18 Aug 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, News, Russia, Ukraine, United States, Volume 54.02 Summer 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 2 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Land of the Free?: Trump’s war on speech at home and abroad, published on 21 July 2025. Read more about the issue here.
In April 2022, two months after the invasion of Ukraine, a bill designating the USA as “the main enemy of the Russian Federation” was submitted by several deputies of the Russian Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament). It was political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann – deemed to be a foreign agent by the Russian authorities – who told Index about this “strange bill”, as she described it. It was meant to amend the law on countermeasures in response to hostile acts by foreign states, which was passed in 2018.
In July 2024 – four months prior to US president Donald Trump’s election victory – six of the seven deputies who had submitted the bill withdrew their signatures.
“Usually this happens when [legislators] realise that their initiative is not going to pass, or that the timing is bad – or that it is politically risky,” Schulmann said.
It seems that the deputies got wind that “the outcome of the election would be such that the US would no longer be [Russia’s] foe – but a friend, if not the best friend”, she added.
In April 2025, the Council of the Duma, an organisational body within parliament, suggested dismissing the bill.
“The political situation changed – and the [bill’s] initiators were nowhere to be found,” said Schulmann.
Trump and the Russian narrative
The re-election of Trump was also pivotal in shaping the Kremlin’s rhetoric. In July 2022, Dmitry Kiselyov, host of Russian political show Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week), dedicated a whole segment to then US president Joe Biden’s poor health, speaking of his “cognitive problems”, according to independent news outlet Verstka.
And in February 2025, the host praised the new US president, saying: “Putin perceives in Trump his own quality – restraint.”
Vladimir Putin himself called Trump a “courageous man” after his victory. As for Trump, he publicly refused to call the Russian president a dictator (he had said Putin was “genius” and “savvy” on other occasions).
What’s more, Trump seems to be repeating the Kremlin’s claims about Ukraine’s responsibility for the aggression. “You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he said in April.
And when he called Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections” in February, he was echoing rhetoric from the Kremlin.
Trump’s criticism of the Ukrainian government is, in turn, used in Russian propaganda, which brainwashes people into supporting Putin’s politics. For example, in February, Kiselyov called Zelenskyy “a mediocre comedian”, according to Verstka, which mirrored Trump’s words about him being “a modestly successful comedian”. Kiselyov reportedly said that Trump “tolerated Zelenskyy for a long time, but now his disgust is obvious”.
Not only does Trump give credit to Putin’s official narrative but, since he took office, the White House has been debating lifting sanctions on Russian organisations and oligarchs, according to Reuters.
In an interview with the independent media outlet Zhivoy Gvozd in April, 83-year-old dissident-in-exile Lev Ponomaryov said that if the sanctions on the Kremlin’s officials were lifted during peace talks, it would allow for the “semi-fascist” regime to remain in place after the war ended. In fact, he is worried that the repression “will only become more severe” when the war is over, because Putin will need to reinforce his position domestically.
An end to Russia’s pariah status?
Talking to Index from Russia, independent politician Dmitriy Kisiev said that, for him, “it’s hard to imagine things getting worse” than they are today. He was the head of the team which stood behind the campaign of Boris Nadezhdin, the pro-peace candidate barred from running in the presidential election in March 2024.
According to Kisiev – and he admitted this might sound surprising – Trump’s presidency could ultimately benefit Russian civil society. He argued that Trump established “some sort of dialogue” with the Kremlin, which could eventually result in Russia becoming more integrated with the rest of the world. In that case, its civil society would be “freer and more protected”. He is concerned about Russia potentially “heading in the wrong direction”, like North Korea, which he described as “a very closed country and a totalitarian state”.
He used the example of Western companies, the majority of which left Russia at the beginning of the war. Their presence acted “as a kind of limiting factor” on the government and helped to deter the creation of overly harsh laws or regulations. This also applied to student exchange programmes and international tourism, which are no longer there either, he said.
Kisiev added that when Trump began talking about peace, speaking about it became safer in Russia. Whereas previously “peace politics” were supported by less than half the population, “today it feels as though more people are for peace”.
In a recent survey by the independent Levada Centre, more than half the respondents said they were in favour of peace talks. The number of people who believed peace negotiations “should definitely begin” (30%) has never been higher. The survey was conducted with 1,617 adults across Russia.
Kisiev underlined that Trump brought hope for peace to people in the face of despair. The pro-peace stance being voiced by more people, he said, could eventually lead to the end of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. When that happens, he believes Russia could evolve in a more “humanistic direction”.
“Some laws would be revised as there would be no more need for such harsh punishments,” he said, referring to legislation passed when the war began – the censorship law which criminalises “discreditation” of the Russian armed forces.
He tries to remain optimistic, saying that if he didn’t believe things could change for the better then he wouldn’t be taking the risk of being an opposition politician in Russia today.
When asked whether Russia’s repressive legislation could be amended or even abolished if the war ends, political scientist Schulmann said the Russian state system was “flexible”, which is “one of the main features of modern autocracies, [making] them different from the totalitarian systems of the 20th century”.
“They are the ones setting the norms,” she said. “A change in the political context can result in changes in the legislation … even though I don’t think that the system would want to get rid of such a convenient instrument as the war censorship law.”
Faint hopes for peace
An independent parliamentary deputy from Moscow, who requested anonymity, spoke to Index about the “faint hope” for peace raised by Trump, echoing Kisiev. But, alluding to the difficult peace negotiations, he said it was “hope which rises and falls, again and again”.
He highlighted that it was not only the public and the opposition in Russia who were fatigued by the war but also deputies from the Kremlin’s United Russia party.
He hopes that a peace agreement would allow his country to “go back in time to a more democratic era”.
But he said that repression remained as severe as it was at the beginning of the war and pro-democracy movements were still being crushed.
One recent example was the request by the Ministry of Justice to liquidate opposition party Grazhdanskaya Initsiativa (Civic Initiative) in May.
The same month, Grigory Melkonyants, co-founder of the election watchdog Golos (Voice), was sentenced to five years in prison after he was found guilty of working for an “undesirable organisation”.
Meanwhile, Trump’s politics continue to affect Russian refugees and opposition movements abroad.
Index spoke to LGBTQ+ activist Nadezhda Shchetinina, who fled Russia for the USA after the LGBTQ+ movement was labelled extremist in November 2023. “Since Trump took office, the [Customs and Border Protection] programme that allowed me to get to the United States safely is no longer operating,” she said.
Trump’s war on immigration and international aid
The second Trump administration has implemented harsh anti-immigration policies. One of its executive orders states that admitting refugees is now considered “detrimental” to US national interests.
Shchetinina said that Russians arriving in the USA have not been welcomed, especially since the invasion of Ukraine. And with Trump as president, “there is less hope that this situation will improve”.
“Everything is being done to prevent Russian political refugees from getting here, even though we have every right to [seek political refuge],” she said.
Many Russian immigrants – including those who have fled to the USA for political reasons – are kept in detention centres, she added. People are deported back to Russia despite the risks of being arrested as soon as they cross the border.
On top of this, the Trump administration has tried to dismantle multiple pro-democratic media outlets through funding cuts, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which are funded by the federal government. These outlets historically broadcast to countries behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Since then, they have continued reaching and covering authoritarian states, including Russia, countering state propaganda. Although some funding for these media outlets has been restored, their future is bleak under Trump amid his administration’s attacks, cuts to services and the resulting mass staff layoffs.
The president’s shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) also severely affects campaign groups, NGOs and independent media that oppose Putin abroad. Those impacted include Kovcheg (The Ark), which supports Russians who have fled because of their anti-war position; international human rights organisation Memorial; and also Golos, whose co-founder was jailed in May.
The human rights non-profit Free Russia Foundation has also had its funding heavily impacted, according to independent media outlet Meduza. Founded in the USA in 2014, FRF supports Russian political prisoners, refugees and civil society.
In 2024, it was labelled an “extremist organisation” by the Russian government. Its vice-president – dissident and former political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza – was released in the prisoner swap between Russia and the West in 2024. He became one of the key figures of Russian opposition abroad. In his speech in April at the opening of an exhibition in Paris dedicated to Russian political prisoners, Faces of Russian Resistance, he stressed that discussions between Trump and Putin had centred on economic issues rather than human rights.
“We hear [Trump and Putin] talk about minerals, [frozen] assets; American businesses coming back to Russia; direct flights – anything but the people,” he said.
He stressed the importance of releasing hostages of war, including children kidnapped in occupied Ukraine, and Russian political prisoners. “The only reason they [political prisoners] are imprisoned is that they spoke against this criminal war,” he said.
Olga Romanova, director of civil rights organisation Russia Behind Bars, recently said in an interview that Trump was not concerned about Russian political prisoners – including minors.
Dozens of teenagers have been imprisoned for their anti-war actions or words, such as 16-year-old Arseny Turbin, who was sentenced to five years in a correctional colony for “participation in a terrorist organisation”.
In May, Ukraine and Russia exchanged 1,000 prisoners of war each. But Russia’s commissioner for human rights, Tatyana Moskalkova – a key interlocutor in the swaps – does not work with independent human rights defenders, few of whom are still in Russia, Ponomaryov told Zhivoy Gvozd.
Moskalkova has also promoted the Kremlin’s narratives – including that the Russian armed forces are “successfully fighting neo-Nazism” – and has rejected the term “political prisoners”.
The USA on the global stage
Ponomaryov and other members of the Council of Russian Human Rights Defenders wrote an appeal in April, highlighting that human rights are not being prioritised in the current peace talks. Recognising human rights as “the necessary condition” for world peace and security was an important breakthrough of the post-World War II era, the appeal reads, referring to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The statement acknowledges how the USA has played a key role in this “movement towards progress”. But today, Ponomaryov says, “the US no longer sets an example for democracy, human rights and so on – and that is a catastrophe for the entire world”.
The Trump administration has created chaos for Russians opposing Putin abroad and reinforced the Russian leader’s position at home. At the same time, Trump’s relationship with Putin has raised a faint hope for peace.
But, even if the war ends it might not lead to the loosening of the Kremlin’s iron grip. As the human rights defenders’ appeal stresses, an unjust peace would “give a green light” to further aggression – and to even more repression in Russia.
In the face of this new reality, where the US president aligns with Putin rather than acting as a counterpower to him, there is a need for global unification. As Ponomaryov says, rights defenders across the world must come together around the issue of human rights and “start influencing what’s happening in the world arena”.
8 Aug 2025 | Africa, Americas, El Salvador, Europe and Central Asia, Georgia, News, St. Lucia, Turkey, Uganda
Bombarded with news from all angles every day, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at the imprisonment of a prominent Georgian journalist, and a blow to democracy in El Salvador.
A slap in the face: Georgian journalist is the country’s “first female prisoner of conscience”
Following a detention that lasted over 200 days, prominent Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli has been sentenced to two years in prison in a case described by human rights groups as “disproportionate and politicised”.
Amaglobeli, founder of independent news websites Batumelebi and Netgazeti, was taking part in national protests against the disputed national election that took place in October 2024 when she was twice arrested by Georgian police – first for placing a sticker on a building, and then for allegedly assaulting a police officer. A recording of the altercation showed that Amaglobeli lightly slapped the officer before being forcefully arrested, and her lawyers have stated that she was verbally abused and denied access to water following her arrest.
She has been recognised as the first female prisoner of conscience in a country where democracy and free speech have rapidly crumbled. While her initial charge of assault was downgraded to “resisting or using violence against a law enforcement officer”, her two-year sentence has been condemned by the EU, with a spokesperson denouncing the “instrumentalisation of the justice system as a tool of repression against independent voices”. Numerous rights groups have called for her release, with the Committee to Protect Journalists describing the sentence as “outrageous” and “emblematic of Georgia’s increasing use of authoritarian tactics” against independent media in the country.
President Nayib Bukele here to stay: El Salvador abolishes presidential term limits
On Friday 1 August, El Salvadoran Congress voted 57-3 to abolish presidential term limits, allowing President Nayib Bukele to potentially serve for life. Following the announcement, opposition congresswoman Marcela Villatoro announced that “democracy in El Salvador has died”.
Bukele, who has described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”, has garnered significant popular support since coming to power in 2019, with an approval rating of over 80%. This is largely due to his intense crackdown on the gang violence that has plagued the Central American nation. In 2022 he announced a “state of exception” allowing the government to arrest tens of thousands without due process. This practice has led to close to 2% of the nation’s population being incarcerated.
There may, however, be another side to the crackdown. In May, Independent Salvadoran news site El Faro released an interview with a gang leader who reportedly struck deals with Bukele to help the 44-year-old rise to power. Shortly after, numerous journalists at El Faro were forced to flee the country under threat of arrest. They are far from the only targets of Bukele’s administration; at least 40 journalists have been forced to flee El Salvador since May because of threats from the government. The country’s leading human rights group Cristosal decided in July to completely relocate following the arrest of Ruth López, Cristosal’s chief legal anti-corruption officer.
Human rights groups are alarmed about the swift deterioration of press freedom in El Salvador – but with Bukele’s popularity still sky-high and his party controlling 90% of seats in congress, he appears unassailable.
The crime of speaking up: Turkish youth activist detained over Council of Europe speech
On 5 August, Turkish youth and LGBTQ+ activist Enes Hocaoğulları was detained upon arrival at Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport over a speech he gave at a Council of Europe (COE) meeting in Strasbourg.
Hocaoğulları, who is Turkey’s youth delegate to the COE’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, gave a speech in March titled “Young people in Turkey say ‘Enough’” in which he railed against police brutality, crackdowns on dissent, and the imprisonment of opposition politicians such as Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was arrested earlier that month. Following his address, Hocaoğulları was subject to a targeted smear campaign branding him as a “traitor” who seeks to “spread LGBTI+ ideology”.
Hocaoğulları faces charges of “publicly disseminating misleading information” and “inciting hatred and enmity”, charges that “flout the fundamental right to free expression”, according to COE’s congress president Marc Cools. The COE previously expressed concern over the Turkish Government’s attacks on democracy after the arrest of İmamoğlu, who intends to challenge Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the 2028 elections. The COE have called for Hocaoğulları’s immediate release, describing his arrest as “scandalous and unacceptable”.
A step in the right direction: St Lucia strikes down colonial-era anti-LGBTQ+ law
In a landmark judgement, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court has ruled that St. Lucia’s colonial-era “buggery”and “gross indecency” laws outlawing consensual same-sex relations are unconstitutional.
Previously, engaging in intercourse with a member of the same sex was punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Although the law was rarely enforced, Human Rights Watch have detailed how such laws imposed under British colonial rule allow for discrimination in employment and healthcare, creating a “climate of fear” for LGBTQ+ communities who felt they could not report homophobic abuse to the authorities. The court held that criminalisation of homosexual conduct results in “public humiliation, vilification and even physical attacks” on LGBTQ+ individuals.
St. Lucia is the latest Caribbean nation to repeal colonial-era anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, following in the footsteps of Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados, among others. However, many of its neighbours still hold on to these laws, with Trinidad and Tobago & St. Vincent and the Grenadines recently voting to uphold repressive legislation targeting LGBTQ+ people.
Jailed for a TikTok: Ugandan university student imprisoned for posting TikTok critical of the president
Ugandan university student Elson Tumwine, who went missing for over a month after posting a TikTok criticising Ugandan President Yowerei Museveni, has been sentenced to two months imprisonment.
Tumwine, a third-year student at Makerere University in Uganda’s capital Kampala, posted a video accusing Museveni of being responsible for the 1989 Mukura massacre, allegedly doctoring a clip of parliamentary speaker Anita Among to make these claims. He was working as an agricultural intern in Hoima, western Uganda, when he disappeared, causing Makerere University to issue an urgent appeal for his whereabouts. Secretary-general of opposition NUP party David Lewis Rubongoya claimed to have information that Tumwine was dumped at a police station on 13 July after being subjected to “incredible torture” by military intelligence units.
The prosecution stated that the TikTok was intended “to ridicule, demean and incite hostility” against Museveni and Among, and charged Tumwine with offensive communication and computer misuse. In court he swiftly pled guilty, resulting in a more lenient sentence than expected. although local reports allege that he may have done so under pressure from security operatives.
Tumwine is the latest Ugandan to face charges over videos critical of the government on social media, with the Ugandan e-paper Monitor stating he is the sixth TikToker to be imprisoned in the country for “offensive communication”. Emmanuel Nabugodi, was jailed for 32 months in November 2024 for “insulting” Museveni in a TikTok, while Edward Awebwa faced 24 months on similar charges in July 2024.
25 Jul 2025 | Africa, Americas, El Salvador, Kenya, Malawi, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine, United States
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at how a human rights group has been forced out of their country, and how the White House faces backlash for banning a popular news outlet.
Human rights on the run: Activists critical of Nayib Bukele forced to flee El Salvador
After 25 years of activism, Cristosal, the most prominent human rights group in El Salvador, has made the decision to relocate its staff and operations out of the country following increasing threats and targeting by the Salvadoran government.
Cristosal had been at odds with President Nayib Bukele’s government for years. The group was at the forefront of critics within the country over the wrongful deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador from the US and has compiled alleged evidence of torture and corruption within Bukele’s government. But tensions have escalated as El Salvador has forged a strong alliance with the USA under Donald Trump. Executive director of Cristosal Noah Bullock stated that repression against journalists and activists has escalated in the last two months, and that the arrest of Ruth López, Cristosal’s chief legal officer in anti-corruption was the tipping point that pushed them to flee.
López, held in the Izalco prison in the west of El Salvador, is now the only Cristosal employee remaining in the country where it was founded; the group ensured that all staff were safely out of the country before making the announcement out of fear of Bukele’s response. It follows an increasing trend of journalists and activists fleeing the Central American country – at least 40 journalists have relocated since May, alongside over 60 lawyers and activists, due to police harassment, surveillance, and threats of arrest. Cristosal will continue to cover human rights abuses in El Salvador from exile in neighbouring countries Guatemala and Honduras.
Getting the boot: White House bars Wall Street Journal from Trump’s Scotland trip
The White House has come under fire for barring The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) from joining the media entourage covering Donald Trump’s trip to Scotland following a controversial report regarding Trump and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The article contained a description of a letter Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein for the disgraced financier’s 50th birthday, including a drawing of a naked woman and allegedly including the quote “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump denied ever writing the letter, and reportedly threatened to sue WSJ if they released the article. US press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated WSJ were kicked from the press pool due to “fake and defamatory conduct”.
A spokesperson for rival newspaper New York Times has condemned the decision, dubbing it “an attack on core constitutional principles underpinning free speech and a free press“, while the White House Correspondents Association’s president Weijia Jiang stated that it should “concern all who value free speech and an independent media”. It is merely the latest incident of the Trump administration cracking down on media organisations; in February the White House revoked the Associated Press’s access to presidential events after it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America” as Trump had decreed.
A tipping point: BBC joins media orgs in statement on Gaza starvation
The BBC have released a joint statement with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP) and Reuters expressing concern over the rapidly increasing threat of starvation to their journalists reporting from Gaza.
International journalists are currently barred by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip, meaning that the only reporters on the ground are local Palestinian journalists, who are as affected by the ongoing conflict as civilians. The statement reads, “For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering.”
It follows an AFP statement calling for Israel to allow its freelance journalists to leave Gaza, reporting that they had been forced to cut back on their coverage of the conflict due to starvation; one journalist said, “we have no energy left due to hunger”. This aligns with widespread reports that the famine in Gaza is reaching unprecedented levels due to Israeli forces blocking aid into the country. The chief of the World Health Organization stated that Gaza is suffering “man-made mass starvation”, and over 100 humanitarian groups released a joint statement detailing the “intense famine” faced across Gaza. Israeli government spokesman David Mencer refuted this, telling Sky News that “There is no famine in Gaza”, and that all food shortages had been “engineered by Hamas”.
A step in the right direction: Malawi decriminalises defamation
In a landmark judgement regarded as a huge step towards press freedom for the south-east African nation, Malawi has ruled that criminal defamation is unconstitutional, stating that it was a “disproportionate and unjustifiable limitation on constitutional freedom”.
The judgement came as part of a case concerning Malawian social media influencer Joshua Chisa Mbele, who challenged Section 200 of the Penal Code – the section criminalising defamation – after charges were brought against him for comments he had made regarding a public official. The Malawi chapter of Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) described the case as “a landmark victory for freedom of expression”.
The law had allowed those found guilty of defamation to face criminal sanctions, such as steep fines and imprisonment. The court ruled arbitrary interpretations of the law and the fear of reprisal harming public discourse meant that the law violated constitutional rights regarding free speech. However, true press freedom in Malawi remains distant: publishing “false news” can be met with up to two years in jail, while the “unauthorised transmitting of data” can be met with up to five years’ imprisonment.
A swift U-turn: Terror charges against Kenyan activist dropped after backlash
Notable Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi was arrested on 19 July 2025, accused of “facilitation of terrorist acts” during the widespread protests that have shaken Kenya over the last two months. His arrest sparked outrage across the country and worldwide, with rights groups denouncing the charges raised against him and #FreeBonifaceMwangi going viral on social media. Now, the terror charges have been dropped, in place of the lesser charge of the illegal possession of ammunition without a licence.
Investigators reportedly searched his home and office, seizing personal devices such as a laptop, notebooks and two unused teargas canisters. The search warrant used by the police also allegedly accused Mwangi of paying “goons” to incite the protests, a claim that Mwangi denies. He stated outside court 21 July that he has never worked with “goons” and that “people hate [Kenyan President William] Ruto for free.”
Mwangi is often involved in protests, and has been detained a number of times. In May, he and Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire were detained and allegedly tortured following a protest in Tanzania before being dumped at the borders of their respective countries. Recent protests in Kenya have been met with intense repression, with Ruto ordering officials to shoot demonstrators in the leg to ensure they are incapacitated but not killed – nevertheless, 65 people are reported to have died in protests since unrest began on 12 June.
25 Jul 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, News, Russia, United States, Volume 54.02 Summer 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 2 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Land of the Free?: Trump’s war on speech at home and abroad, published on 21 July 2025. Read more about the issue here.
On a hot June evening in London’s Bloomsbury earlier this summer, there was standing room only to hear the American historian Benjamin Nathans talk about the Soviet dissident tradition. Perhaps the audience at Pushkin House, the UK’s oldest independent Russian cultural centre, was drawn by the author’s new-found celebrity – the result of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize he has been awarded for his 800-page history of the dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause. Whatever the reason for so many people being there, they were treated to a masterclass in storytelling. After detailing the struggles of a tiny network of writers, scientists and academics against the authoritarian Soviet regime, Nathans turned to the subject of Donald Trump’s America.
“We are in a state of war,” he said. “We are in a state of war with our own government, and this is a war that’s going to last at least several years. The sooner that people understand that, as far as I’m concerned, the better. We need to be on a war footing.”
Nathans is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution based in Philadelphia, who has made his reputation through careful and nuanced analysis of Russian and Jewish history. His comments on US politics were delivered in the same calm and measured tone as his answers on Soviet intellectuals in the middle years of the 20th century.
Although “UPenn” is not on the frontline of attacks from the Trump administration, like Harvard and Columbia, it has been threatened with significant funding cuts – a $175 million embargo on research. Its offence? Five years ago, the university allowed the trans athlete Lia Thomas to participate in the women’s swimming team.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of this decision, at the time Thomas met the requirements of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) to swim on the women’s team. Nathans elaborated: “So what the White House is essentially saying is, you obey the law five years ago, but we changed the law three months ago, and now we’re going to go after you retroactively for having violated our version of the law.” University of Pennsylvania is suing the government to block this action, but Nathans recognised that the Trump administration has a whole armoury of measures up its sleeve: stripping the university of its nonprofit status, taxing its endowment, or blocking the recruitment of foreign students, to name a few.
Beginning the fightback
Initially shellshocked, those opposed to the attacks on American civil society, including universities, are finally fighting back, said Nathans. “I know a lot of people in Europe have been dismayed at the lack of protest, at least until [14 June] with the ‘No Kings’ Day’, which produced a tremendous turnout in dozens and dozens of American cities. I participated in several quite modest-sized protests against these threatened funding cuts, against the demand by the administration that they have a say in our admissions policy, that they have a say in our hiring policies, things that just so egregiously cross the line of state interference.”
It would seem the global expert on dissidents is himself becoming a dissident in his own land. However, Nathans believes Trump and his allies are not mistaken in their view that American universities are hotbeds of left-liberal thinking.
“The reason why this war started with the Trump administration is that they view American universities as factories that produce Democrats. And they’re not wrong,” he said. In case anyone in the audience doubted him, Nathans repeated himself for emphasis: “They are not wrong. 95% of my department identifies with the Democratic Party. You have to look really hard to find a Republican in the humanities at a place like Penn.
“In general, there is a very clear, powerful correlation between higher education and voting Democratic – the more degrees people get, the more likely they are to vote for a Democratic candidate. Now, correlation is not causation, but as they say in the social sciences, it’s a good place to start.
“Republicans say, you know, why are we giving so much money to these institutions that just produce Democratic voter after Democratic voter? They concluded at some point that we are unreformable, that they cannot break the chokehold that left-of-centre academics have on the Academy.
“And so, what they’re going to do is break the institutions themselves, and that is what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to destroy these institutions so that they can remake them in a very different mould. It’s a war, in other words.”
The end of the Ivy League?
On a slightly more positive note, the historian said he didn’t believe the present US government would succeed in its mission to crush the USA’s elite universities, but he felt it would do a lot of damage on the way.
Intriguingly, there is a strategy at the heart of the dissident movement that may serve those fighting the Trump regime well. In the opening chapters of his book, Nathans describes the thinking of Alexander Esenin-Volpin, an eccentric mathematician and poet, who developed an ingenious method of resistance. For figures like Volpin and those around him, the old ways of the revolutionaries, such as mass demonstrations and underground cells, seemed outdated and associated with the romantic myth-making of the regime they opposed.
Volpin despised the “lingering romance with revolution as the paradigmatic form of historical change”. Instead, he suggested holding the Soviet government to the literal meaning of the 1936 Stalin-era constitution, which guaranteed free expression and open justice. In the 1960s, he developed the concept of the “glasnost meeting”, where people would gather to demand adherence to the law by the authorities. Glasnost translates to “openness” or “transparency”.
This “law-based dissent” was tested first at the glasnost meeting of 5 December 1965 in Pushkin Square, led by Volpin. It was designed symbolically to coincide with Constitution Day under the watchful eye of Russia’s late national poet Alexander Pushkin, the author of Ode to Liberty.
When Nathans was writing the conclusion to his epic work in the summer of 2023, his first thought was how it would carry in translation in Russia. He never imagined that it would take on a resonance in the USA. Now, he believes the parallels are real and that lessons can be learnt: “The dissident legal strategy can serve to highlight the really fundamental role that American courts are playing in resistance to Trump. And it’s a mixed picture, to be sure, but a lot of the imperial overreach that we’re experiencing now from this administration is being pushed back by the courts saying, ‘No, you can’t expel people from the country without due process. No, you can’t withhold money from a university and threaten to take over its hiring procedures’.”
Disdain for the law
The consequences of these judicial rulings are still unclear, and Trump, like his Soviet predecessors, is not overly concerned with obeying the law. But Nathans said there was inspiration to be drawn from law-based dissent along with other dissident strategies. “The legal strategy and the ability to destroy the Soviet government’s monopoly on the flow of information in the form of samizdat (censored and underground publications) and the radio broadcasts that brought it to millions of Soviet listeners – there is an echo of that in the situation in the United States today. It’s the courts and the press that are the front lines.”
It was also possible, said Nathans, that the legalistic approach coupled with a robust media might ultimately prove more effective than a traditional protest movement. “It’s very hard to measure the impact of public protests. The numbers are impressive. The diversity of the crowds is impressive. But how do you translate that into political outcomes? Whereas judicial rulings and the transparency that good journalism forces on a regime, those are things that you can really measure. So, I do think there are lessons to be learned from this story.” Nathans has referred to the “radical civil obedience” of Soviet dissidents and it is not difficult to see the correlation with Trump’s America.
It is no longer fanciful or hyperbolic to characterise Trump as an authoritarian leader. What he hinted at in his first term, he has delivered in his second. In a matter of months, he has dismantled the structures of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within state-funded institutions and thousands of people have been fired from their jobs. Political activists have had their visas revoked and dozens of universities have been investigated.
On the research side, cuts to funding have forced labs to shut down and university departments to lay off staff. There is now a real possibility of a brain drain in American academia. Meanwhile, civil society organisations have faced threats over their tax-exempt status. The crackdown on the media has included the White House taking control of the press pool that covers presidential events, and the defunding of broadcasters such as National Public Radio, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Challenging the American state
The concept of the “American dissident” is already gaining currency in intellectual circles. In April 2025, Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer published a New Yorker weekend essay entitled So You Want to Be a Dissident: A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump’s Age of Fear. Angwin, a respected investigative journalist and Fields-Meyer, a White House senior policy adviser from 2021 to 2024, warned that “the consequences of challenging the state seem to increasingly carry real danger”. While recognising that there had always been retribution for those who took on the American state, this felt different.
“The fear now is different in kind,” they said. “The sweeping scope of Trump’s appetite for institutionalised retaliation has changed the threat landscape for everyone, almost overnight. In a country with a centuries-long culture of free expression, the punishments for those who express even the slightest opposition to the administration have been a shock to the American system.”
Angwin and Fields-Meyer also cited To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause and Nathans’ concept of “radical civil obedience” as a potential source of inspiration for Trump’s opposition. “An affirmative vision of what the world should be is the inspiration for many of those who, in these tempestuous early months of Trump 2.0, have taken meaningful risks – acts of American dissent.”
In December 2024, four months after Nathans’ book was published, The Atlantic staff writer Gal Beckerman was quick to recognise its saliency for contemporary America. In an article entitled A Mindset for Trump’s America, Beckerman picked up on another dissident strategy expressed best by Andrei Amalrik, the author best known for his provocative 1970 essay Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? Writing later of his fellow dissidents, Amalrik said:
“They did something simple to the point of genius. In an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.”
Never normalise
Ultimately, the dissident mindset is the radical refusal to accept institutional untruth. It is the denial of denial. Whether embodied in Václav Havel, the former dissident who became President of Czechoslovakia, or Alexei Navalny, who died at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s neo-Stalinist regime, dissidents are people who, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie.
“What dissidents teach us is not to normalise,” said Beckerman. “Just look at the Republican Party’s radically shifting attitudes about Trump to understand how easily this can happen. Leaders who were once worried enough to publicly call the former and future president out as a ‘reprehensible’ (JD Vance) ‘con artist’ (Marco Rubio) who had ‘discredited the American experiment with self-governance’ (Robert F Kennedy Jr) are now his closest advisers and legitimisers.”
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause has taken on an almost mythic status in Trump’s America and its author rightly won the Pushkin House Book Prize, which celebrates the best non-fiction writing in English on Russia, to go with the Pulitzer Prize.
The title of Nathans’ book is a reference to the ironic toast dissidents made to each other in the dark days of the Cold War. The American dissident cause must sometimes seem equally hopeless in the face of the USA’s first authoritarian president. Donald Trump has often been described as a “pathological liar”. It is entirely appropriate then that his opponents should take inspiration from Alexander Esenin-Volpin, the man who the great Russian dissident and fierce Putin critic Vladimir Bukovsky described as “pathologically honest”.
