Fire in Our Peace: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance
They want us to believe that silence is strength. That if we keep our heads down, the storm will pass. But we are the storm. And our storm doesn’t need fists. It needs strategy, courage, and the fire of militant nonviolence.
In the latest episode of Gaslit Nation, Jamila Raqib, the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution, delivers a masterclass in radical defiance without a single weapon raised. Raqib doesn’t just talk resistance. She teaches the art of war, the nonviolent kind, built on discipline, planning, and unshakeable conviction.
She carries forward the torch of Gene Sharp, the quiet revolutionary whose writings, like From Dictatorship to Democracy, which the Gaslit Nation Book Club read in March, have armed movements from Serbia to Syria. His ideas are dangerous, not because they incite chaos, but because they illuminate how to take power back without bloodshed. And dictators fear that more than any rifle.
This is militant nonviolence. It’s strategic. It’s disruptive. And when practiced with precision, it brings regimes to their knees.
Blueprint for the Battle Ahead
Raqib outlines a crucial truth: power is not monolithic. It comes from the obedience of people, workers, civil servants, police, students. Withdraw that obedience, and even the strongest tyrant collapses.
Take Serbia. Take Bangladesh. The world keeps giving us proof that nonviolent action isn’t weak; it’s lethal to authoritarianism when wielded with discipline. These movements succeeded not because they were polite, but because they were strategic. Organized. Defiant.
This is how repression backfires. Every crackdown becomes fuel. Every jail cell, every bullet, every propaganda campaign becomes a rallying cry, if activists know how to use it.
Weapons of the Peaceful Warrior
Raqib reminds us that art is a weapon. Culture is armor. Community is infrastructure. And technology is a battlefield. Whether it empowers or undermines you depends on how well you understand it. Movements rise and fall on logistics, not just slogans.
Fear will always be there. That’s normal. But as Raqib insists, fear doesn’t mean stop. It means go smart. Fear is a compass, if it scares the regime, you're probably doing something right.
Nonviolence is Not Passive. It's Precision.
This conversation isn’t about kumbaya. It’s about battle-readiness. It’s about studying the terrain of power, exploiting the cracks, and toppling giants with the slow, grinding force of disciplined resistance.
Nonviolence doesn’t mean surrender. It means refusing to give your enemy the war they want. It means winning on your terms. And in a time of rising fascism, digital surveillance, and global despair, we must turn to the tools that have worked, again and again.
So study Gene Sharp. Listen to Raqib. Organize like your life depends on it, because it does.
This is not the time for feel-good hashtags. This is the time for public education, mass mobilization, and strategic action. Nonviolent resistance is not soft. It’s the hardest fight there is.
But it’s the one that wins.
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Download Transcript
Andrea Chalupa (00:21):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it Today. We're honored to sit down with a woman on the front lines of peaceful resistance. Jamila Raqib, executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution trained under the legendary Gene Sharp, the author of the Gaslit Nation Book Club pick earlier this year, From Dictatorship to Democracy. That that Gene Sharp. Jamila has spent years empowering people worldwide with the tools to resist oppression without lifting a weapon. Get ready for an eye-opening conversation about power, resistance, and the strategic art of nonviolence. Welcome to Gaslit Nation Jamila.
Jamila Raqib (01:16):
Thank you so much, Andrea. It's great to be with you.
Andrea Chalupa (01:18):
So let's start at the beginning. What first drew you to the work of Gene Sharp and nonviolent resistance?
Jamila Raqib (01:25):
Well, a lot of people are surprised to hear that. I didn't really know who Gene Sharp was before I applied for a position to work with him. Actually, I came to this work with a lot of misconceptions. I thought nonviolent resistance was, well, let's say something that people in privilege suggest for those living under oppression and that it was really a conversation non-starter for people facing difficult circumstances, that it was a nice idea, but not really workable in a world with real problems. And that's because I was born in Afghanistan. My family fled during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the country, and I was really angry and I felt that there was a really strong need for people to be able to defend their communities. And I thought just rejecting violence because it was somehow someone decided it was morally wrong, was really not very compelling for me.
(02:18):
So I heard about this position and applied for it despite my misgivings, and I learned very quickly that everything I knew about nonviolent action was wrong. That actually you could be tough and be nonviolent, that it meant that you use weapons of a different kind, that it is effective, that it presents a real option for people living under repression. So that's what it was. It was a real eyeopening moment for me to learn that there was this powerful tool that was drawn from what people had done for thousands of years. It just wasn't very well known and that we could actually learn how to do it more effectively and make our struggles more effective.
Andrea Chalupa (02:56):
And what was it like working with Gene Sharp?
Jamila Raqib (02:59):
Well, he became my friend and mentor for 15 years, and we had a very close relationship, and I just so privileged to have had that at that time and experience with him and all the learning. We worked very closely. At some points, it was just him and myself in a small office, and it was as a person, he was extraordinarily generous with his time. He was very kind person and he believed deeply in human freedom and dedicated his whole life to it. So it was incredibly inspiring. He was already 74 when I started working with him, and I worked with him until he was 90 when he died in 2018. And it was a really interesting decade and a half for nonviolent resistance in the world. You can imagine starting in 2002 what was happening in the world with the so-called color revolutions and the kind of new awareness about nonviolent means that they could kind of fight these entrenched dictatorships and actually be effective, well, at least in the short term. And then we had the Arab Spring, which brought massive new awareness and suddenly it seems like the whole world wanted to know who is this old scholar living in this house in the suburb of Boston that is somehow playing a role in providing the kind of intellectual underpinnings of revolutions around the world. So we got to witness all of that together. It was fantastic. And it remains so.
Andrea Chalupa (04:25):
That's incredible. So the Albert Einstein Institution, which Gene Sharp founded and that you currently run promote strategic nonviolent action, what does that strategy look like in practice?
Jamila Raqib (04:40):
Yeah, that's a good question. I think when he founded, when Gene Sharp founded the organization initially, he recognized that here was a field of study and practice that wasn't very well known. There was this remarkable history. He'd been looking at it and studying it since the 1950s. And then in 1983 when the organization was founded, originally, it was before that, it was a kind of research institution at Harvard, and he recognized that it needed to be an independent institution that would both conduct research. So looking at historical cases of how people had conducted struggles of this nature when they chose to use nonviolent means as opposed to violence or doing nothing, why did they make that decision? What did they do? What were the tactics they used? What worked, what didn't work? And what are the kind of best practices that we can distill from these historical cases, but also the ones that are ongoing and taking place around the world today?
(05:35):
So there was a research component and then there was a sharing of that research initially because it was such a scholarly institution, it was mainly through publications. So he wrote more than 30 books on the topic, and we also had a fellows program. So really preserving the historical accounts, knowing that our societies are mostly emphasizing a history of war and violence, but meanwhile, there's this other thing that has been happening historically and we need to document it. So it was taking a very rigorous social science approach and applying it to a field of study that it wasn't very rigorous. It was like Gandhi was successful because of his spiritual practices and that people do this because they believe the same thing. There was a lot of misconceptions, which honestly exists today too. And he was like, well, let's really study this and the way that military means have been studied and developed.
(06:25):
So he used that as maybe a broader framework of, well, military means have been developed over thousands of years, and we've invested so much people power and resources to understanding how that type of conflict works. We need to do the same for nonviolent resistance because it is as sophisticated as war and violence if not more, and we can't expect to use it effectively without this knowledge. So that's a very long answer for why the research piece is so important and then figuring out how can this research reach the people who need it when they need it so they're not having to reinvent the wheel.
Andrea Chalupa (07:03):
And so what are some real world examples of non-violence, especially recently being successful in making a meaningful difference in people's lives? Who are most impacted?
Jamila Raqib (07:13):
Well, we have a couple of very recent examples just from the last couple of years and also, or let's say one year even, and an ongoing struggle in, for example, Serbia. Serbia had a very important case of nonviolent resistance against Milosevic. That was a completely nonviolent people power movement that was successful where military means failed to get rid of Milosevic. And that's the outpour movement of which culminated in the removal of Milosevic in October of 2000. But that knowledge and that history is now in some ways has existed in society. They have an important example that they've given their own country and the world, and now you're seeing a very, very interesting and powerful display of people power that's reemerged over the past maybe eight months. And it's a completely student movement. It emerged as a response to an accident which killed 16 people at a railway station.
(08:11):
And people rightly understood that this accident was really a result of corruption, of negligence of the government. And they said basically, we always knew that corruption kills, but this time we saw it in its really clear way. So there's massive protests throughout the country. They spread to something like 400 cities and towns in Serbia. There's been a crackdown against them, a lot of violence and repression that they're facing these mostly students. And in spite of this repression, the movement is going strong. Just a couple of months ago, they organized something like a thousand mile ride to Strasburg because they're saying basically that we're being completely overlooked by European leaders. And so they organized this bike ride to show their commitment to democracy and to human rights. And I think it's just an incredible example of how people are organizing under these difficult circumstances, that they're effective even in face of repression that is completely student led.
(09:09):
They're building leadership and decision-making structures to make sure that what they're doing is sustainable and they're presenting a real challenge to the government. So it remains to be seen what happens, but they've already achieved some very, very important incremental successes. And I think Bangladesh is the other one. Bangladesh also had about a year ago in August, a very, very powerful student led movement. It was mainly students from high school and colleges, and they eventually forced the prime Minister to resign someone who had ruled the country for 15 years, completely nonviolent, using really diverse tactics. And there's an important point to be made here, which is that it wasn't just street mobilizations. There's this perception globally that we can go in the streets, hold a sign, express disapproval, and somehow change is inevitable. And they recognize that there's a lot of building of power that's required, building of skills, understanding that people in the movement need to be trained for negotiations for elections, that there needs to be a pathway to democracy.
(10:10):
And these students are just having this remarkable, they led this remarkable movement, and now they're making sure that the gains they made can be defended. And so they have a transitional government now, and they're insisting that they have a role in that transitional government that what they did needs to be continued so they can see their revolution through. I think those are remarkable examples, and honestly, I don't hear much about them, and I think that's really dangerous because it sends us the message that the way you do change is through violence or that you just trust in a system that's failing us, and those are not workable options for us anymore.
Andrea Chalupa (10:46):
Yeah. Well, everybody is focused on Trump and Netanyahu dragging America into war with Iran. So yes, those two examples that you gave Serbia, Bangladesh, we are not seeing that in the American press to any large degree. I want to ask about Serbia because famously you talk about this current struggle in Serbia led by students. And historically though, the horrific regime of Milosevic was brought down ultimately by NATO violence, and he was dragged to the Hague.
Jamila Raqib (11:17):
But Andrea, that is debatable, and I think that people in Serbia, clearly there's a debate nationally and probably inside Serbia as well, but many people would say that actually the bombing made Milosevic bit stronger in the short term. That in fact, NATO bombing really disrupted a movement that was already achieving a lot of effectiveness and undermining the sources of support that he had in mobilizing the Serbian population. And that in fact, that disruption set the movement back. And so I think this is a problem globally that we attribute much more success and effectiveness to violent means than is born out by the evidence. And that there is a very, very clear rally around the flag effect that happens in moments like this even by people who hate their governments, that when they're attacked by outsiders are going to really either out of a sense of fear, stop what they're doing or they're going to see no other choice. But there's a pressure there to tone down the dissident activity to really support the government they have.
Andrea Chalupa (12:27):
So we talk a lot on the show about the dictators playbook. Gaslit Nation wrote a whole graphic novel on it called Dictatorship: It's Easier Than You Think, but all the ways dictators come to power and stay in power and all the work that you focused on for so long. Now, what do you see as the militant? That's what Martin Luther King Jr would call it, militant nonviolent resistance. What would be a really smart step-by-step blueprint? I agree with you. It's not enough for us to just go in the street and hold up signs. There have to be stronger network effects that are activated. And so what would that look like?
Jamila Raqib (13:02):
I mean, you're asking a really broad question, right?
Andrea Chalupa (13:04):
Let's do it! This is the show.
Jamila Raqib (13:06):
Yeah, there's some principles that we can draw from that we don't necessarily see reflected. And I'll just start by saying that this type of action is still the best tool we have, even though it doesn't work perfectly. But that a lot depends on what we do. We focus so much on the conditions of our society, what the authoritarians are doing, how sophisticated they are. We're often attributing too much sophistication to them when in fact they have weaknesses. And one of the major weaknesses they have is that they rely, even the most dictatorial system, even the most authoritarian, relies on the obedience, cooperation and assistance of actually multitudes of people in groups in society. And so understanding this basic concept of power that they inherently don't actually have power, it's what power we give them by either doing nothing and obeying or by cooperating and providing what they need to function to carry out their harm.
(14:03):
And so without getting too as theoretical, we can't develop strategies without this understanding. And I think it's incredibly empowering to say that, okay, we do need to understand their capabilities. We need to know what capabilities the opponents have that are going to be mobilized against us because we want to make sure they don't collapse our movements, but that actually focusing on them is actually demobilizing and disempowering. So a good understanding of power and a good understanding of our societies. And I think we often lack that. I'm not saying people don't know their communities. I think they do, but do we have this kind of bird's eye kind of complete understanding of our societies and the weakness being that there is this reliance, this vulnerability that authoritarians have that they depend on People, institutions do nothing to obey. We call these pillars of support. These are institutions in society, in groups like the police and military, like judges and prosecutors like media, like religious institutions, like artists, like legislators.
(15:05):
And essentially it's everyone in society who has legitimacy, whose cooperation matters. And understanding who these are is an important first step. So authoritarians can be undermined by undermining the supply of this power. So identifying these groups and then figuring out how can they be persuaded and pressured to stop obeying a regime's orders. So we're not talking here about appealing to people's morality to the groups that are harming us. And that's part of it, but it's really to figure out how can nonviolent action by these groups be done so that imposes financial reputational costs for authoritarians, including economic ones, like non-cooperation and boycotts. So I think that that's a piece of it, this understanding of the landscape and figuring out what enables the harm and punishing and trying to persuade and punish depending on why they're obeying the people who are cooperating. And then I think in terms of the democracy defense playbook, this idea that we can be spontaneous, that we can be act in improvised ways and still be effective collectively, that's dangerous because I think even though tactically we can be effective, a small group could plan a particular mobilization and be effective in the short term and at a very limited community level.
(16:35):
But if it's not connected with a kind of broader strategy that's not going to work, especially against really powerful and well organized opponents. I think we also need to have clear objectives. I think our objective, maybe there's some consensus on what that objective is, but maybe there isn't. And actually we often think at a very high level, this regime needs to be stopped or we need to replace it with a democratic system. But often for people who feel weak, that's asking a lot, you also need to develop these kind of component campaigns. So this is what we mean by strategic planning. So King, you quoted him, he also said that doing a movement is not pressing a neat row of buttons and then getting the outcome that we want, it actually does take a lot of work. I think developing these component campaigns is a major piece of that and disseminating that information broadly enough so that people understand that when you design action at a local level, how does it fit into something broader?
(17:39):
I think those would be broadly the pieces of it. Clearly violence is a very important piece of this. How do you resist being provoked into it? And then how do you withstand repression? So we think about violence very kind of broadly and in a bit of a fuzzy way, but I do think it's important to distinguish between the type used against us to make us stop what we're doing and the one that we need to resist using. And it's really important to do both because that's what the research shows that movements can be collapsed by repression, but that they need not be, that there are ways to resist it. And there's a whole variety of those. So I think having this understanding in societies allows you to then use these kind of one 90 tactics. So maybe your listeners know about this. This is a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action.
(18:30):
It goes back to 1973, so it's kind of old now, but it still gets people very excited that there are these individual things that you can do and they're categorized based on how they work, what are they meant to do? But you can't really act strategically with just this list of methods. You have to actually understand these broader strategic concepts. And I'm not saying everyone in society needs to understand this fully, right, but people designing action on behalf of multitudes of people do need to have this understanding both at the tactical and strategic level. And I think only then can planning and action be effective?
Andrea Chalupa (19:06):
And what are some real world examples of movements withstanding repressive violence? Because all it takes is killing shooting at a couple of protesters to send a message to everyone that you need to stay home and you need to stop speaking out. And as soon as you become silent, you imprison yourself, you sentence yourself to a prison. So how have you seen in real world examples, movements withstand oppressive violence, and what sort of strategies do those individuals and those movements and habit in order to keep going?
Jamila Raqib (19:40):
It's such a great question because I think there's a myth that if you're facing an opponent that has the capacity and willingness to use violence against the nonviolent movement, then really what's the point, right? I mean that it doesn't work, that it only works against them kind and gentle opponents, that it couldn't have worked against the Nazis and that it worked against the British or in the US because we face somehow a kind and gentle opponent. And I think that's really what it is, a myth, because actually it ignores that these movements that were successful historically and around the world today, they've been met with the maximum level of violence and repression that their opponent can get away with. And I think this is the key that repression has costs to it, and we need to understand these costs that the very thing that makes authoritarians powerful.
(20:31):
So we think is their capacity to punish you, to strip you of rights, to put you in jail, to use different kinds of smart repression, legislative legal measures to impose a cost to make you abandon what you're doing, to stop resisting, to instill fear in society so that people are deterred from acting. And so that's the purpose of repression. Let's understand it. Let's also understand that this is to be expected. Let's normalize it. You can't expect to face a powerful opponent and not have them react using whatever means they can get away with. But then the question is how do we withstand it and how do we make it backfire? And there's lots and lots of examples of that sort of thing. I said that it instills fear, so also normalizing fear, understanding that it's not, it's literally a biological response to perceived danger, right?
(21:28):
It's not a sign of cowardice or a lack of commitment to the struggle. So I think normalizing that and understanding that I think prepares people in a different way than saying that we're nonviolent, we're going to have a nonviolent response, and that somehow it's going to just be easy. So first it's not easy, and I think we all get that, but movements have succeeded against even the most violent opponents. So understanding the types of repression is important, and then picking actions based on the level of risk people are willing to take and the capacity they have to withstand that repression. Obviously asking people to face tanks. So we saw this in Syria, right? You had an incredibly powerful nonviolent movement during the Arab Spring that then went out in the streets and had massive casualties day after day after day, and after a month, it's very, very difficult to sustain that.
(22:22):
So picking actions that are not what we call tactics of concentration versus tactics of dispersal, you have a whole repertoire of actions available to you. Maybe if the risk of repression and violence is extremely high, whether it's because you as a movement don't have the training to withstand repression without being provoked to violence or because a lot of violence is going to be used against you. Then methods of concentrating large groups of people that are very vulnerable to repression, maybe tactically and strategically is not wise. So then picking methods becomes important. I think training is extremely important. You saw in the umbrella movement in Hong Kong, which was incredibly nonviolent and very disciplined. You had training going up months and months and months and maybe years before the mobilizations that we saw. And you had things like, for example, they knew water cannons would be used against them.
(23:18):
So they brought in a water cannon to test it out with people who are going to be in the streets so that the panic and fear that could cause a collapse doesn't happen. We saw role-playing training in the civil rights movement. We've seen it in movements around the world that are developing increasingly sophisticated kind of scenarios to say repression is to be expected. We don't want panic. We don't want us to be provoked into violence. We want to make sure these things don't spread because they're going to create a failure in our mission. And so this type of training and role playing becomes incredibly important. And then if you get super theoretical about it, Gene talks about the so-called acts of commission and the acts of omission. So doing something that is forbidden or not expected or not doing something that is expected or required, these are the ways in which we can disobey.
(24:13):
So clearly doing something forbidden is very different in terms of the risk you face because disobedience is very difficult to repress in a way, because how can they prove that you're withdrawing your cooperation, that how can they prove that you're boycotting if you don't want to announce that, right? So these kinds of acts of non-cooperation or actually more powerful, yet they're actually less risky in terms of repression. So I'm making this a kind of broad strategic response, but you've seen this in many, many, many different movements around the world. You're seeing it in Serbia today. We saw it in Bangla as well. The way in which developing capacity to withstand repression makes it more likely that repression is not going to work.
Andrea Chalupa (25:02):
I recently interviewed a 90 something year old revolutionary from the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and he was describing how the Hungarian uprising, one of the greatest challenges to the Soviet Empire began with a poetry reading in Budapest. And you saw that with Iro Maan, there were poetry readings, there were free open libraries on the square. There were beautiful murals going up to Ukraine's. Great artists like Tara Chenko and Cioca and music going nonstop. I know a family, the mom and dad met as musicians on Euro Myan and now have a big beautiful family and musicians. They travel the world performing their music, and that's a lemon bucket orchestra for those who know. So an extraordinary story you see again and again like Pussy Riot in Russia, for instance, a girl punk rock band. Could you talk about how art plays such an important role in resistance? I truly believe it does. I mean is art making art consuming art sustains me and this show not exist without art? So could you speak about art as a powerful weapon of resistance?
Jamila Raqib (26:09):
I think you mentioned so many of the great examples, and actually I just heard that in the No Kings protest, that in the Atlanta demonstration that you had this really tricky moment in which the proud boys were there to do this counter protest, and it created this really volatile situation which nobody wants because it means that either again, there's going to be some violent outbreak that is going to delegitimize the protest that was so largely disciplined and nonviolent and that it's going to scare people away the next time. And for a number of reasons, obviously violence is very counterproductive no matter who uses it in that context. Okay, so Proud Boys showed up, they were very loud and aggressive, and there started to be this kind of discussion shouting back and forth, and suddenly you had this band show up of Tuba Band that started to play music, and suddenly you had this incredibly festival like atmosphere that completely diffused the situation and created a joyful thing of like, well, they're here doing their thing, but here we are affirming beauty and art and music, and this is what we're fighting for.
(27:31):
And also, I mean, let's not forget music has this quality of regulating your nervous system. So there's actually a biological response, which I'm so fascinated by because we think about music and art as this kind of feel good thing. But actually historically, just as the military uses cultural symbols and music and bands in a way to kind of promote nationalism or unity, a sense of belonging to reduce fear stimuli, I mean, movements have historically used it as well. I see it as a strategic necessity, to be honest, not a kind of nice thing that we can do. And we saw that there's an incredible example. Have you heard about the Estonian singing revolution? It's an incredible way in which Estonians, during the independence movement in the early nineties from the Soviet Union held hands and sang, and somehow they said like when one person sang, it was grounds for arrest because singing national songs was a assertion of a culture, and somehow that was illegal.
(28:37):
But when people, thousands of them did it together, suddenly it reduced fear. It showed that their opponents were not as powerful as they made themselves out to be, and it promoted the sense of wellness and defiance in a way that also reduced risk. So there's so many ways we can talk about the role of music and art and culture. These are in the 198 methods of nonviolent action. I mean, I should go in there and look at how many of them actually are art and culture, because Gorilla Theater, even when I said role playing in trainings, art as a means to educate and to communicate values, to communicate even strategic insights. We have examples of how in societies where, for example, there's a large rates of illiteracy. They use comic books to communicate basic theories of power in quite sophisticated ways because just because people can't read doesn't mean they can't understand these sophisticated and important concepts. So the theory of consent through stories and through theater is very powerful. And I mean, there's obviously such a rich history of that,
Andrea Chalupa (29:47):
And art gives us a feeling of shared humanity to aspire to, which is extraordinarily powerful and transcends all of these idiot dictators that we're up against. I want to ask you about technology. So obviously Gene Sharp has been at this for a very long time, and you've inherited his mantle and you've been at this for a long time. How does the methods that he talks about in dictatorship to democracy and all the research you've done, how can that apply? Now in our AI sludge bought farm disinformation on social media fueled algorithm world, I am trying to list all the evils we're up against, including the oligarch of Silicon Valley that engineers these algorithms to be mass destructive, including against ourselves, rates of suicide ideation and self-harm among young girls shoots up using Instagram and they don't care as long as they're boosting engagement and making profits for their shareholders. So how do you see your resistant methods applying in this dystopian futuristic hellscape.
Jamila Raqib (30:53):
Yeah, hellscape is right. I think that the landscape is, I mean, it's scary out there, but I think it's another tool available to all of us. Disproportionately yes, because what we're seeing is that it's creating another imbalance in terms of capabilities because the opponents are quite sophisticated in their use of these technologies to create further imbalances of power, and they're investing very heavily into them. And our technologists among us somehow believe that these tools are somehow inherently democratizing. I mean, in the same way that there was that euphoria or wait, maybe they don't believe that it's really about profit. But anyway, I think there are some technologists and purists that think that somehow building these tools is democratizing or that they have no responsibility as to how they're going to be used in what kind of a world that they're going to bring us to. But we need to understand these capabilities.
(31:57):
We need to understand how they're being used against us. I mean, I think we don't have full knowledge of that. You know yourself, I look at it, I look at the very specific cases in which the technology is affecting what people do in their communities and how they either enable authoritarians or the movements, and you're finding weird cases. Maybe you've heard of these, where people are being mobilized to protest locations even being told to bring weapons, and both the protestors and the counter protestors are both being mobilized from a troll farm in Russia. This is the kind of thing you're actually seeing a shift in behavior and that the technology coupled with an understanding of how to weaken movements and how to promote violent conflict is incredibly dangerous. So I'm interested in how it changes how people think, but also how is it impacting behavior in ways that are really weakening the movement space?
(33:04):
But let's not forget that in some ways these tools are also available to us and that it's a mistake to think that there's no role for AI for the movement space. I'm very interested in how just like the internet reduced the cost of organizing it reduced it to the point where it made street mobilizations easier because you no longer needed the March on Washington and everything that required logistically to get tens of thousands of people in the street. You no longer needed those structures. The level of decision making, the resources, the planning, you could skip all of that. You get a lot of people in the streets, but it wasn't really sustainable. You didn't have clear objectives. People were not really trained. You didn't really have a structure to make sure that they could build on that mobilization. I think that the new tech tools carry with them those same vulnerabilities that they are reducing the cost of, for example, analysis, the kind of analysis I was discussing earlier about really understanding our society and what the authoritarians and what their weaknesses are, understanding security forces.
(34:13):
So I think it makes this analysis that normally is very difficult for movements to do. It makes that easier access to case studies, understanding what people in our own societies have done, what people have done in other countries that have similar conditions. That's much easier with AI developing scenarios and exercises that can help people think and plan together. That's something we're experimenting with right now. I think that's a really fascinating use of this incredibly sophisticated data and tools. And so going back to what we started with, which is that these are the conditions we're facing, understanding these capabilities doesn't have to demobilize us. It has to mean that our strategies have to shift, and it means that we have to prepare to face them and to figure out how we ourselves can use them, but that these tools when used in the movement space can't replace the need for building power organizing, thinking for ourselves using common sense because I fear that people are going to become reliant and dependent on them in the same way that we use social media tools to mobilize people without building the power necessary to make our actions sustainable.
Andrea Chalupa (35:27):
I want to ask you about the three largest weaknesses you see specifically with Trump and his administration and the democracy crisis here in the US right now.
Jamila Raqib (35:41):
Very good question. I think that these types of executive usurpations or power grabs, they depend on communicating that there's a sense of legitimacy. They depend on making clear that what's being done, that the entity has the right to do it, and that it's for the greater good. And I think we're increasingly seeing that this is really about self-enrichment and corruption, and that actually they're operating as other authoritarian minded groups have done historically and are doing around the world today. It's really quite as simple as that. The ideology might have some role to play, but to a large degree, it's about personal benefits that people can gain. So I think when these power grabs are successful, it's not because people support them, it's because people don't act in time. That's clear from the literature and from the historical cases. And so there's often a strategy by the authoritarians and by the corrupt government officials to throw people off balance to create a sort of passivity.
(36:47):
You refer to this so much in your show and even in our conversation today, and to instill fear, and I don't necessarily see that fear and that passivity. I think that we're seeing, we saw early a bit of a chilling effect on civil society, but I think people are motivated. Then the question is, so they're acting right, and they're acting in all the ways that we're seeing, but then the question is people recognize people are getting activated. I see that as a weakness. People are getting activated and there's a real opportunity there for them to be strategic and to think about how their action can actually disrupt or block this power grab. So this idea that you asked me for three things, I'm giving you a long drawn out answer.
Andrea Chalupa (37:33):
I love it.
Jamila Raqib (37:34):
But I have to say that I think we need to really focus on, I mean going back to how do these power grabs, how are they successful and they're successful because don't people don't act in time.
(37:47):
And that the anti-authoritarian playbook, our playbook is to deny legitimacy and to deny cooperation. I see both of these things happening, both a weakening of legitimacy that is coming about both in the way in which the movement space, let's say is framing what's happening, is translating what's happening for the general public, what is a pretty confusing situation at times that is undermining the legitimacy of what's happening and of the people doing it. And I think in terms of non-cooperation, which I would say is the second kind of pillar of this anti-authoritarian playbook, I think I see that happening to a great deal of defiance and non-cooperation and people saying that they don't agree. I think that the scale that is happening, let's say it needs to be broadened, and I think the strategy of it needs to be a little bit better thought through.
Andrea Chalupa (38:44):
Yeah, waiting for the midterms is not a strategy.
Jamila Raqib (38:48):
Well, I think it once again, and I don't blame people for thinking that, but that is only one part of our strategy. Just like the media strategy is one part of it, just like an organizing strategy is one part of it, just like the protest is one part of it, but we're facing opponents that are using a kind of multi-tiered strategy because just as they're pursuing a legislative strategy, an executive strategy, a media strategy, a civil resistance strategy, let's say they're pursuing these kind of simultaneously, and meanwhile, we're often just pursuing one at a time, and the electoral one is not on its own going to work because that depends on the system working. When we're seeing that actually the institutions can be so undermined that election results might not be honored, are we going to have free and fair elections to begin with? And what makes us think these legislative bodies are not going to be so stripped of any power that even when we have legislators in there, that they're going to on their own be able to stop a further degradation of democracy.
(39:59):
For that I think we need to understand that everyday people have a role. Religious institutions have a role, the media has a role, and that there's a really ecosystem response needed here. And I fear we don't have that, or at least it's not coordinated in any way that can be cohesive. Because I see people right now saying that the authoritarian takeover is not successful because they're losing a lot of court cases. Well, that assumes that strategy is a legal one, but what if it's not? And we know it's not, then that's not a very clear indicator or a good indicator of whether ultimately we're going to be able to defend the system.
Andrea Chalupa (40:39):
And so what advice do you have for people listening? What should they be getting themselves involved in? I know movement work is not easy. It's not like pressing buttons, but what would you advise people listening to do?
Jamila Raqib (40:50):
I think first, there's a public awareness, like public education piece, that the system requires us to defend it and that we actually can do that. That there is a historical precedence through these types of power graphs being defeated, and it provided that we think carefully and act according to what is likely to be effective and what we have the capacity to do and the level of risk we're willing to take. Maybe there's some quiet thinking required there in groups and on an individual basis that something more indifferent is required. Now it's also figuring out in our groups, whether that group is five people or 500 or 5,000, designing action with some strategic insight in play. What are the actions available to us? What is the objective of what we're about to do? Is this likely to achieve that? How is it going to serve the movement as a whole?
(41:47):
And by serving the movement, I mean either empowering people or undermining the opponent's capacity to inflict harm. I mean, those are really our main objectives here. And if it doesn't do that, if it weakens our movement, then perhaps we ought to reassess that. So applying some strategic logic to our actions, understanding what is the repertoire of actions available to us? There's a responsibility for educators, people, movement educators like groups like ours, others to work very aggressively right now to disseminate this knowledge. And clearly I'm in the education space, so I see a real need for that. I think people are acting without really understanding what they need to do, what else they might do, what that's meant to achieve, how to build on it, how it fits into something larger. This idea that we need to have some sort of centralized leadership or someone telling us what to do.
(42:41):
Maybe that's too much to ask and maybe that's actually a liability anyway. But people still need to be coordinated and effective. And I think we can do that through getting a sense of understanding about how this type of action works, looking at the case studies, looking at the methods available to us, and having these conversations in our small groups. I mean, I love the fact that you suggested from Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp on your reading list. And there's lots of other resources, and we need to, ideally this would have been done before because you're having people read a book that's now 30 years old. And I'm not saying there's not new stuff, but we do need to find new ways for people to access the knowledge that can help them to design action more effectively. I guess I read a blog post where maybe you could help me, but somebody was arrested at one of the town halls, a woman who was like a grandmother, and she went there.
(43:32):
She was probably, this has happened more than once, but the one that I was reading, she basically said that she was inspired to do civil obedience, refused to leave, so she was dragged out. And this really brought a lot of attention to it. Brought attention, let's say it was extremely important in undermining whoever authorized that and really building recruitment for the groups operating there. And she said, I did it spontaneously. Imagine what I could have done if me and people like me understood. What is civil disobedience? What is the framework? How is it used? How has it worked in the past? What does it even mean? And we're often recommending tactics and action like boycotts for example, or call for strikes or general strike without really understanding what's needed. What are these tactics? How have they historically been used? Can we even define them? And then what's required to do them effectively?
(44:35):
What do we need in terms of training? What do we need in terms of numbers? What do we need? What level of risk might we face? Do we have the capacity to withstand that and not taking action before we answer those questions? And I just think back to that grandmother who did that, and the fact that she operated based on this level of defiance and yes, courage, but how much more effective could we be if people had those conversations in advance? And if we had access to knowledge that could help us think and plan together,.
Andrea Chalupa (45:05):
We have to continue this extremely important conversation. So much more to talk about.
Jamila Raqib (45:09):
Yeah, I would love to.
Andrea Chalupa (45:12):
Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up at the Truth Teller level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can also give the gift of membership all summer long.
(45:26):
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