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?