The No Kings Movement Has All But No Point
As no amount of synchronized dancing or masquerading in inflatable costumes is going to relieve the United States of its descent into authoritarianism, non-Americans should take heed of the need to take matters into their own hands
It should go without saying that, as time passes under this second Donald Trump administration, the United States is increasingly revealing itself as being far more aligned with the likes of authoritarian Russia than it is with its more traditional allies, the most notable example of all being its treatment of Ukraine. Although examples of this change in alignment are legion, in just the past few days we can see how president Trump lifted sanctions on the import of Russian diesel fuel (which could very well be sourced from Iran, the country it's currently at war with), threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine (which it followed through with), lied that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an "energy cease-fire", accused Ukraine of blocking negotiations with Russia (when it's actually Ukraine that's been proposing cease-fires on multiple occasions, all of which have been rebuffed by Russia), and more.
Whether Trump was recruited by the KGB as a spy under the code name "Krasnov", has been "merely" cultivated as a Russian asset for more than 40 years, or none of the above, the undeniable fact is that Trump clearly has an affinity for the authoritarian leader of Russia (as well as the authoritarian leaders of China, North Korea, and more) and acts in Russia's interests rather than those of democracy-aligned Americans and allies.
But Trump's affinities aren't the only issues that democratic (former?) allies should be concerned about, because what's possibly just as important is what the response of ordinary Americans has been to Trump's affinities, and even more importantly what exactly they're doing about the democratic backsliding that's affecting their very own country (whose indirect as well as direct knock-on effects are notably also impacting the countries of said democratic [former?] allies).
If those democratic (former?) allies are looking for an answer to how Americans are responding to their current situation, then it'd be of use to put their behaviour in context by comparing it to the behaviour of another country that in the recent past has been in somewhat of a similar position (of having a leader whose strings are largely being pulled by Russian president Vladimir Putin). Rather fittingly, an excellent case for comparison just so happens to be the country that the United States is currently working to undermine and force to capitulate to the demands of president Putin. Ukraine.
Let's take a first look then at how Ukrainians responded when their country was recently threatened with takeover by Russia, followed up with a look at how Americans are responding to their country being remade into a form similar to that of Russia's, replete with an authoritarian leader, oligarchs, rampant corruption, and all the rest of it.
Resistance is fertile (in Ukraine)
Ukrainians have their own experience of dealing with a Russian-aligned leader, specifically its fourth president, Viktor Yanukovych, who held office from February 2010 to February 2014. While his alignment to Russia somewhat bounced back and forth over the years (he was nicknamed "Moscow's man" during his first [failed] presidential run in 2004, but then repeatedly snubbed Putin's intense pressure to join the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union in his initial years as president), he eventually showed what might be called his true colours when, just days before he was set to sign an association agreement with the European Union in November of 2013, he abruptly pulled out and instead opted for a $15 billion bailout from the Russian government.
Yanukovych's alignment with Russia ultimately alienated the Ukrainian public (who overwhelmingly favoured European integration) and sparked what came to be known as the Euromaidan protests. Starting on November 21st, 2013, protests broke out on Kyiv's Independence Square / Maidan Nezalezhnosti (of which soon spread to the rest of the country), upon which thousands of protesters turned the square into a protest camp with kitchens and first aid posts; with stages for speeches, lectures and debates; with stacked tires, sandbags and wooden crates to secure it into a fortress. While a core group of a few hundred people undertook a permanent occupation of the square and slept out in tents and adjacent occupied buildings (even through the bitterly cold winter months), attendance of the protests at times reached several hundred thousand people, if not more than a million.
Public outrage emerged when riot police attacked (peaceful) protesters on November 30th, which ultimately transformed the (peaceful) protests from pro-European integration into a nationwide revolution against government corruption (which still exists to this day, albeit to a much lesser extent), police brutality, and authoritarian rule.
While the Euromaidan protests lasted just over three months, in its final days it developed into what came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, largely due to violent clashes that occurred between protesters and police, resulting in the deaths of over 100 protesters (most occurring between the 18th and 20th of February, the deceased coming to be known as the "Heavenly Hundred"), many of whom were killed by police snipers.
Come February 21st an agreement was signed by Yanukovych and the opposition, bringing about an interim unity government, constitutional reforms, and early elections. Although it was agreed that Yanukovych could remain president but with reduced powers, with police abandoning Maidan square the next day he secretly fled the city and, following his removal from office by the Ukrainian parliament for having abandoned his duties, asked Russia for help before secretly feeling to Russia itself (which just so happens to be where Trump, his family, and all his cronies belong) where he's lived in exile under the protection of the Kremlin ever since.
But whereas Ukrainians, under circumstances unique to themselves, worked out a way of how to deal with a president who in one way or another was a puppet of the Russian leader, Americans appear to be utterly clueless and feckless when it comes to dealing with their own president who, although he serves himself first and foremost, is nonetheless in one way or another also subservient to the Russian puppeteer.
Resistance is futile (in the United States)
When it comes to ordinary Americans ostensibly pushing back against their wannabe King, Donald Trump, it appears that doing so isn't all that high on their list of priorities, and certainly isn't garnering the degree of seriousness that Ukrainians showed during their Euromaidan protests.
As is well known by now, the most prominent – if not only – form of broad-based organized resistance that Americans have partaken in to express their discontent with Trump and his administration is the nationwide No Kings protests that kicked off back on June 14th of 2025. Don't get the wrong impression by associating the No Kings protests with the Euromaidan protests though, because no, there certainly haven't been protesters camping out in various cities (or in even just one city) across the US, as the duration of these protests have been along the lines of a not-so-frequent-or-so-long-so-as-to-inconveniently-interfere-with-people's-lives kind of thing.
More specifically, these No Kings protests haven't been a continuous undertaking but rather have occurred on nothing more than a few widely-spread-out dates:
- 14th June 2025, with 5m+ attendees
- 18th October 2025, with nearly 7m attendees
- 28th March 2026, with 8m+ attendees
- 17th October 2026, with 2,500+ marches/rallies/protests held across all 50 states
Moreover, they individually last no longer than an hour or two, sometimes "as long" as three hours. Put it all together and, over the past year and a half, the cumulative duration of these No Kings protests has generally amounted to somewhere between four and 12 hours.
In total.
Over an entire year and a half.
In a year and a half those same No Kings attendees have probably spent more time at bars and restaurants, at the movie theatres, even getting their hair cut, than they have at No Kings protests. In fact, many of those No Kings attendees have probably spent more time scrolling through social media in a single week (if not in a single day) than they've spent at all of the No Kings protests combined.
Putting aside snarky comments and the fact that these No Kings protests occur on the not-quite rapid-fire tempo of once every half a year, the reasoning for their scant duration can likely be chalked up to the fact that, alongside the necessity for permits, police escorts, crowd control and porta-potties were events to last longer than a couple of hours (you can see porta-potties in the Euromaidan photograph above), the reality is that for various reasons most ordinary Americans wouldn't be willing to commit more than a couple of hours of their time anyway. Moreover, attendees would all but certainly trickle in and out were the events to be held for the entire day, ruining the impact of having everybody there all at once from which photos and videos could be made available for news outlets and – let's face it – for sharing on social media.
To get to the point of this most recent No Kings iteration, its overriding aim, as pointed out by NPR, was to "get people out to vote early in the midterm elections". That is, the United States, the richest country the world has ever seen, the supposed bastion of democracy, saw organizers utilize a large amount of resources to stage more than 2,500 rallies not to galvanize its millions of attendees and other Americans to undertake some kind of (non-violent) radical action in order to meet the (dire) moment, but rather to encourage Americans to participate in nothing more than the most bare minimum and low-effort tenet of democracy there is: voting, something that to a certain extent should be nothing more than a given. If that isn't an indication of the pitiful and pathetic state of democracy and of civic responsibility in the United States today, of the inability of Americans to step up and meet the moment, then what is?
And "pitiful and pathetic" is by no means an exaggeration. Keeping in mind the months-long protests that Ukrainians undertook in the bitter cold months of 2013/14 as a comparison, what Americans have done after nearly two years of what is without a doubt the most incompetent, traitorous, authoritarian, and blatantly corrupt presidential regime the country has ever seen is hang out in government-approved glorified street parties (on weekends so that no one's inconvenienced), replete with synchronized dancing with the "energy of family barbecue" and a welcoming "festival atmosphere". After which attendees generally go back home to their regular scheduled programming of doing nothing, effectively convinced that urinating on a forest fire amounts to something productive.
To drive home the un-seriousness of it all, the big trend at these protests (supposing that that word doesn't belong in quotations) is to don inflatable costumes in which, as the BBC describes it, reiterating descriptions made above, "demonstrators are adopting the energy of a community costume parade or block party". Said costumed protesters have also "taught salsa lessons, handed out snacks and ridden unicycles as armed law enforcement look on", a professor specializing in performance art exemplifying what is seemingly his full support of the approach by stating that "it makes it look worse if you respond with violence".
But the absence of violence (complete passivity and fecklessness) isn't necessarily any better, or more useful, than the existence of violence. The donation-funded "Operation Inflation" (in which inflatable costumes are handed out freely to those wanting one) has unsurprisingly met much success, its express purpose originally being to counter the narrative that Trump needed to send the National Guard into Portland, Oregon, after he called it a "burning hell hole". As Operation Inflation co-founder Brooks Brown described a conversation with police,
[An officer] said that the thing he likes about it is he knows anyone in these costumes isn't going to be doing something that they've got to run from, which is fair because if you haven't been in one of these costumes, you cannot run in them.
But what the police care or don't care about should be a complete non-story, as pleasing or displeasing them amounts to nothing when it comes to confronting the Trump administration. Regardless of whether or not a protester is either riding a unicycle, giving salsa lessons or doing something requiring running away from, Trump likely couldn't care either way. Worst case scenario violence draws in the National Guard and repression escalates, best case scenario a bunch of performance artists entertain the masses at the bi-annual "costume parade block party" and little to nothing is accomplished (other than everybody patting each other on the back for having "raised consciousness" or something).
As one protester in an inflatable unicorn costume similarly put it,
They can't handle people responding in a silly or frivolous or humorous fashion. They just don't know what to do about that.
"Do"? "Do" about what? What threat to the stability of the Trump administration do protesters in inflatable costumes pose? Answer: nothing, because the entire No Kings movement and its sign-wielding and costumed protesters amount to little more than a gigantic circle jerk in which everybody pats each other on the back about how they're all standing up to oppression, happily proclaiming to every television journalist (eager to fill up some advertisement-flogging airtime with the latest bit of protestainment) that they're actually accomplishing something. Meanwhile, Trump laps it all up as he knows none of it threatens him in the slightest, and so ultimately doesn't give the slightest shit.
So to speak. Because while Americans are constantly revealing how feckless the American populace currently is, not only does their authoritarian president realize that when it comes to Americans standing up to him that he has little to worry about (other than some boxes getting ticked in polling booths, which might actually be inconsequential, depending on what might happen between November 3rd and January 3rd), but their authoritarian president also feels free to mock the feckless populace by posting to his Truth Social platform an AI video depicting him flying in a jet over New York City while dropping mounds of feces all over the protesters below.
The fact of the matter is that all of the No Kings-affiliated symbolic actions are little more than the opposite of trying, what with them being more like an ersatz effort emblematic of the learned helplessness that the throng of consumerist- and entertainment-oriented Americans have come to embody.
The possibility that something undertaken by Americans might have an actual effect on their current political situation will eventuate only when Americans are actually willing to make sacrifices, which at the very least would go beyond "sacrificing" a few spare hours on the weekend. Unless a significant amount of Americans are willing to actually give anything up or experience any actual discomfort, unless business as usual is threatened with sustained mass action, then little to nothing in the United States is going to change.
As it stands, it doesn't appear that the future of the No Kings movement is going to come anywhere close to encouraging or bringing about any sacrifice or discomfort in its attendees (never mind Americans at large). While the approachable and public-friendly No Kings movement has so far yielded no tangible results (besides that of much positive attitude!), what appears to be its way forward is at worst nothing more than more No Kings rallies while at best more network building and busy-bee organizing.
But even in that best case scenario it's more than fair to ponder over how all that networking and organizing might be utilized to counter the very real possibility that the disastrous-for-the-GOP midterms are in one way or another overturned or effectively annulled by Trump and his cronies. Will No Kings tactics be ratcheted way up into something much more disruptive and effective? Or will they simply schedule another rally for a Saturday afternoon some time next year once the cold weather has subsided enough so that the hands of attendees don't get too cold while holding up their creative and witty signs?
“Yes” to entertainment, “meh” to democracy
Possibly the only thing that Americans can do to remove the authoritarian and Russia-aligned Trump administration from the White House (seeing how Trump and company may attempt to overturn or effectively annul the upcoming midterm elections, and seeing how Trump may in one way another attempt to hang around for a third term) is to undertake a prolonged and crushing general strike. Without imposing a widespread halt to economic and social activity by withdrawing labour on a significant scale and by paring back purchases to the bare essentials, Americans probably stand no chance of causing any meaningful change to the growing authoritarianism that's increasingly becoming the status quo in the United States.
To be clear, actually pulling off a general strike is no small feat, as it's by no means something that just happens spontaneously. They require massive amounts of planning, particularly for ensuring that people not receiving an income for extended and indefinite periods of time have access to such things as food, necessary medicines, and other necessary goods. Organized labour are usually the ones to lead such undertakings, which similarly doesn't bode well for the United States seeing how unions and the like have been giddily crushed by Americans in recent decades.
Although random comments can be seen on social media by both Americans and non-Americans calling for a general strike in the US, the fact that most of these commenters likely have little to no understanding of the herculean effort required to properly organize an undertaking as such speaks to the unseriousness of what are effectively empty suggestions glibly thrown around on social media.
The closest that Americans have actually come to enacting a prolonged and crushing general strike hasn't even amounted to following through with the measly Resist and Unsubscribe campaign launched by author and entrepreneur Scott Galloway (in which Americans would unsubscribe from "subscription-driven consumer tech companies [...] identified as having out-sized influence over the national economy and our president"). Rather, it's come via their outright pitiful boycotting of Disney in order to protest the removal of what can only be assumed to be their constitutional right to free speech listen to entertaining jokes made by their late-night court jesters (in this particular case, television host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel).
In other words, it's hard to deny the reality of the overarching attitude Americans have embodied when discovering that their country has come under threat by authoritarianism:
You can take away our democracy, but don't you dare touch our entertainment!
With Americans being amongst the most stimulus-driven and dopamine-addicted people on the planet, we can all but forget the highfalutin notion that "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they've tried everything else" (which, contrary to the popular belief, wasn't actually spoken by Winston Churchill). Because as evidence would suggest, there's no sign that would lead any of us non-Americans to believe that Americans have the fortitude necessary to come even close to "do[ing] the right thing".
In reality, Americans today, facing the erosion of their democracy, are nowhere near that faux-Churchillian description but rather come closer to embodying the feckless phrase made on that all-American television show, The Simpsons: "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".
When it comes to guessing what Americans will do if push comes to shove sometime between the midterm elections on November 3rd and the swearing in of the next Congress on January 3rd, please don't be surprised to find out that yours truly voted "Go to Costco".
Forced to pick one, Americans will choose:
That all being so, the fact of the matter remains that while the United States will all but surely continue to descend further into the depths of authoritarianism with little to no concerted pushback from Americans themselves, it can only be expected that other democratic countries will continue to feel various forms of pressure placed upon their democracies in unison with worsening conditions in the ol' US of A.
While citizens of most – if not all – of those other democracies aren't quite as consumed by protestainment and aren't as stimulus-driven nor dopamine-addicted as Americans are (which isn't necessarily saying very much), the fact that they can't depend on Americans to actually address the festering problem in their own country raises the inescapable question: What exactly can all those non-Americans do about the situation in the United States from their end in order to ward off influence campaigns and the like from spreading similar problems into their own countries?
The answer to that will have to wait for another time.
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