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It assumes that moral outrage by the public and a guilty conscience constitutes "harm." Non-violent protests say that you're willing to suffer injury because you believe in the rightness of your cause. It provides a moral example for those "weaker" while forcing the oppressors to either say "in for a penny, in for a pound" or "cut bait and run".
Gandhi's non-violent protests worked because the British mostly didn't want to be violent. For all the Black-Hole-of=Calcutta business, it created a bit of a firestorm among the British populace and recriminations in the colonial hierarchy. This could be exploited by non-violent protests because they'd either force compliance or they'd force the colonialists to take steps that harmed the colonialists' collective conscience. That the populace was relatively free was another point helping Gandhi, in that his message was not only to South Asians but also to the English; support for the Empire was weak at home and weaker in S. Asia, and non-violent protests that didn't result in great physical harm would show that Britain was a paper tiger, easily defeated with minimal risk by a resentful population, or an immoral, injust, unworthy power worthy of international contempt and shame. How is that not harm?
A prof once pointed out to the class I was in that had Gandhi lived under the Nazis or Stalin he'd have died quickly, unknown, and having accomplished nothing. The ideology that Nazis and Stalinists served gave them a reasonably clean conscience: The deaths were justified by the ends. Moreover, both regimes were supported fairly widely, so there was no popular support. Information came out of the countries infrequently, and often got a positive spin in the West--even the Ukrainian famine made much worse by Stalin's policies were reported as no big deal. What did get out was met with a collective sigh of indifference.
Using these tactics is often a kind of compliment to the oppressors. They're not all that bad, whatever your spin may be. It can also be a call for others who might be your allies--domestic or international--to be outraged and support.
The protests last year fall into that category. The mullahs are more like Hitler than they were like Gandhi's British. Domestic opinion was more like the USSR's than Britain's. There wasn't much international support--in fact, it was rather an inconvenience and embarrassment because the local protesters were seen to interfere with the much more important international negotations between the US/Europe and Iran. In some quarters there was a Chamberlainesque sigh of relief when the protests ended. The protesters misread their fellow countrymen, they misread their rulers. Meanwhile, Western NGOs gave the impression that their numbers and influence were huge, a false, self-serving misperception; and leaders gave the impression that human rights and liberties mattered, a false, self-serving bit of PR.
Now, this guy in Venezuela was a kind of loon, as far as I'm concerned, an attention-seeking buffoon. The problem is that the final verdict on the guy has to be rendered later. You have to be willing to commit unreservedly to this kind of thing or you undermine your cause; you can bluff, but if your bluff is called you're out of the game. Done elegantly, with finesse, it's a great thing to watch, even if you're on the losing side; done inelegantly, you will always look like an attention-seeking buffoon. When I hear of non-violent protesters that are arrested whining about how horrible it was they were actually arrested and processed and held overnight, in the same icky clothes they were wearing when arrested and forced to eat jail food--they surely assumed that nobody would mind having the intersection of Wilshire Blvd and Sepulveda blocked from 4:30-5:30 on a Friday night--it hurts their cause. They're willing to commit some time talking to their friends and insulting their enemies, but no more--not the inconvenience of an uncomfortable bed, being deprived of a Friday night with friends, not the annoyance of being woken up on "not my schedule" and fed food that they don't like. If they act like catch-and-release is the height of tyranny, they insult those who died for their beliefs. "Dude, I can't believe it. Your parents are worse than Hitler. He only killed 6 million Jews and 6 million Slavs and caused a war that killed millions more. Your f-ing mom made you clean the toilet in your personal bathroom." Petty acts for petty people striving to be attention-seeking, yet ball-less, buffoons.
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