The Seven Rules for Dealing with Autocrats and Their Enablers

We can’t pretend we’re immune to autocratic forces. We aren’t. But we can prepare, we can organize, and we can win.

By Trygve Olson

Over the past two decades, I’ve worked alongside pro-democracy leaders in more than 40 countries, from Serbia to Zimbabwe, Belarus to Venezuela. In those places, the threats were often more violent, the repression more overt. But the tactics of the autocrats — and the resolve of the people fighting back — always echoed the same patterns.

T…