A dissident lawmaker is expelled by the legislature’s majority for supporting a popular protest movement. The lawmaker argues that the move was politically motivated following his participation in a protest. Outside experts call the expulsion a dangerous sign of increasing authoritarianism.
This is not a description of the expulsion last month of two Black Democratic Tennessee lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, after they stood with protesters advocating for gun control. Instead, it is an account of an eerily similar event in 2012 when the pro-Kremlin majority in the State Duma, the Russian parliament’s lower house, voted to expel a dissident lawmaker, Gennady Gudkov, for joining anti-Putin protests.
The lawmaker’s expulsion set a dangerous precedent for the suppression of dissent in Russia. Similar tactics are now showing up in the United States, including in the Tennessee case and then a few weeks later in Montana, when Republican state legislators barred Rep. Zooey Zephyr from the House floor for speaking out against a bill banning gender-affirming care for youth.
All of this is straight out of the authoritarian playbook, a set of strategies used by corrupt political leaders to seize and maintain power, consolidate wealth, and repress dissent.
We were both born under the former Soviet Union’s repressive regime. As rights and justice grant makers, we have successfully supported activists in the most challenging and restrictive countries in the Eurasia region, including Russia — first with the Open Society Foundations and now as co-founders of Stroika, where we fund and connect resistance movements around the globe.
We know all too well that authoritarianism doesn’t take hold overnight. The first time something as egregious as expelling democratically elected leaders happens, it seems shocking and unprecedented. The next time, however, it no longer seems quite so horrific. Authoritarians will continue to push the line, further and further.
To be sure, the United States is not Russia. Borrowing lessons from the civil-rights movement, expelled Tennessee lawmakers Jones and Pearson showed what it looks like to fight back and quickly regain their seats. The authoritarian playbook works only when the tactics elicit fear and keep people in line.
Change begins with those who resist. We have witnessed firsthand how supporting passionate and pragmatic advocates — whether they work in organizations, informal movements, or on their own — can thwart authoritarianism and alter history. In this fraught and fragile moment for U.S. democracy, there is much philanthropy can learn from Russian activists about how to help build a stronger antiauthoritarian movement in this country. Here’s what our grant making in Russia and other countries battling autocracy has taught us:
Learn from those who have lived through rising authoritarianism. Campaigns to attack social-change advocates of all stripes — Indigenous climate activists, feminists, independent journalists, and more — are increasingly coordinated, resourced, and connected throughout the world. They are designed to keep movements in a reactive mode, forcing advocates to fight local struggles on their own rather than joining larger efforts to stop authoritarianism.
At the same time, social-change movement leaders are hungry to learn from each other and to work together across issue areas and geographical boundaries. They already see the intersections in their work — whether they focus on reproductive or racial justice, climate or voter protection, labor or trans rights. Jones and Pearson, for example, knew their expulsion was mostly about racism and the stifling of dissenting voices, not guns.
Most progressive donors, however, lack an interdisciplinary approach to funding, keeping movements separate and limiting true collaboration. In the face of encroaching authoritarianism, that must change.
Grant makers can start by taking the simple but critical step of supporting in-person and online gatherings where individuals who are under attack can connect, strategize, and learn from those living through rising authoritarianism. They should then provide generous and flexible funding for activists to experiment and test out the new tactics they’ve learned together.
Our organization, for instance, is bringing together 30 intersectional feminist and LGBTQ+ activists from around the world this summer to develop strategies to fight back against political leaders pushing a “traditional values” playbook used by authoritarians from Moscow to Texas to create fear and draw attention away from real problems. We hope to raise another $120,000 for the event so that all participants will leave with seed grants for their work.
Counter misinformation with accurate and hopeful stories. Authoritarians attempt to manipulate public opinion through rapid, continuous, and repetitive lies — or what scholars Christopher Paul and Mariam Matthews call “the firehose of falsehoods.” Getting in front of misinformation or propaganda, instead of refuting falsehoods, is the most effective response. That means priming the public with the correct information and hope-based alternatives to fearmongering — before the lies start escalating.
Jones and Pearson were strategic in calling out the authoritarian tactics that their expulsion represented. They took advantage of this critical moment to draw attention to a frightening shift in U.S. politics, while continuing to speak out for their constituents’ concerns and energize their supporters.
The events in Tennessee have created a valuable opening for broadening the national conversation, not just about authoritarian tactics, but also about the hopeful possibilities for resistance. Philanthropy must ensure that journalists and storytellers are resourced and well trained in how to explain these dangerous trends.
This involves more than investing in a professional cadre of so-called narrative-change consultants. Donors should help build strategic communications skills within progressive movements by investing directly in content creating organizations such as TransLash Media and Scalawag Magazine, political commentators like the abolitionist lawyer Olayemi Olurin, and socially engaged artists. Their voices serve as a powerful antidote to hate and fear.
Fund local movements. States and municipalities have become laboratories for authoritarian tactics. The far right has spent the past decades investing in a big tent of white nationalist and antidemocratic allies at the local level to complement a network of neutral-sounding national and global think tanks and professional groups, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, CitizenGo, World Congress of Families, and the American College of Pediatricians, all of which are anti-LGBTQ+ groups.
Major liberal donors, after spending years focusing their funding on large international and national organizations, must now play catch-up. Local pushback is critical — and where philanthropic resources are urgently needed today.
Prepare for worst-case scenarios. Anti-nonprofit rhetoric took off during the Trump administration, including questioning sources of nonprofit funding to delegitimize activist movements. This was straight out of the authoritarian playbooks of Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Both men have first vilified donor-funded nonprofits and then used the banking and legal systems to criminalize the nonprofits’ activities and prevent them from receiving financial support.
Donors shouldn’t wait until these tactics arrive in the United States to act. They should immediately start funding and expanding digital, physical, and financial security measures, and emergency plans for organizers and their families. This includes funding security audits and building flexible financial reserves into grantee budgets for emergency use, such as covering legal fees, crisis communications support, and even relocation costs.
Records between donors and grantees that reveal personal information or internal strategic documents should also be secured. Stroika advises donors on how to meet their compliance requirements while minimizing grantee risks in case of a data breach.
Don’t recede into cynicism. Grant makers should be clear-eyed about the similarities between the United States and its more authoritarian counterparts, but also recognize the differences. This country is not living under Putin-like rule. We still have wide space for dissent, a vibrant civil society, and clear pathways to political change, despite deliberate attempts to restrict democratic practice. Enough Tennesseans recognized the unacceptable actions of Republican legislators to reinstate Jones and Pearson to their rightful positions as their representatives.
Ample opportunities remain to act and change America’s authoritarian trajectory before it becomes status quo. This is the moment for donors of progressive movements to let go of American exceptionalism, deepen their understanding of authoritarian tactics, and build forward-looking strategies to prevent further democratic backsliding.
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