Archbishop Desmond Tutu once warned, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Neutrality—that quiet silence born of fear and resignation—is the oxygen every autocrat breathes. They survive by persuading us that resistance is pointless, that solidarity is too dangerous, and that isolation is inevitable.

But history has no mercy for regimes built on fear. They all fall.

We are watching the same authoritarian script play out today, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia to Benjamin Netanyahu’s siege of Gaza, from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to the United States itself.

On Monday, President Trump invoked the Home Rule Act to seize control of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, installing Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terry Cole as its leader. Citing “violent gangs, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people,” Trump’s move stripped local leaders of authority and placed city policing directly under federal control.

Tyranny collapses because people insist on the truth, because they reach for each other even when fear tells them not to.

The rhetoric is familiar: Criminalize the marginalized, amplify public fear, and consolidate power in fewer hands.

This is no isolated power grab. A landmark survey of more than 500 political scientists, known as Bright Line Watch, reveals a chilling reality: The U.S. is rapidly moving away from its democratic foundations........

© Common Dreams