In the following are excerpts of the interview “Resistance in dark times | Tad Stoermer” from the Interview Series “The Tea” with Dr. Myriam Francois [1], which highlight the role of civil political action facing the authoritarianism/fascism under US President Trump according to US history scholar Tad Stoermer.
Interviewer (Myriam Francois):
You wrote in your Substack that resistance isn’t about speeches or symbolic opposition, but about direct action operating without permission, forcing abuse of authority to spend its energy holding on and accepting that success isn’t guaranteed. Are you saying that it’s time for people to accept that they will have to come up against the force of the law?
Interviewee (Tad Stoermer):
Yes, absolutely. People have to get arrested. People have to get arrested. All resistance in order to, in fact, get going in order to make sure that abuse of authority will pay attention, involves risk. Risk of what? Risk of loss and all resistance depends upon that one question. What are you willing to risk and how much? It’s the nature and scope of that risk, and without it, there is no meaningful opposition.
This isn’t one thing that I go through in my book about the anti-slavery resistance, and we have to understand resistance dynamics. The first, the level of frustration that people like Henry David Thoreau saw, with moderates who just argued for reform and for appeasement and for compromise with the abuse of authority that was consigning 4 million Americans to live in brutality. Was perfectly fine with enabling the perpetuation of that abuse, as long as they remain comfortable and they didn’t have to risk their own place in the establishment.
The level of frustration that people like thorough and others had with that acceptance, there is already the violence inherent in the system. There is already the violence that was being deployed by the United States government in the Mexican War and then in the then in the Kansas-Nebraska act and then the Dred Scott decision, and then on the floor of the United States Senate when Preston Brooks went and beat the hell out of a United States Senator without any reaction, that recognition that unless they stepped up, what actual resistance meant, then this would never end. The oppression would never end. It was going to continue in perpetuity because there was no reason for it to end, since they had captured all the authority of the federal government twice.
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Interviewer (Myriam Francois):
What would you say to people who might push back and say, we’ve just seen the No King’s day, protests or demonstrations or parades, depending on how you see them. 7 million people, across America in different cities coming out, you know, purportedly to, oppose authoritarianism. Isn’t that a sign that democracy is healthy and doing what it should do, Tad?
Interviewee (Tad Stoermer):
I think it’s a sign of the exact opposite. I think it’s a sign that, yes, there is there is grievance. It’s legitimate. There is legitimate anger. And that anger exists in, in great numbers. And not that, you know, 7 million people more will come out and rally for a day to give voice against it. That is important for developing a level of solidarity and making people feel that they’re not alone, to, to ident, to be able to show abuse of authority, that there are people who are watching, the problem with it and is the major problem with it, as a part of resistance, is that it doesn’t do anything more than that. Abuse of authority just outweighs it. It always does. It will go ahead and and deal with it, ignore it on Saturday for the most part, and then come back and get back to what they’re doing on Monday because there is no tail to what’s going on on Saturday. That’s the big problem with it.
There is no organized opposition in the United States. They’re happy with the optics of, of a rally on on Saturday. No. King’s. What do we do with that on Monday? There is no direct call to action. There’s no articulated grievance. Even coming out of these protests on Saturday, there was no clear line of even what people were against. Even the coverage was talking to ten people getting ten different, giving ten different responses about what they were opposing and the calls to action. Coming out of all this were all steps. Go ahead and reinforce the status quo, reinforce establishment systems, vote blue. No matter who there. There was no targeted decisions about strategically what you need to do to push back against this regime. And in that case, opposition doesn’t even form, much less get, much less coalesce.
It comes down to this the function that protest serves and resistance. Is it a pressure release or is it a pressure creator? These are releasing pressure because it’s being built up within people who are angry about what’s going on. So they need to get that out, and that’s giving them their opportunity to do that. That serves the authority, because then they can just go home and be comfortable and then get up the next day and, you know, read the paper and go to the movies or binge watch Netflix. They can do that and still feel okay about what’s going on until the next time they get mad for resistance. That needs to turn into a pressure creator. It needs to be perpetuated, needs to be persisted.
The Gen Z protests are really going on right now are wonderful examples of what might be possible. But if you’re going to go ahead and hold, hold a rally for, for two hours in places where people aren’t allowed to go ahead and be very clear on their signage or in any kind of demonstrations about what they’re against. And there are no real calls to action about what they should do with it. Well, you can no king all you want. That’s still making an argument about what happened in 1776. Not what you need to do in 2025.
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References:
[1] Interview: “Resistance in dark times | Tad Stoermer”, Interviews Series “The Tea” with Myriam Francois, October 24, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITLLP2TPelA, https://www.patreon.com/posts/resistance-in-141949702
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