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By Trygve Olson
This is the seventh in an eight-part series on the lessons I’ve learned confronting autocrats over the past twenty-five years. From post-Soviet capitals to American battlegrounds, I’ve seen how authoritarianism grows — and how democracy survives.
People love the romance of resistance. The posters. The speeches. The hashtags.
But real resistance is harder. It's slower. It’s messier. And when you’re doing it right, most people won’t even know you’re doing it.
In Serbia, it was students organizing underground, using humor to mock Milosevic. In Belarus, it was civil society leaders who kept the idea of a free future alive, even after their elections were stolen and their colleagues disappeared. In Ukraine, it was a people who came to the streets — not once, but twice — to demand that their voice, not a strongman’s will, determine their future.
I was there. I saw what worked. And I saw what didn’t.
The mistake too many make — especially in the West — is believing that resistance is about speeches or tweets. But autocrats don’t fear words. They fear structure. They fear networks. They fear competence.
So what actually works?
1. Organization over Outrage. Movements that survive and succeed aren’t built on emotion alone. They’re built on systems. Messaging. Ground games. Infrastructure. Authoritarians bet on the opposition burning hot and burning out. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
2. Strategic Unity. You don’t have to agree on everything to stand together. The most successful resistance movements I’ve supported understood this. Coalition is the price of survival. You fight side-by-side today so you can disagree tomorrow.
3. Values First. Authoritarians win by turning the fight into “us vs. them.” When you keep the focus on shared values — truth, fairness, accountability — you deny them the terrain they want.
4. Global Networks. Solidarity matters. Authoritarians isolate. But when activists in one country know they’re not alone — when they learn from others and feel part of a global cause — they’re harder to crush.
5. Showing Up — Consistently. This one sounds basic, but it’s everything. The regimes I’ve seen fall were not beaten in a day. They were worn down. Because people kept showing up — in courtrooms, in newsrooms, on street corners, in polling places. Even when it felt hopeless.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
You don’t beat authoritarianism with a perfect moment. You beat it with persistence.
You don’t need to go viral. You need to go local.
You don’t need to win every argument. You need to outlast every attack.
Democracy isn’t defended in one grand gesture. It’s protected every day by ordinary people doing unglamorous things that build power, earn trust, and tell the truth.
And in America, we still have time. Not much. But enough.
If we do the work. If we build the coalitions. If we act like democracy depends on us — because it does.
Trygve Olson is a strategist, pro-democracy fighter and a founding Lincoln Project advisor. He writes the Searching for Hope Substack. Read the original column here.
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