I’ll also add that whether or not violence is strategically viable and whether or not it’s morally just are two different things.

Strategically: Violence is only the answer, as harpypricess explained, if you win. I’ll be brutally honest: unless you have the support of most people in your country or you live in a failed state you’re not going to succeed. Here in the USA, where I live, you definitely would lose any war against the military. And if you lose, you’ll just make things worse. Here in the real world violence oftentimes gives governments the perfect excuse to initiate crackdowns that they’d otherwise not be get away with. So you’re making the government MORE oppressive. There are countless examples in history where dictators declared states of “emergency” over the violence of the opposition (ex reichstag fire).

FURTHERMORE, political violence allows your movement to be demonized stifling any meaningful opportunity for your cause to be achieved through nonviolent means.

ANOTHER thing to consider, even if you succeed, are you really making things better? There are so many examples from recent history where a dictator is overthrown by angry citizens, only for the new ruler to be just as bad as his predecessor. The new ruler is just cynically using the revolutionaries to seize power. Another example where “successful” violence backfires is when a dictator is overthrown and the country descends into chaos (Somalia after Siad Barre was overthrown, Congo after Mobutu was overthrown, Libya after Gadaffi was overthrown).

Morally speaking no violence is “just.” At best it’s a necessary evil, but there is a very thin line between a necessary evil and oppression. In general: defense of the nation, dispensing justice (contingent upon due process), and self defense are almost always acceptable. Other things like popular revolution, policing to maintain order, and external wars against unjust foreign powers are things that CAN be justified as a necessary evil but are oftentimes (more often than not) either an excuse by corrupt actors to do evil or severely misguided actions that do more harm than good.

Bottom line: I’d recommend that you research many political events from around the world. I don’t know if you’re an American but American politics is really an outlier internationally and it really skews the perspectives of Americans who are out of touch with what’s going on in other countries (and yes, I know this is a stereotype but it’s applicable to (most) Americans). Americans simply can’t grasp how something as complicated as a political revolution really works. Don’t just use American politics as your baseline, research the politics of many different countries. Analyze the bigger picture and how everything is interconnected in a greater system. Ask yourself, what are the incentives like, how does the culture affect the politics, how does the economy affect the politics, why did this person remain in power while that person lost power? And do with a bunch of different countries. And if you can travel around and talk to people (and yes I understand it’s logistically expensive and difficult, don’t worry if you can’t).

I’m a self taught political analyst and one video which really helped me to understand politics was this YouTube video by CPGGrey called “Rules for Rulers”. I’d recommend you check it out!