The Autocrats Are United: DEFENDERS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY MUST UNITE AS WELL
Through unity from every corner of the world and by incorporating all of our voices, we can defeat the global alliance of autocracy. Through a concentrated effort of building and creating a global democratic coalition of every nation and every ideology, we can achieve a truly democratic future.
China’s Xi Jinping with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. (Photo credit: Grigoriy Sisoev, RIA Novosti, via Wikimedia Commons)
From Moscow to Caracas and Beijing to Havana, an alliance stands to crush dissent and silence the voices of opposition politicians. They have their allies in the free world—non-state actors from both the extreme right and extreme left unified to sow doubt about liberal democracy as we are thrown deep into an identity crisis. At times, democracy defenders seem fatigued; they are often divided, focused not on building a larger alliance but torn by inner turmoil. This attitude needs to change.
Autocrats are unified in more ways than we can imagine. A vast kleptocratic financial network sustains them with material resources. Disinformation dominates the internet, the purpose of which is not to make people believe propaganda, but to make them lose faith in everything. When people lose faith, it is harder for them to take to the streets to protest—or to take a stand for an idea that could very easily get them tossed into prison for the “crime” of believing in a better world. Autocrats meet frequently, engaging in different strategies and tactics. Russia supplies leadership and military support, Iran has strategies for avoiding sanctions, China provides economic support, Cuba handles intelligence, Venezuela handles the disinformation and propaganda machines, and various smaller autocracies also engage in this tight-knit relationship—the Alliance of Autocracy.
Russia’s imperialist and genocidal invasion of Ukraine opened the world’s eyes to the scope of the Alliance of Autocracy. Iran, North Korea, and China supplied Russia with more weapons while Venezuela and Nicaragua assisted in boosting narrative support. Throughout Africa and Latin America, both Russia and China pillaged resources to assist in this genocidal conquest. Russia has made it very clear that the goal of this invasion is to both destroy Ukraine as a nation, and to defeat democracy globally. From China to Venezuela, leaders became emboldened to threaten conquest of their neighbors. Democracies remained almost frozen by polarization and culture wars—both of which are stoked by actors both at home and abroad. Russia in particular has supplied thousands of trolls to deepen preexisting tensions within democratic countries and to keep people so occupied by smaller struggles or petty fights that they entirely neglect the greater picture. Instead of seeing their enemy as a global autocratic alliance, they see their enemy as their own neighbor.
“Autocrats are unified in more ways than we can imagine. A vast kleptocratic financial network sustains them with material resources.”
Autocrats also engage in repressing dissent and protests in other autocracies. This makes it impossible for civil society to gather and resist. In Belarus and Hong Kong, students were arrested for taking part in a protest where they sang “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical Les Misérables, a protest song for pro-democracy movements. In Les Misérables, young liberal activists took to the barricades to resist an increasingly autocratic king who had connections to other autocrats in the region. Today, young liberals in places as diverse as Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus, Iran, and Hong Kong are likewise demanding fair and free elections, the right to protest, and political participation.
This is one example of how autocrats engage in censorship across borders. When Venezuelans took to the streets to protest in favor of Juan Guaido and a democratic transition, Russia and China supplied military force to the Venezuelan regime to crush and silence the protests. Likewise, when Belarusians started protesting against Lukashenko, Russia quickly supplied forces to the latter. The Ukrainians’ 2014 protest succeeded; it was conducted entirely by civil society and the Ukrainian people’s exercise of their own agency. Putin has resented Ukraine ever since. The same year, Venezuela and Syria had massive protests—both of which were quickly and violently repressed.
Global propaganda machines attempt to smear the reputations of democracy activists. Shortly after Venezuelan protest leader and former political prisoner Leopoldo López fled to Spain in 2020, a smear campaign by the Maduro regime alleged that he “stole humanitarian aid money” and tried to depict his family’s everyday activities such as taking a walk as “living in luxury.” When Juan Guaido fled, the Venezuelan machines did the same thing claiming that playing tennis is living in luxury! Seeing the extent of the Venezuelan smear campaigns, Russia soon copied this tactic to stir up distrust of Zelensky. They photoshopped pictures of mansions, claiming these were “Zelensky’s mansions” and attempted to portray aid to Ukraine as a money laundering operation. In reality, no humanitarian aid was lost or misplaced—and every single piece was very carefully accounted for. Russia also wants to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States, increasing populism and eroding mutual trust. Americans and Europeans have a lot to learn from each other, and the average American, Italian, French person, or Swede can get along wonderfully. But autocrats want to divide us—they want to stoke xenophobia and distrust. They do this on a small scale by trying to exaggerate and provoke polarization within countries, but also on a larger scale by attempting to divide pro-democracy individuals against each other on a global scale. The United States and the European Union could work together on a great many issues and have so much potential to allow greater academic and cultural exchanges. While we have a few great programs, we need to expand these so every American or European could participate in them, regardless of financial background. In addition, these programs could be expanded to include democratic countries globally and democratic thinkers and activists who live within autocratic countries. The more global collaboration there is among supporters of democracy, the easier it could be to share ideas.
While it is true that not everybody will get along, a friend of democracy should be a friend of all supporters of democracy; we need to focus on building a great global grassroots coalition of people of any gender, race, and ideology unified by one goal—defending liberal democracy. Oftentimes, people are focused on denouncing democratic decline only when the other side is doing it: “Oh the Republicans are destroying democracy!” or “it is actually the Democrats ruining democracy!” Change begins when we criticize all autocratic tendencies, even those coming from our own “team.” We need to begin to view politics not as “dirty,” but as a civic duty all citizens must be engaged in. We need to expect more of democratic discourse and encourage our elected representatives to conduct themselves in the civic virtues of statespeople striving to make the world better, and when we ourselves do not feel represented, instead of complaining, we should take the mantle and get involved. When democratic countries invest in political training and roll back the idea of politics as “entertainment” and begin to view politics as service, then we may see serious improvement. We also need to help dedicated young people through the hurdles of running for office and equip them with tools for victory.
We also need to form the following new coalitions and alliances.
1) A coalition of preexisting democracies consisting of the United States, Canada, most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and other full democracies to unite and share ideas about how to prevent democratic backsliding and how to support group 2.
2) An alliance of peaceful pro-democracy activists from autocratic regimes to collaborate and share ideas, and to also to learn from group 1. In addition, this group can include democracy activists from competitive autocratic regimes. This group will interact with group 1 and share the realities of their countries and how we can assist them, both groups will work closely together sharing ideas. Group 2 would be handling more dangerous circumstances and thus deserves the full support of the free world. Only together can we defeat the global alliance of autocracy.
If these groups work in unison, they can accomplish great things. Democracy activists on the ground in places like Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, Belarus, and other places will be able to communicate to societies in democracies exactly what kind of help they need. Democracies can meanwhile elect men and women who know how the alliance of autocracy is working together, and these new politicians can enact reforms and strategies on combating the autocratic influences in their own countries. It will be non-ideological and will focus on democracy in every part of life and on strengthening democracy activists.
It will take much work, and ideologies and personalities could get in the way. But it will be a fight worth fighting; after all, when the United States was built, the founding fathers had many different views and ideas on how the new democracy would work. But with a careful system of checks and balances, they were able to construct a new system of government that has lasted for centuries. Likewise, with our global coalition of democracy supporters from every corner of the world, we can learn and from each other and grow. We can listen to people’s reasoning for their beliefs and their ideas about how we can work together to push back the alliance of autocracy. Autocrats rely on us being divided and exclusive, but we can become more unified than ever and fight for a better world.
In the early 1800s, Colombian political prisoner and human rights activist Antonio Narino saw his country being divided by petty ambition and regional prejudices In the south of that country; this strengthened Spain’s efforts to retake Latin America. Narino wrote, “Let us open our eyes, the hour has come, our ruin is irresistible if we do not unite, if we do not abandon all personal views, all childish resentments, and above all, this apathy and naïve trust, this inaction that is so harmful in critical moments.”
Likewise, this is a call for all democracy defenders across the globe to set aside culture wars or power struggles and focus on the big picture—the autocrats are unified, and we must unify for truth. We will not rest until democracy prevails.
Through unity from every corner of the world and by incorporating all of our voices, we can defeat the global alliance of autocracy. Through a concentrated effort of building and creating a global democratic coalition of every nation and every ideology, we can achieve a truly democratic future.
