#5: How to Break a Tyrant

It only takes 3.5% of the population to bring a regime to its knees if citizens know how to play the game.

That number isn’t a guess. It comes from political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who analyzed hundreds of resistance movements over the last century. The movements that succeeded in removing autocrats or forcing democratic reforms were the ones that were large, broad-based, and disciplined enough to sustain pressure over time. They were also the ones that stayed peaceful. And they only needed active participation from a small sliver of the population to succeed.

That’s really good news.

The bad news is that most people don’t know how this game is actually played. They think they can get rid of an autocrat by using existing institutions. Or through violence. But in practice, successful resistance movements all follow the same script. Build a solid organizational game that can sustain a movement over time. Make yourself relevant to the widest set of the population and convince them it’s in their interest to follow. Never, ever turn to violence; as soon as you do that you lose support.

We’ve now come to the final post in this series on how autocrats play the information game and how the public can beat them. This one is about winning.

Why Size Isn’t Enough

People often assume that massive protests equal success. But what’s more important is resilience.

Think back to the Women’s March in 2017. It was one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history. Millions of people showed up (I showed up). It sent a powerful signal of opposition to the incoming Trump administration. But within weeks, the energy faded. There were no clear demands, no coordinated follow-up, and no sustained pressure on the people and institutions that helped Trump’s rise.

Compare that to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004. Protesters filled Kyiv’s Independence Square for weeks after a dishonest presidential election. They stayed (and kept staying) despite freezing temperatures and threats. The movement was diverse which is also key. It included students, pensioners, workers, even members of the military. And they had a clear goal. They wanted a revote. When the protesters didn’t back down, the regime eventually did.

The 3.5% Rule

Chenoweth’s research shows that no regime has survived a nonviolent movement that engaged more than 3.5% of the population in sustained protest. That’s a tipping point - a level of disruption and visibility that shifts the incentives for everyone else, including those inside the regime.

In the U.S., that means roughly 11 to 12 million people. That’s more than showed up for the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 which were already among the largest in American history. The BLM protests were extraordinary, but they didn’t solidify into a national movement capable of driving sustained reform.

Lasting movements need a lot more than passion.

They need leadership, infrastructure, and strategy. Leadership doesn’t mean a single charismatic figure. It means a disciplined network of organizers, legal strategists, fundraisers, and spokespeople, all coordinating across cities and constituencies. Infrastructure means permanent organizations, funding pipelines, tech platforms, legal teams, and training systems that last long after the crowds go home. And successful strategies combine mass protest with electoral campaigns, legal action, policy design, and coalition-building. BLM changed local politics and shaped the national conversation, but it didn’t have this deeper architecture to keep the momentum going.

That’s what’s needed now. Not just more people in the streets, but real infrastructure and a coordinated strategy.

How the Public Wins

Winning the information game requires flipping the story: showing the public that they are stronger than the autocrat.

There are three ways do to this:

1. Undermine the Regime’s Base of Support

No autocrat rules alone. They rely on alliances with the courts, the business elite, the military, and party loyalists. Public resistance wins when it creates incentives for allies who had supported the autocrat to jump ship.

When large protests are peaceful and visibly diverse, they send a signal to people inside the system (judges, civil servants, military officers, political appointees, CEOs) that they may be on the wrong side of history. It reveals that there could be real costs to continuing their support and that there’s still time to choose the right side.

When businesses see instability hurting the economy, they pull support. When soldiers are asked to repress citizens who look like their families, some refuse. This is what happened in Tunisia in 2011. It’s what nearly happened in Venezuela in 2019. It’s what may still happen in the U.S., if pressure is applied strategically.

2. Create an Information Cascade

One of the biggest hurdles preventing people from protesting is uncertainty: “Am I the only one who feels this way?” The more people see others resisting, especially from unexpected sectors (think “Pastors and Police for Democracy”) the more likely they are to join.

That’s why it matters when veterans protest. Or when small-town mayors speak out. Or when conservative business leaders publicly break with an authoritarian figure. These signals blow up the myth that everyone is okay with the status quo.

3. Sustain the Effort

Autocrats count on fatigue. They wait for people’s passion to burn out. The public wins when it stays the course. Weekly marches. Economic boycotts. Strategic walkouts.

In Poland, the Solidarity movement took nearly a decade to bring down communist rule. It did this peacefully, by building a parallel civil society and sustaining pressure until the regime collapsed under its own weight.

What This Means for the U.S.

The United States is not Venezuela. It’s not Egypt. It’s not Myanmar. But that doesn’t mean the game is different. It’s still about perception. It’s still about who appears strong, who looks isolated, and who can keep the pressure up when the other side starts to slip.

The public doesn’t need to overthrow the government. It just needs to reveal its deep dissatisfaction, hold the line, and create visible, sustained resistance that breaks the illusion that the strongman can’t be touched.

Because once 3.5% of the country stands up and refuses to sit down, the strongman starts to look weaker by the day.

And once that happens, the game changes.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.