How Other Nations Oust Their Autocrats

From our Friends Abroad: Demonstrate, Provoke Overreach, Nail the Messaging

One steamy afternoon in Sri Lanka, protesters pushed, heaved, and burst their way into the Presidential Palace, but Gota was gone. It was July 9, 2022. In the US, the Jan 6 Committee was hearing Pat Cipollone recount “Donald Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty,” while former president Trump was calling Elon Musk a “bullshit artist” to a crowd in Alaska. On the other side of the earth, millions in Sri Lanka had decided Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been so disastrous a president, he needed to go. Now.

State intelligence had learned about large demonstrations planned that morning that were likely to spin out of control. Soldiers raced in and escorted the President and his family to Army headquarters four miles away, then changed their minds and zipped him back past the protests to the Port of Colombo. He barely missed being torn to pieces.

By the afternoon, the presidential residence was breached. Protesters were dancing and cheering in the presidential art gallery and cannon-balling into the presidential pool. The deposed autocrat was floating on a naval patrol craft out in the Indian Ocean.

How did this happen? Gota was an assiduous authoritarian. His ministers were all fawning allies; some were immediate family. His party changed the constitution to give him ultimate power. He had monopolies in the media and military. He transferred most civil administration to the Ministry of Defense and used it to punish his enemies. In 2021, Human Rights Watch reported,

“Fundamental human rights protections in Sri Lanka came under serious jeopardy following Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election…[V]ictims of past abuses, lawyers, and journalists, faced intimidation and surveillance from government security forces.”

He was rich while his citizens were poor. He had every advantage an authoritarian needed to stay in power until death claimed him. How did a poor populace break through each of Gota’s limitless defenses?

Happily, what happened to Gota was not rare. In the last decade, 19 heads of state have been evicted by their own people - and the currently-impeached Yoo Suk Yeol of South Korea may soon become the 20th.

But the authoritarian takeovers that Gota and Yoo attempted are also not rare. In 2024, Freedom House calculated the world had grown more autocratic in each of the previous 20 years. Major democratic backsliding has occurred in Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Brazil, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan. Already-repressive regimes in Myanmar, Russia, and Sudan have only grown more so.

Until recently, the United States has remained a major outlier. For 248 years, it has avoided the experience of a democratically elected leader eviscerating the democracy that elected them and then begin wielding state resources for their personal gain. That luck has run out.

In only weeks, Donald Trump’s second administration has taken countless actions, but none have suggested the pretense of benefitting the common good over himself. He’s announced no plan to end homelessness, to build housing, to tame inflation, or to finally publicize his “concepts of a plan” to fix healthcare. Instead, every move has been calibrated specifically toward expanding his raw control over government resources and processes. This path is strikingly similar to the one forged by the world’s 19 recently deposed autocrats before they were tossed out.

Our friends abroad have several lessons for us about deposing dictatorial egomaniacs from power without waiting til the next election.

What Methods Work?

By the numbers: of 19 heads of state ousted in the last decade, six were removed by military coups. Six were removed through impeachment. Five fled mass protests. A no-confidence vote in Parliament ousted the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The threat of impeachment removed Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The President of Gabon only stepped down when a multinational force showed up to enforce the election results he refused to accept.

In every instance - except for some African coups - a strong and sustained public outcry had buttressed, if not driven, the method that ousted the autocrat.

How Long Does it Usually Take?

Zooming out beyond the last decade, history has disposed of authoritarians with surprising quickness. From longest to shortest: the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s took about 15 months to depose The Shah of Iran. Yemen needed about a year to oust Ali Abudllah Saleh. Sudan protested for eight months before the military removed Omar al-Bashir. Gota in Sri Lanka held out for seven months of mass protests. The Euromaidan Uprising in Ukraine got rid of Viktor Yanokovic in three months, and Bangladesh needed only two months to send Sheikha Hassina fleeing to India.

Other movements succeeded more quickly than that. Algeria ousted Abdelaziz Boutaflika in six weeks. Armenians blocked city streets for three weeks before President Sargsyan resigned. During the Arab Spring, Tunisia took 28 days to oust President Ben Ali, while Egypt needed only 18 to depose Hosni Mubarak. In 2005, Kyrgyzstan took 20 days to oust its leader and did it again in 2010 to a different leader in nine days. Romanians in 1989 needed only six days to protest, capture, try, and execute Nicolai Ceucescu and his corrupt wife.

The modern record may go to the Philippines, who, in 1986, ousted Ferdinand Marcos after only three days of non-violent civil resistance. Most of these movements, however, required months, if not years, of pre-planning to organize mass protests, hone messaging, and beta-test the best tactics.

What Issues Spark Mass Resistance Against Autocrats?

1. Financial Theft and Nepotism

When Tunisians burst into President Ben Ali’s palace in 2011, they found millions of dollars in cash, diamonds, and gold. Libyans discovered that Muamar Qadafi’s head of infrastructure had stolen money meant for hospitals and used it to buy luxury hotels in Scotland, and had awarded his own companies 200 million pounds in contracts. Once evicted, the Shah of Iran’s fortune was estimated at $20 billion, and this was in the 1970s.

When Gota won the presidency, he chose for his Prime Minister his brother, Mahinda, who had previously been president, and his other brother, Basil, for finance minister. In Bangladesh, what sparked protests was a law expanding the percentage of civil servants who needed to be allies of the regime.

Based on these criteria, Trump has made himself a prime candidate for popular removal. He’s fired the head of government ethics and 17 inspectors general tasked with unmasking government abuses. He is selling US citizenship ‘gold cards’ for $5 million each. He remains in control of the Trump Organization, which is handling more foreign real estate deals than in his first term. A Chinese entrepreneur purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from a venture backed by President Donald Trump and his family. Elon Musk is dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ending investigations into X, Tesla, and SpaceX, and usurping a $2 billion air traffic communications contract from Verizon for his other company, Starlink.

2. Inflation

Americans are not the only people who dislike rising prices. On the eve of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, inflation had grown to over 10%. Bangladesh’s was 11%. Before the Arab Spring, Yemen’s had quickly doubled to over 19%. The 1989 Solidarity Movement in Poland was fueled by anger at inflation reaching 60%. Pre-revolutionary Sudan’s was almost 64%.

During his campaign, Trump promised to “end inflation,” but once in office, merely ordered four departments to lower prices before quickly softening his stance on the issue. It didn’t work. Since Trump was elected, annual inflation has risen and hiked up the price of gas, groceries, and rent. Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico and a doubling of a 10% universal tariff on Chinese goods. Stocks tumbled after this announcement, and economists warn these moves will exacerbate inflation rather than tame it.

3. Power Grabs

Gota in Sri Lanka, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and Viktor Orban in Hungary co-opted their legislatures so deeply that they were able to change constitutions to grant them ultimate power, legally, without support from any opposition members. Other leaders (in Tunisia) shut down their parliaments, while others (in Romania) asked Russia to help sabotage local democratic institutions from Moscow.

These leaders then used their new political leverage to strong-arm businesses and media, which then began spreading regime-friendly propaganda and exploding the president’s coffers with money.

In his own style, the Trump administration has used executive orders and threats to extract tribute donations from AirBnB, Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Coinbase, Comcast, Crypto.com, Disney, ExxonMobile, Google, Home Depot, Jimmy John’s, Johnson & Johnson, Qualcomm, Uber, and Verizon, among others. MSNBC has fired many of its hosts of color. Jeff Bezos said Washington Post opinion columns will now abide by his viewpoint. Mark Zuckerberg said META platforms will stop fact-checking content. Media experts now note that Elon Musk’s X has become a hotbed of fake news articles and right-wing propaganda.

This type of power consolidation, however, infuses regimes with new weaknesses. When all government levers flip to benefit the autocrat rather than the people, the people’s experience of everyday life becomes more difficult. Products become more expensive as industries are consolidated and subsidies dry up. Scholarships, loans, and tax breaks vanish except for allies of the leader.

As power congeals, leaders lose touch with the reality all around them. Lackeys obscure bad news. When leaders remove all mechanisms for criticism, popular civil disobedience becomes a people’s only option, and with all the power resting in one person, those people know exactly who’s to blame.

Lessons for the United States

1. Protests Work

In only the last 14 years, popular protests have ousted some of the most entrenched and longest-serving authoritarians on earth in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. None of these countries had any previous experience with democracy.

Even in the U.S., it was popular anti-war protests that created the political discomfort that compelled Richard Nixon to resign - and Lyndon Johnson to not seek re-election. It was MLK’s giant marches on Selma and Washington, among many others, that helped force the civil rights laws that arguably pulled the U.S. in line with the values it espoused at its founding.

But not all protests work. Not even most. As a first step, Srdja Popovic - leader of the “Otpor!” movement that ousted Slobodon Milosevic in the 2000 presidential elections - advises, in his book, Blueprint for Revolution, to think hard about the thrust of the movement. Recognize that the battle most psychologically pleasing to fight may not be the one most likely to be won.

“Take a piece of paper…and draw a line. Mark yourself on one side of it, and then try to think who could stand together with you (for that cause). If the answer is just a few people, start over - no matter how committed you are to a cause or how troubled you are by a problem - try again. When you’ve managed to place yourself and your friends and just about the rest of the world on one side of the line and a handful of evil bastards on the other, you’ve won.”

2. Be Provocative

Grade schools teach children about Rosa Parks because her act of protest unfolded more provocatively than others who refused to give up their seats on segregated buses. Martin Luther King Jr. is the “godfather of civil rights” because he filled the Washington Mall with a quarter million people and executed the revolutionary concept of peaceful resistance to world-changing effect. Unlike a few people on a street corner waving signs and chanting at oncoming traffic, these acts were provocative in a way that neither normal people nor the media could look away.

During the first weeks of Trump 2.0, there have been many protests in Washington, DC, against the abuse of bureaucrats and in solidarity with Ukraine, in Los Angeles against ICE raids, in national parks against the firing of rangers, and at every state capitol against Trumpian authoritarianism. But none have broken through to mass media coverage or provoked a mention from Trump or his inner circle. This is no sign of failure. Every movement must start small and use trial and error over weeks and months to hone its tactics. Beta-testing provocative actions is a critical exercise in preparation for the ideal time to strike.

3. Harness an Inciting Incident

Timing matters. Riding a wave of energy from a provocative event is often required to train popular anger and action on a singular target. On August 19, 1978, a movie theater in Iran exploded in flames, killing 400 people. The Shah had no hand in the disaster, but he was so unpopular that the ensuing anger turned against him, and the Islamic Revolution was born. In Bangladesh, it was the passage of a law that ruined young peoples’ job prospects in favor of regime allies.

The most common type of inciting incident is a violent crackdown on early protests. In November 2013, Ukraine’s Russian-backed President, Viktor Yanukovych, pulled out of trade negotiations with the EU, signaling he was yanking Ukraine further from Europe and closer to Russia. A small protest of mostly students assembled in Kiev’s main square. Security services beat them with batons and detained them. News footage of this made demonstrations swell to hundreds of thousands by the end of the month, which soon sent Yanukovych fleeing to Moscow.

Three years earlier, in the random town of Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia, Mohamed Bouaziz lit himself on fire after police confiscated his fruit cart when he refused to pay a bribe. Video footage of police beating and shooting protesters in the aftermath lit the spark for the Arab Spring that enveloped the entire Middle East for years.

Trump's first term provided the U.S. with a series of inciting incidents, from Charlottesville to Lafayette Square to George Floyd’s murder. Perhaps these helped him lose the 2020 election. But a full-blown authoritarian takeover in 2025 suggests activists should prepare to launch a universal objection to Trump’s next unfathomable outrage.

Many Americans used the contentious Oval Office meeting between President Trump, VP Vance, and Volodomyr Zelinsky as an impetus to protest in Boston, New York, and Vermont. Time will tell if this incident sustains successful protests, but future inciting incidents from this administration are all but guaranteed.

The United States itself began with an inciting incident. Scholars do not peg our nation’s birth to 1776 but to 1765, when King George passed the Stamp Act. The outcry across the Atlantic was so strong the King quickly repealed it, but the residual anger was furious enough to launch the American Revolution.

4. Invent a Pithy Slogan

Coming up with random hashtags is easy, but inventing one that sustains a movement is elusive. The best ones are succinct, accessible, and bitingly clear in their intention.

Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (“Struggle”) Movement made t-shirts advertising their Hashtag, #GoHomeGota. The unpopular president’s catchy nickname helped the phrase sing in both English and Sinhala.

Egypt’s catchphrase was even simpler, “Irhal,” or “Leave” in Arabic. The movement borrowed the word from a song by Egyptian musician Ramy Essam. When protests began in early 2011, Essam, a fifth-year architecture student, grabbed his guitar, traveled 100 miles to Cairo, and entertained protesters in Tahrir Square, turning their chants into songs. Essam's full song, “Irhal,” went viral on YouTube and became the anthem of the revolution. TimeOut Magazine dubbed it the third most influential song of all time, two places ahead of “Imagine” by John Lennon.

The most creative use of a catchphrase may be by Serbia’s Otpor! Movement. The ragtag student group made resistance fun through a concept called "Laughtivism," by which you “spark a series of small and creative confrontations with the regime.”

In one town, they dressed a barrel up like Slobodon Milosevic, left it on a sidewalk next to a baseball bat and a note saying, “Whack Slobo for a dollar,” then videotaped the police arresting the barrel. In another town, activists took white roses - which Milosevic’s wife wore in her hair every day - and tied them to 100 turkeys - a very bad word to call a Serbian woman - and released them into the streets. Otpor! started small but subversively creative. Before they could get 30 people to a demonstration, they would spray-paint 300 clenched fists each night all over town - a symbol later seen at demonstrations in Egypt and Iran. These sent a signal to citizens that resistance was building and to the government that their hour was nigh.

In 2000, “Otpor!” used their catchphrase, “Gotov Je” (“He’s finished”), in a 1950s-style washing machine commercial where a dutiful housewife complains about trying for ten years to remove a stain from a white tee shirt. Unfurling the shirt, the stain is Milosevic’s face.

“Believe me, I’ve tried everything. But now there’s a new machine. It has a great program which, with confidence and security, permanently cleans this and similar stains.” She pulls a clean shirt from the machine and shows that the stain is removed. “See, it works.” A voice-over whispers, “Gotov je.”

5. Non-Elites Must Lead

Almost every successful protest movement is started by workers, labor unions, clergy, and/or students. Only occasionally do domestic quasi-celebrities drive people to benevolent revolution like Gandhi and India, Mandela in South Africa, Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, or Martin Luther King in the U.S. Most often, popular movements are flat, underground operations led by non-public figures.

Before orchestrating the electoral defeat of Slobodon Milosevic, Srđja Popović was a bassist in a goth band. It was only after “Otpor!” went national that the politician Vojislav Koštunica signed on to be the group’s presidential candidate.

Similarly, no one can name the figures who first organized mass protests in Cairo or Khartoum that unseated decades-long regimes in Egypt and Sudan. Only after sustained resistance by no-named folk did those militaries finally flip and toss their presidents out.

Clergy have led movements in Armenia, Belarus, and Myanmar. The Iranian Revolution had a spiritual leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, but he was exiled in Paris and never marched with supporters. The ground game was driven by local imams and common shop-owners called “bazaaris.”

In American Revolutionary lore, the Founding Fathers take center stage. But commoners had to push them. The first to attack British troops were white frontiersmen, Native Americans, African Americans, and common sailors like those cut down at the Boston Massacre in 1770. John Adams slandered them as hoodlums.

Thomas Paine was a commoner who wrote the best-selling pro-independence pamphlet, “Common Sense.” Other elites were unamused at Paine’s musings. As British troops shot more colonists, Paine slandered the Continental Congress, saying, “It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow. The evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed.”

By the time the British invaded, General Washington was gathering his troops to hear Paine’s words read aloud:

“These are the times that try men’s souls…Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have that consultation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Two days later, Washington crossed the Delaware and decimated a British outpost at Trenton. John Adams admitted his error, “Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.” Paine donated all proceeds from his writings to the revolutionary cause, picked up a musket, and joined the front lines.

The final chapter of Gota’s political career inspires hope by showing how the greatest odds favoring a rich, powerful leader can turn in an afternoon. Attempting to assert Presidential authority, Gota raced his naval vessel ashore and drove to the airport to fly to Dubai, but immigration officials assumed he was escaping and refused to process his passport. Gota refused to stand in the immigration line for fear of being attacked by his own citizens and barricaded himself in the airport’s VIP suite.

The next morning, Gota took a military flight to the Maldives and sped to the Waldorf Astoria. He tried to fly to Singapore but was barred from boarding for fear other passengers would assault him. He eventually made it to Singapore, but demonstrations erupted protesting his arrival, and he was confined to a hotel. A month later, he flew to Thailand, where he tried to obtain a Green Card to flee to the United States but was rejected. After 50 days on the run, he returned to Sri Lanka, where the country’s Supreme Court found him and his brothers guilty of economic mismanagement, violating the public trust, and violating “the fundamental rights of the people.”

President Trump and his shadow-president, Musk, are guilty of these exact crimes. The U.S. is larger and richer than Sri Lanka, but given that all powerful empires have collapsed, there’s no reason to doubt that enough committed Americans can send Trump and Musk fleeing Washington and darting between airports like rich fugitives.

If we can learn from our friends abroad, we can create the right cocktail of political discomfort that forces Trump from office before the next election, either through a Nixonian resignation, GOP mutiny in an impeachment trial, his cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment, the military removing him by force, or the Supreme Court convicting him like Gota. None of these will occur unless we, the democracy-loving citizen masses, demonstrate such resistance that the media, the country, the world, and the president himself can no longer ignore it.