Im sorry, are you trying to say that the struggle for oppressed people to vote, be represented, or have their own government created no violent backlash? Thats blatantly false, and even many of the reformists faced a ton of backlash, not just the radicals.
I'm saying that pensions, education laws, social security schemes, labour regulations and many other things were gradually developed, typically by democratic reforms within the existing system, without violent revolution. I'm also saying that this has yielded permenent, lasting change without pushing countless people into the meat grinders of radicalism.
And when gradual reform fails to be implemented/enforced, you do get reactionary violence because those backwards elements know/feel they're threatened. And even still, reforms can and have been reversed, leaving everyone back at square one.
No, you don't. If radical revolutions fail, you get major reactionary backlash. If reform fails, you just get... the status quo maintained a little longer. Your belief that "white terror" is some sort of inevitability instead of something that only ever emerged as backlash to revolutionary regimes, is simply incorrect. For instance: the attempt to create public education laws in the Netherlands failed three times. None of those failures caused backlash. In fact, in every successive attempt, the proposal was actually expanded
and got more support from moderate conservatives. In your view, the first failure should have led the conservatives to pass, say, a law prohibiting the public financing of education forever or something. But no. The opposite happened.
lets not forget the fact all the while "gradual change" is going on, hundreds will suffer under the structural violence that maintain the existing social order while the gradualists make those tiny tweaks that they find agreeable. And how often had those gradualist been satisfied with the adjustments that made them more comfortable, and had to be pushed by radicals to do more because it wasn't enough? In the absence of pressure to actually change something the gradualists will sit back and do nothing more; reform has always had, in the background, those radicals pushing for more.
Whatever course may be taken violence will be faced: be it the unjust violence inherent in maintaining the social order, or the legitimate violence to end it.
Here you reveal a lot. Your assumption are that the gradualists are wrong by default, and can only do good if pushed. The notion that the gradualists might be
right, and that the radicals may be, well...
too radical... is something you clearly will not even consider. I find that in many cases, tiny tweaks
are enough. Also, the idea that those pushing for maintaining the social order are automatically "unjust" and that violence for revolutionary ends is "legitimate" shows a bias on your side. One I find rather disturbing. I'm not what people would call a conservative, but i'll hardly deny that conservatives can sometimes be in the right.
I don't think we're going to come to agreement here. My position is that when the elite makes paeceful change impossible, that elite may and indeed must be overthrown (there being, after all, no better options). But if peaceful ways
are fully available (like democratic reform), and radicals deliberately aim for revolution instead (even knowing what bloodshed that entails), then
they are the true criminals. Simple fanatics, who will bring nothing good into the world.