umkhonto we Sizwe in South Africa, the Sons of Liberty in the American Revolution, the Irish Republican Army in Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, the National Resistance Army in Uganda, and the most famous ones, the Palestinian resistance groups Such as The Islamic Resistance Movement, The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and The Popular front for the liberation of Palestine, which were considered freedom fighters by supporters. However, a person who is campaigning for freedom through peaceful means may still be classed as a freedom fighter, though in common usage they are called political activists, as in the case of the Black Consciousness Movement. In India, "Freedom fighter" is an officially recognized category by the Indian government covering those who took part in the country's independence movement; people in this category (can also include dependant family members)^[13] get pensions and other benefits like special railway counters.^[14]

People described as freedom fighters are often incorrectly also called assassins, rebels, insurgents or terrorists. Freedom fighters target only military targets not civilians. This leads to the false aphorism "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".^[15] The degree to which this occurs depends on a variety of factors specific to the struggle in which a given freedom fighter group is engaged.

During the Cold War, the term freedom fighter was first used with reference to the Hungarian rebels in 1956.^[16] Ronald Reagan picked up the term to explain America's support of rebels in countries controlled by communist states or otherwise perceived to be under the influence of the Soviet Union, including the Contras in Nicaragua, UNITA in Angola and the multi-factional mujahideen in Afghanistan.^[16]

In the media, the BBC tries to avoid the phrases "terrorist" or "freedom fighter", except in attributed quotes, in favor of more neutral terms such as "militant", "guerrilla", "assassin", "insurgent", "rebel", "paramilitary", or "militia".^[17]

Common weapons

Partisans often use captured weapons taken from their enemies, or weapons that have been stolen or smuggled in. During the Cold War, partisans often received arms from either NATO or Warsaw Pact member states. Where partisan resources are stretched, improvised weapons are also deployed.

Examples of resistance movements

The following examples are of groups that have been considered or would identify themselves as groups. These are mostly, but not exclusively, of armed resistance movements. For movements and phases of activity involving non-violent methods, see civil resistance and nonviolent resistance.

Pre–20th century

• The Sicarii were a first-century Jewish movement opposing Roman occupation of the Jewish Promised Land.^[18]
• The Yellow Turbans were peasant rebels against the Eastern Han dynasty, led by Zhang Jue, was crushed by the lack of co-ordination with other Yellow Turban groups as well as destabilization.
• The Abbasid Revolution overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty under Abu Muslim, which was caused by discrimination against non-Arab Muslims and government corruption.
• The Mamluks were Turkic slaves who overthrew the Ayyubid dynasty.
• In opposition to British rule in Ireland and the subsequent Plantations of Ireland, the native Gaelic population, at times with and against the Hiberno-Normans lords, launched the Bruce campaign in Ireland (1315-1318), the Desmond Rebellions (1569–1573 & 1579–1583), the Nine Years' War, also known as Tyrone's Rebellion, (1593-1603), the Irish Rebellion of 1641 & the subsequent Irish Confederate Wars (1641-1653), the Williamite War in Ireland (1688–1691), the Irish Rebellion of 1798, also known as the United Irishmen Rebellion, and the Tithe War (1831-1836).^[19]
• The Jacobite risings were a series of rebellions, uprisings, and wars to reinstate the Stuart dynasty.
• The American Continental forces of the American Revolutionary War were essentially a resistance movement against the British Empire.
  • Francis Marion was an American Revolutionary War partisan who led a partisan guerrilla movement against Great Britain.
• Indigenous Australians in the early history of Australia
  • Pemulwuy – An indigenous Australian who resisted the European colonization of Australia. In 1797, a state of guerrilla warfare existed between indigenous people and settler communities in Sydney. The Aboriginals were led by Pemulwuy, a member of the Bidjigal tribe who occupied the land.^[20] Pemulwuy was eventually shot and killed by Henry Hacking in 1802.^[21]
  • Jandamarra – The first Indigenous Australian to use firearms and conduct organized warfare in battle against settlers; leading a war against Euro-Australian settlers for three years, from 1894 to 1897. The resistance movement ended when Jandamarra was shot dead by an Aboriginal tracker.
• Resistance movements against France also emerged during the Napoleonic Wars
  • The 1808 invasion of Spain by Bonaparte sparked a resistance movement composed mostly of the lower classes, who felt that the nobility was simply allowing themselves to fall under French control. Lord Wellington remarked that it was extraordinary that the French had managed to remain in the country for so long (about 4 years).
  • Landsturm – German resistance groups fighting against the French in the Napoleonic Wars.
• Certain Native Americans during Manifest destiny.
  • Tsali – Cherokee tribal member who led a small band of Cherokee people against the United States military during the Trail of Tears era. Executed in exchange for the survival of his band, the band were integrated into the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
  • Osceola – Seminole chief who was very influential. Resisted deportation during the period of Indian removal. Led a number of successes until being captured by the United States during faux peace talks, died a few months later in prison.
• During the American Civil War, there were also resistance movements on both sides
  • Bushwhackers were Confederate guerrillas who engaged in raids, robberies, and massacres against the Union forces and affiliated citizens. Continued resisting for some years after the American Civil War ended. Responsible for the Lawrence Massacre
  • Jayhawkers were Union guerrillas who engaged in the same acts as the bushwhackers did, they were also active during Bleeding Kansas, most prominent member was John Brown responsible for the Pottawatomie Massacre and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.
• Carbonari – 19th-century Italian movement resisting Austrian or Bourbon rule.
• The Polish National Government – Underground Polish supreme authority during the January Uprising against Russian occupation of Poland. In 1863–1864, it was a real shadow government supported by majority of Poles, who even paid taxes for it, and was a significant problem for the Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire.
• Andrés Avelino Cáceres' resistance movement against invading Chilean forces during the War of the Pacific.
• The Kataas-Taasang, Ka-Galang-galangang, Katipunan ng mga Anak Ng Bayan (KKK) was an organization in the Philippines that instigated the Philippine Revolution in 1896 against the Spanish colonials and resulted in the dissolution of the Republic of Biak na Bato and the exile of the Philippine Government, headed by Emillo Aguinaldo.

Pre–World War II

• Filipino guerrilla units after official end of Philippine–American War (1902–1913)
• Chinese Communist Party
  • Chinese Red Army
  • Chinese Soviet Republic
  • Communist-controlled China (1927–1949)
  • Fujian People's Government
  • Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region
• Charlemagne Peralte and his Cacos rebels who resisted the United States occupation of Haiti.
• Freikorps
• Ukrainian forces in the Ukrainian War of Independence (1917-1921)
• House of Saud
  • Ikhwan
• Forest Guerrillas (1921–1922)
• Augusto César Sandino led a rebellion against the United States occupation of Nicaragua.
• Lwów Eaglets
• Black Lions (1936)
• Irish Republican Army (1918–1922)
• Turkish national movement
  • Association for the Defense of the Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia
• TIGR (1927–1941)
• Ustaše – Croatian nationalist and fascist resistance movement against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
• White movement
  • National Alliance of Russian Solidarists

World War II

Post–World War II

• Post-WWII anti-fascism (ongoing)

Africa

East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania

Europe

Middle East

Indian subcontinent

Western hemisphere

Notable individuals in resistance movements

World War II

Other resistance movements and figures