Revolutions. Uprisings. Wars. Assassinations.
Historically speaking, the notion that institutional politics alone can dismantle authoritarian regimes is, at best, a naive fiction.
Power, once consolidated, does not negotiate itself into irrelevance. It doesn’t step aside because the people asked nicely. It requires force, not always physical, but often enough to rattle the windows of the palace. Political reform? That’s a rearview mirror event. It’s what happens after the walls crack.
Take a quick tour through the charnel house of history:
The French Revolution wasn’t a policy paper.
Nazi Germany wasn’t undone by parliamentary procedure, it was bombed into compliance.
The fall of the USSR didn’t arrive on the wings of discourse, it bled out in the cold, cannibalized by its own contradictions.
And yet, every generation births its class of well-groomed idealists who genuinely believe that voting harder will neutralize fascism. This is the narcotic of liberal democracy, the belief that a broken system can repair itself through ritual alone.
But the machinery of authoritarianism is not interested in compromise. It adapts, it consumes, and when it’s threatened, it bares its teeth.
As Chomsky would remind you: systems of power do not yield to morality, only to pressure.
And as Hunter S. would yell: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
Even when resistance starts peacefully, it’s the threat, or reality of force that shatters power. Violence is the final veto.
That doesn’t mean it’s noble. It’s just real.
Power doesn’t listen until it’s afraid.
And fear doesn’t come from dialogue, it comes from fire.