Defiance, Civic Courage, and the Moral Ecology of Resistance in the Age of Authoritarian Drift

James B. Greenberg

Authoritarianism feeds on fear. The No Kings Day protests showed that fear can be broken. Peaceful demonstrations signal more than opposition; they reveal a widespread sense of being ignored. The “No Kings Day” protests make visible what millions already know: Republican representatives understand their constituents are being harmed by this administration and have chosen silence. They no longer hold town halls. They no longer answer questions. Instead, they parrot Trump, labeling the protest a “hate America” rally, and frame participants as radical leftists or terrorists. The message is unmistakable—this administration not only refuses to listen, it no longer cares what people think.

Our government rests on majority rule, compromise, and the slow, difficult work of consensus. Dictators reject all three. Force replaces deliberation; opponents become “enemies within.” The message this regime delivers is not through debate, but through deployment—troops in the streets, mass arrests, and intimidation dressed up as law and order. Consent has been replaced by fear—the new currency of governance.

I live in a community that historically votes Republican. The so-called “enemy within” are our neighbors, many of them lifelong conservatives. Like me, they have learned that when the choice is between tyranny and constitutional freedom, partisanship disappears. That is what makes the No Kings Day protests so remarkable. Their message is clear and loud: we are not afraid and we will not be intimidated.

Authoritarianism, at its core, is an ecological crisis of governance—an enclosure of the public commons. It seeks to privatize speech, assembly, and truth itself, turning the open flows of democracy into restricted channels of obedience. The No Kings protests disrupt that enclosure. They reclaim civic space from fear and restore the moral ecology of community. Their extraordinary quality lies not in defiance alone, but in defending constitutional order with principled resolve. In towns that once voted Republican, citizens stand shoulder to shoulder—not as partisans, but as stewards of the republic—asserting that legitimacy flows upward from the governed, not downward from a throne.

By shutting down dialogue instead of negotiating, the administration conflates fear with strength and obedience with unity. But fear corrodes institutions, and obedience hollows them out. What the No Kings Day protests reveal is that Americans—across party lines—are beginning to see this corrosion for what it is.

They are multigenerational, rooted in local memory, and rich in symbolic defiance. Across small towns and suburbs, people gather with homemade signs and flags, not as partisans but as neighbors. Veterans, retirees, teachers, and small business owners stand together to demonstrate that civic courage is not the monopoly of any ideology, but the obligation of all who value freedom. Their presence turns streets into arenas of moral clarity, reminding authorities that legitimacy is not claimed—it is earned and maintained by consent.

Republican officials, confronted by this defiance, respond with the familiar authoritarian messaging. They frame the protests as dangerous, radical, and illegitimate. Protesters are cast as outsiders or “enemies within,” and the moral inversion is complete: the exercise of civic duty becomes a crime, while abuse of power is normalized. Anthropologically, this is a familiar dynamic—rulers attempt to redefine loyalty and dissent, yet it is precisely this overreach that signals vulnerability.

Fear spreads through communities like a slow poison, altering behavior in subtle, pervasive ways. The No Kings protests act as a detoxification, restoring trust and solidarity. Citizens learn anew that they are not alone, that resistance is possible, and that the public commons belongs to them as much as to those in power.

Authoritarianism thrives by enclosing knowledge, language, and space. Citizens reclaiming streets, words, and civic rituals disrupt the very ecology that power seeks to control. These protests are acts of regeneration: they reopen channels of dialogue, reaffirm the authority of consent over coercion, and remind all participants that democratic legitimacy is not handed down, but nurtured through engagement and vigilance.

No Kings Day is not merely a protest—it is a collective rebalancing of the civic ecosystem, a moment when ordinary citizens remind their rulers that the republic belongs to the governed. Authoritarianism thrives by narrowing what is sayable, thinkable, and possible; democracy survives when people widen those boundaries through courage and solidarity. By refusing silence, these protests do more than challenge a presidency—they restore something elemental to American life: the conviction that freedom is not granted from above but renewed, again and again, from below.

Suggested Readings

Das, Veena. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Herzfeld, Michael. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics and the Real Life of States, Societies, and Institutions. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Holifield, Ryan, Andrew E. Fisher, and Becky Mansfield, eds. “Special Section: Authoritarianism, Populism, and the Environment.” Journal of Political Ecology 26 (2019): 1–120.

Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Tilly, Charles. Contentious Performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.

Wolf, Eric R. Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.