The New Global Wave of Anti-Authoritarianism

We are living through a global renaissance of nonviolent mass protest

We are used to hearing about the march of authoritarianism across the globe. Yet there is also a wave of anti-authoritarianism that is building in reaction to this spread of tyranny. The global surge in nonviolent protest in the past five years, and the countries making “U-turns” from years of illiberal governance or mobilizing to avoid that fate are two examples of a new reality unfolding that is grounded in the desire to stand up for freedoms and rights and push back against injustices and oppression.

America has been part of this global phenomenon which constitutes a systemic reaction to authoritarianism. We in the United States may be called upon to express our dissent to attempts to take our freedoms from us. We should know we are not alone.

A growing number of countries are not just turning back autocracy but are also making their reborn democracies more robust. V-Dem Institute’s 2023 Democracy Report, "Defiance in the Face of Autocratization,” analyzes eight cases of countries (Bolivia and Slovenia among them) that have made a "U-turn" from autocracy and now qualify as democracies. Since that report appeared we also had the big victory of democratic forces over the far right in Poland (October 2023), and the successful unity play of the French left against a National Rally victory (June 2024).

Nonviolent mass protest remains among the most important ways to show our support for democracy in situations of creeping authoritarianism; to protest injustices and advocate for policy reforms; and, in autocracies, to show the world the government does not speak for us.

Autocrats pay lobbyists and public relations experts to conceal their failures and crimes and present their continuance in power as inevitable and desired by the people. The millions who risk their safety to protest those governments tell us with their voices and bodies that this is not the case.

In 2020 the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that this wave of demonstrations was “historically unprecedented in frequency, scope and size.” This remains true four years later. Each national context is different, as is the scope of the goals of protest. Some demonstrations are against specific policies, like the 2022 oppositions to pandemic lockdowns in China, while others are about regime change, like the 2020 demonstrations for democracy in Belarus against Aleksandr Lukashenko’s dictatorship.

What they all share is a validation of nonviolent protest –people coming together in public spaces to express dissent—as a way of doing politics or simply acting on an inner conviction that what is going on in their societies is wrong and they can no longer stay silent.

A partial list of protests that have proved effective domestically or influential transnationally in terms of innovative tactics and messaging includes the 2019 demonstrations against economic inequality in Chile (the largest in that country since the 1980s protests against the military dictatorship), the 2019 protests in Russia for fair elections, and the 2019 Hong Kong protests against a proposed bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China. In 2020, the world saw mass mobilizations in Belarus, large protests against police brutality in Nigeria, myriad marches and actions to protest inaction on climate change, and more.

Protests in Democratic America

Americans have not only been part of this wave of actions, but have inspired hundreds of protests abroad. The 2017 Women’s March against Donald Trump’s misogyny and expected war on women was the largest protest in American history, and it sparked hundreds of marches in dozens of foreign countries. The same dynamic was true of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, which engaged an estimated 15-26 million people in the middle of a pandemic, breaking the record of the Women’s March to become the largest social protest movement in American history and inspiring countless manifestations globally.

Demonstrators on the National Mall, Washington DC, January 21, 2017. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images.

These two mass American protests were especially impactful because they had electoral outcomes, mobilizing millions either as voters or candidates in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections and yet again for the 2020 presidential election. It remains to be seen what the electoral effects will be of the campus protests that occurred after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military’s continuing atrocities against Palestinian civilians during its response to Hamas.

Protests in Dictatorships: China and Iran

Since 2020, we have also seen demonstrations in places where the price of public opposition can be very steep, such as China and Iran.

The Chinese regime does not want anyone to talk about the outpouring of grief and anger among Chinese in late 2022 after a fire killed ten people in a partially locked-down high-rise apartment tower in Urumqi. The protests that swept China were the largest public expression of dissent since 1989's Tiananmen Square. This infographic shows that 79 universities, including the elite incubator Tsinghua, Xi's alma mater, held protests.

In Iran, a protest movement had been building among women who rebelled against morality laws, hijab requirements, and other strictures of that regime. In June 2022, the regime's annual National Hijab and Chastity Day was openly mocked for the first time by women who "celebrated" the holiday by going bare-headed.

The death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in September—she had been arrested for few stray hairs peeping out of her headscarf, as well as pants deemed overly tight— drove tens of thousands of Iranian men and women into the streets; images of women cutting their hair and going out in public bare-headed were everywhere.

The scale of the protests took the theocrats by surprise. Between September and December 2022 alone, more than 500 Iranians were killed and 18,400 arrested. With each death, they created future resisters among a new generation of highly educated Iranian women who do not want to live like this any longer.

What exiled Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law tweeted during the Chinese lockdown protests can be a watchword for all who engage in nonviolent action, including Americans who can know they are part of a larger transnational history of resistance.

"History in the making. We have no idea whether are in the beginning, middle or end of it. But we are sure that history will mark what you have done as something magnificent. History will treat you well. No matter what will happen, your effort is not going in vain."