A Threat Model for Opposing Authoritarianism
Hi friends –
The morning after the presidential election in November, I jolted awake in a panic. A thought was blaring in my brain: “My threat model is wrong.”
A decade ago, I published a book on privacy “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.” In the book, and since then, in articles and speeches, I have been dispensing advice to people on how to protect their privacy. But my advice did not envision the moment we are in – where the government would collaborate with a tech CEO to strip-mine all of our data from government databases and use it to pursue political enemies.
In the parlance of cybersecurity, I had the wrong “threat model,” which is a fancy way of describing the risks I was seeking to mitigate. I had not considered that the United States might be swept into the rising tide of what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism” – authoritarian regimes that retain some of the trappings of democracy, such as elections, but use the power of the state to crush any meaningful dissent.
In their 2002 article on competitive authoritarianism, Professors Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, of Harvard and Temple universities respectively, describe the characteristics of this new form of tyranny:
Although elections are regularly held and are generally free of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results.
In recent weeks, Levitsky has said that he is stunned by how aggressive Trump’s authoritarian behaviors have been - from usurping Congress’ power of the purse to flouting court orders. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding,” he told the New York Times in March.
For anyone who wants to oppose our democratic backsliding, it’s time to build a new threat model. In The New Yorker this week, my friend Ami Fields-Meyer and I provide a roadmap for what that could look like in our article, “So You Want to be a Dissident? A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump’s Age of Fear.”
For months, Ami and I have been interviewing dissidents from repressive regimes around the world, as well as activists in the U.S. and experts who study pro-democracy movements.
We expected to hear about counter-surveillance techniques and code words – and we did. But we also learned a lot more than we expected about the psychological aspects of challenging unlawful, unjust, and corrupt actions under rising risks – how lonely and hard it can be – and what it takes to do it right. We distilled some of their most important lessons into a loose set of principles for challenging authoritarianism.
Principle 1: It Can Be Done. The most important thing we learned is that authoritarianism, no matter how nasty and brutal it is, can be challenged successfully by a relatively small portion of the population. Harvard Professor Erica Chenoweth has been collecting data on more than 600 anti-authoritarian mass movements since 1900 and has found that most regimes cannot withstand opposition from just 3.5% of the population.
“All power- holders, even the most ruthless and corrupt, rely on the consent and cooperation of ordinary people,” veteran organizer Maria J. Stephan, who co-authored a book with Chenoweth titled “Why Civil Resistance Works,” told us. When citizens withhold their cooperation, authoritarian regimes can weaken and fall.
The data shows that non-violent protest is twice as effective as violent protest, according to Chenoweth and Stephan, and that economic disruptions such as strikes and boycotts are particularly effective tools of opposition.
Principle 2: Clean-Up. Authoritarian regimes often try to discredit people who oppose them using the most minor of scandals. Of course it’s not possible to completely scrub all your data, but you can make it harder for them by cleaning up your life, digitally, physically, and operationally.
That can mean deleting tweets, using encrypted messaging and disappearing messages, and possibly even swearing off dating apps (which have been used by conservative activists to secretly record political opponents). It's also worth removing your phone number and address from as many online databases as possible – and perhaps convincing key family members to do so as well. That won’t deter the government itself – it knows where you live – but it could impede the online mobs that often are used to harass and threaten political opponents these days.
Principle 3: Compliance. Authoritarian regimes also use minor legal infractions to persecute political opponents. So it’s good practice to comply with as many laws as possible. Tax laws. Traffic laws. Anything that a petty bureaucrat could use to harass you and undermine your legitimacy.
Compliance doesn’t mean that you won’t be investigated – it just means it's less likely that the investigation will be fruitful. Minor investigations are part of the government’s strategy to “never talk about the substance of the issues,” Sandor Lederer, who runs K-Monitor, a corruption watchdog group in Hungary, told us.
Principle 4: Compartmentalization. Authoritarian regimes have always relied on informants to rat out activists. Dissidents told us that they don’t share sensitive information with anyone they don’t really trust. As one dissident in exile told us: “Don’t brag about your activism. I've seen so many guys bragging and now they're in jail.”
Elena Sherstoboeva, a Russian media scholar now teaching at the University of Essex, told us how she had to narrow her circle of friends when she was living in Russia – a process she described as “internal exile.”
“You limit your communications to very trusted people who become your friends just because you are politically on the same side,” she said. She said she and her friends described those outside their circle by a Russian word that roughly translates as “non-handshakeable.”
In today’s technologically-mediated world, it can also be useful to exile some devices from your inner circle. Many people in sensitive situations have separate work and personal devices so that if one is searched, the other is not swept up in the search. And now that border agents are increasingly searching phones, it’s a good idea to clean up the device you carry across international borders.
Principle 5: Community. Authoritarianism thrives on fear: Fear of being investigated, of being persecuted, of being defunded, of being deported, etc. Dissidents told us that finding a community of support was crucial for navigating fearful times.
“They want us to be so afraid. The only way to counter fear is with joy,” Keya Chatterjee told us. Keya leads an organization, FreeDC, that is trying to obtain statehood for the District of Columbia.
She’s organizing DC through a series of joyful events, including block parties, dance parties, drum circles and bracelet-making bashes. FreeDC’s mission statement declares that the group will “prioritize joy” and “take up space” as they try to reach their goal of signing up 3.5% of the population.
Because, after all, joy and community are not only what it takes to counter fear, but are also the necessary ingredient for the solidarity that is required for challenging authoritarianism.
As always, thanks for reading. And please do check out the New Yorker article as well. It’s my first time writing for them, and it was a delight. Their beautiful editing just makes the words go down easier 🙂
Best
Julia