It strikes me that too many today miss what is the only reason the tactics of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Mahatma Gandhi worked. To put it in focus, ask yourself why their tactics don't work in, say, Somalia, North Korea, Tehran, or Cuba.
What MLK and Ghandhi relied upon was the compassionate culture of the Christian West; the goodwill of the people whose government was sponsoring the injustice. Remember, it wasn't any government functionary who took any initiative, either in America or in the British Colony. Rather, MLK & Ghandi roused the sense of injustice in the citizenry -- notably in those NOT directly affected -- which forced the governments' hands.
Such is the inverse of government force. It was the culture of the citizenry that caused the change.
Therein is insight into the purpose of socialist politics in the West, which amount to endless warfare against the culture of their host civilization. Beaten down to their beastly nub, other cultures aren't so caring as to be so motivated by pure empathy. So, such tactics never work in totalitarian regimes, be they atheist-socialist, pagan-socialist, or Islamic.
