Meet the Pessimist in the Mirror: The Hardest Lessons of Resistance History

Experience is the most brutal teacher. And for many, it’s the only one they’ll believe.

People don’t want to accept that they are living through something they do not fully understand. They don’t want to believe that they are witnessing the slow death of a system they once thought was unshakable. They want to believe that there are limits—rules of political gravity that will eventually assert themselves and return things to “normal.”

But resistance history tells us otherwise. And the hardest lesson of all is this: There is no normal to return to.

There is only what we do now.

Historians and scholars of authoritarianism—like Abby Heffer and Tim Snyder—have laid out in extraordinary detail how modern autocrats consolidate power, dismantle institutions, and erode democracy from within. Their work is essential, and they provide their insights in real time through digital media.

But knowing how authoritarians operate is only half the equation. The real question for us is: What do we do about it?

That’s where resistance history comes in. And time and time again, I’ve found that these are the hardest lessons for people to accept:

1. Institutions have failed. If institutions were going to stop this, they already would have. The courts will not save democracy. Elections will not reset the balance. The systems that people assume are there to hold the line are either already compromised or are fundamentally incapable of checking a determined, anti-democratic movement. Institutions are built to protect themselves, not to challenge power. They don’t correct themselves. If they did, they would have already acted decisively to prevent what is happening. This does not mean that institutions are irrelevant. It means that waiting for them to act is a form of submission. Resistance cannot be outsourced to political processes designed to contain, not dismantle, authoritarian rule.

2. So-called opposition leaders have refused to resist. That makes them complicit. Refusal to resist is collaboration. Opposition leaders who tell you to “stay the course,” to “trust the system,” to wait for the next election rather than directly challenging the erosion of rights and democracy—they are not resisting authoritarianism. They are accommodating it. The hard truth is that many who present themselves as opposition leaders would rather exist within a degraded democracy than risk everything to restore it. Just look at the stark difference between Charles Schumer and Gavin Newsom, on the one hand, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, on the other. (Consider U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's statement on the recent budget fiasco: "If only one Republican would have opposed it, we [the Democrats] could have gone on to 'regular order.'") There is no opposition in words alone. There is only resistance, or complicity.

3. The idea that “this is as bad as it gets” is always wrong. There is no limit to how much power will be seized. People want to believe that there is a threshold—some red line that, once crossed, will wake the public up or trigger institutional backlash. They want to believe that authoritarianism has a stopping point. It doesn’t. The moment you believe you have reached the worst of it, you are already behind.

Hannah Arendt warned us that authoritarianism does not self-correct. There is no built-in limit to its expansion. It does not hit a point where those in power say, “This is enough.” Instead, it escalates, consolidates, and redefines what is “normal” until it either collapses under its own weight or is actively resisted. More than that, Arendt makes clear that totalitarianism does not just demand compliance—it requires participation. It is not enough for people to remain silent; they must be made to affirm and reproduce the system, to make it seem inevitable. The longer people wait to resist, the more difficult it becomes to even imagine another way forward.

So where does that leave us?

The reality of resistance is that authoritarians do not relinquish power willingly. They must be made to. That does not mean they collapse overnight. It means that power is never as stable as it wants to appear.

• James C. Scott shows us that no power is ever absolute—it constantly struggles to maintain itself. Resistance forces it to work harder, making oppression unsustainable.

• Hannah Arendt warns us that there is no natural limit to authoritarian expansion. The longer it is allowed to consolidate power, the harder it becomes to resist.

• Albert Camus teaches us that resistance is not about whether we will win—it is about whether we will refuse complicity.

• Joseph Tainter and Arnold Toynbee remind us that collapse isn’t an “if”—it’s a “when.” All oppressive systems require increasing resources just to sustain themselves. More surveillance, more repression, more force. Eventually, they overextend, becoming too costly to maintain. But that collapse is never on our terms unless we make it so.

What comes next?

Be an optimist to your family and friends. But you must be a pessimist in the mirror.

There is no scenario where authoritarianism collapses on its own. Resistance is not just necessary—it is the only force that makes power relinquish control.

There is no normal to return to. There is only what we do now.