Put Down the Pitchfork. It’s the One Tool That Guarantees We Lose the Battle for Democracy.

Trump is praying for a mob. The data says don’t give him one.

Put Down the Pitchfork. It’s the One Tool That Guarantees We Lose the Battle for Democracy.

Trump is praying for a mob. The data says don’t give him one.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,068: Wednesday, October 28th, 2026

Let me say something that’s going to make some of you mad.

Every time I scroll through the comments under one of my posts about Trump’s corruption, I see the same thing. “Torches and pitchforks.” “Time to storm the gates.” “When do we march?”

And…I get it. I really do. I’m as furious as you are. Maybe more.

But I’m going to tell you something I’ve learned the hard way, and I need you to actually hear it:

That rhetoric isn’t resistance. It’s surrender…with extra steps.

If you want to lose this fight, if you want to hand Trump the one thing he can’t manufacture on his own, then by all means, keep typing about mobs.

But if you want to win, read this twice…and actually study it like you would a critically important exam.

The Numbers Don’t Care About Your Anger

A Harvard political scientist named Erica Chenoweth did something nobody had bothered to do before.

She and her co-author Maria Stephan sat down and catalogued 323 resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. Every major one. Violent and nonviolent.

Then…they counted who won.

Nonviolent campaigns succeeded 53 percent of the time. Violent ones? 26 percent.

Not close. Not a rounding error. Half.

And…here’s the part that rocked my wife sideways when I shared it with her. In that entire dataset, every single campaign that got 3.5 percent of the population actively participating won. Every one.

And…every one of those was nonviolent. Not a single violent campaign ever got there.

Why? It’s not morality. It’s math.

The average nonviolent campaign pulled about 200,000 participants. The average violent one pulled 50,000.

Your grandmother will join a boycott. Your neighbor with the bad knee…will sit in a courtroom and watch. The single mom down the street…will make phone calls from her kitchen table.

None of them will pick up a pitchfork.

The moment you go violent…your movement shrinks to the people who are young, angry, and physically able. That’s a demographic the government can always outgun. Always. You just handed them the home-field advantage.

You’re Writing His Emergency Declaration For Him

Now let me tell you what the people around Trump are praying for.

They are praying for a mob.

Every strongman in history…has needed exactly one thing before he could suspend the rules: a scary…visible enemy that lets him say, “I had no choice.” That’s the playbook, my friend. It’s old. It’s boring. And…it works every time somebody’s dumb enough to give it to them.

The Insurrection Act is sitting right there. It has never once in American history been invoked against people who stayed home and voted. Not once. It gets invoked against crowds. Against chaos. Against the footage that runs on a loop on Fox for six weeks straight.

You think you’re threatening him with “torches and pitchforks”?

You’re casting his next campaign ad.

And…I’ll tell you who else is reading those threads with a smile: every Russian troll farm on earth. Because that’s exactly what they do.

They don’t invent a division. They find the crack that’s already in the wall…and pour water in it every night until it freezes. A thread full of Americans fantasizing about political violence is the single most valuable thing Moscow could ask for…and we’re producing it for free.

The Only High Ground You’ve Got

Here’s the thing that actually keeps me up at night.

What’s the entire case against this man? Strip it down to one sentence. It’s this: he doesn’t follow the law, and we do.

The Constitution. The courts. The vote. The rule of law. That’s not one argument among several. That’s the only argument. It’s the ground we’re standing on.

The instant you say “any means necessary,” you’ve given it away. All of it. Now you’re not the defenders of the republic. You’re just the other gang. Two factions fighting over who gets to ignore the rules, and in that fight the side with the federal apparatus wins every time.

Admission: I have likely used the phrase “by any means necessary” in social media posts over the years, sometimes without clarifying I meant “by any legal means necessary.”

Anyone who follows me and reads the bulk of my posts, in the collective, knows I do not promote violence, and consistently advocate against it. If I ever wrote that, it was sloppy, and I will not make that error again.

Democracy doesn’t die when the bad guys break the rules. We’ve survived that before.

Democracy dies…when the good guys decide the rules were never the point.

That’s the end. Not a coup. Not a riot. A quiet decision…made by millions of decent people at once, that it’s okay to burn it down because the other side started it.

Don’t make that decision. Don’t let your anger make it for you.

Rage, Misused Is a Sedative

One more thing, and this one’s personal.

Typing “pitchforks” feels like action. That’s why people do it. You hit post…your heart rate spikes…you get forty likes…and for about an hour you feel like you did something.

You didn’t.

It’s a sedative. It burns off the exact energy that should have gone somewhere real. Every hour spent fantasizing about mobs…is an hour not spent on a phone bank. Not spent as a poll watcher. Not spent at a county commission meeting where the real decisions get made in front of nine people and a sleeping reporter.

The real levers are boring. That’s precisely why they work. Nobody puts “I filed a public records request” on a T-shirt. But…that’s what wins.

Here’s What I’m Asking

A week from today, this country votes.

I believe Trump’s candidates get rejected, and rejected hard. I also believe he’ll try something ugly when it happens.

When he does…he’s going to need you to lose your mind. He’s counting on it. His entire next move is built on the assumption that you’ll give him the footage.

Don’t.

Be the thing he can’t use. Be calm, be relentless, be legal, and be everywhere. Show up in numbers he can’t spin and a posture he can’t attack. That’s not weakness. That’s the one strategy with a track record of actually working.

I’ll be honest with you about the counterargument, because you deserve it. Some critics of Chenoweth’s research point out that most of the campaigns she studied were against dictators and occupiers, not elected governments.

Some say ugly, visible outrage is what tells the powerful that the price of going along just went up. And…it’s true that plenty of nonviolent movements won while a more militant wing made the moderates look reasonable.

Fine. Grant all of it. None of it gets you to pitchforks. And…every single one of those arguments…still ends in the same place: you need the numbers…and only a nonviolent movement has ever produced them.

So put it down.

Pick up a phone instead.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Some of you are going to call foul, because you’ve read me for years and you know I write constantly about rage. About anger…being the most powerful engine for action there is. I stand by every word.

But…go back and look. Every single time, I tell you exactly where to point it. A phone bank. A poll-watcher shift. A county meeting. A records request. A lawsuit. A ballot. Legal, boring…relentless…and aimed.

Anger with a legal target is an incredibly powerful tool. Anger…without one…is just a fire in your own house. “Pitchforks” is the second thing…pretending to be the first. Don’t fall for it.

P.P.S. One more thing, because somebody will ask. Yes, I say we’re going to win…and I’ll keep saying it. Belief is fuel. Nobody ever drove to the polls on despair.

But fuel doesn’t move the car. The vote does. A landslide isn’t something I predict. It’s something you build…one ballot at a time…and it only exists if you show up. Confidence gets you off the couch. The count is the only thing that gets you across the line.

So believe it. Then go prove it. Vote.

Sources

On nonviolent vs. violent resistance

• Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict(Columbia University Press, 2011). The original study of 323 campaigns, 1900–2006.

• The “3.5% Rule”: How a Small Minority Can Change the World — Summary of Chenoweth’s findings: 53% vs. 26% success rates, participation numbers, and the 3.5% threshold.

• How to Start a Revolution — WAMC/NPR interview with Chenoweth on the research and its caveats.

• What Determines the Success of Movements Today? — Follow-up research on success factors, including data on how violent protest shifts voting behavior.