Thanks for the links.
I didn't get far with the first one; this sentence looked pretty implausible: "Nonviolence, argues Dr Michael Nagler in the above talk (well worth its
46 minutes), always makes things better, even when we who practice it
get hurt or killed." No real need to read further.
The first voluntaryist article I found a lot more persuasive, because it moved these tactics away from moral arguments and toward strategic and tactical ones, and also contained some recognition of reality, i.e.:
First, is the attitude and orientation of the opponent; success seems somewhat
dependent upon whether the opponent really cares how a population views him -
whether he has any long-term interests in pacifying or winning support. Also,
the effect varies upon whether the opponent is the resister's own countrymen;
if foreigners are being resisted, non-violent resisters may more easily play
upon common identity and nationalism. Finally, in some societies passive suffering
may be viewed with contempt, and it can produce an opposite effect: instead of
viewing suffering as noble, they perhaps see it as masochism or "an exploitation
of the rulers' good natured reluctance to allow unnecessary suffering, denying
thus any attributes of personal courage or virtue to the sufferer."
I think there are very strong arguments for non-violent tactics. For example, the South should have let Fort Sumter sink a few ships for nonpayment of the hated Northern excise tax, before starving them out. That likely would have thwarted Lincoln's ploy.
But violence has its place. The state of Massachusetts, responding to federal financial incentives to kidnap children, started taking many kids from parents for no good reason. Finally it got so bad that two fathers, figuring they would have no chance to get their kids back through normal channels, killed the social workers in their cases. I suspect the kidnapping slowed down significantly, because social workers want an easy state job and a fat pension, not death. Of course there are no studies to prove so; it's not in the state's interest to have such. But we can guess it works that way.
Using nonviolence works less well for individual criminal action. Then you are not looking to apply pressure to institutions, but for a change of heart in the criminal attacking you - which as the article admitted, is often bad tactics. Use of nonviolence in the political arena does not imply one has to be a pacifist.
I'm all for delegitimizing the state and informing people the state's predations depend significantly on the peoples' acquiescence. Youtube videos of cops beating pregnant women are powerful. But I'm not about to discard violence as a tool (all tools, both violence and nonviolence, can be used well, or poorly). Fear in the minds of the ruling class can be a good thing. Also, some people just need killing (Mussolini, hanging from that lamp post, comes to mind).