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For more than a decade, it has felt to defenders of free society that we are peddling fruitlessly against the powerful current of authoritarianism. That current grew firmer, more dominant, as it swept in new nations from the shores of democracy and carried the world further toward illiberal abyss.

How many eulogies did we read -- indeed, how many did we write! -- for the free world? And who could blame us?

Many concluded, after 2024, as America selected a president who campaigned on a pledge to dismantle both domestic checks and balances and the postwar democratic order, that we were simply Victims of Events -- that history had caught up with us and this was our lot.

But it was not our lot. One by one, democratic antibodies have attacked the virus of authoritarianism. Our societies have fought back. People have fought back. Hungary evicted its “strongman” after sixteen years, delivering an electoral victory so decisive that he had no choice but to walk away.

India’s increasingly illiberal government was brought to its knees for the first time in recent memory -- and forced to change course on major policy -- in a wave of youth protests.

And tonight, voters in both Brazil and Serbia decisively rejected members of that global right-wing nationalist cabal -- “Greater MAGA” as Josh Marshall calls it -- as well as their dark visions for society.

The global democracy movement will be administered a new battery of tests in the coming days, first in Israel and then in the United States. We will see just how healthy our movement is.

1) The students who risked their futures and took to the streets; 2) the politicians who focused the public on corruption; and 3) the non-traditional coalitions that mobilized not around fine-grained policy provisions, but around the rejection of a common enemy.

There are more factors -- this is complicated. The road will not a be a straight line. And yet global dissidents and democracy activists often share the same advice about moments like this: savor the wins.

Allow them to embolden our visions for a more just tomorrow and to fortify us against the forces of illiberalism which will only grow less forgiving and more aggressive in the coming days.