“Pessimism is not fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that things will always necessarily be worse. Pessimism is the belief that things will probably get worse. Within that ‘probably,’ it opens up space for action.” — Gal Beckerman

In the first months of Trump II, Gal Beckerman watched American society do something that shocked him: comply. In one pathetic example after another, prominent law firms, universities, and senior federal employees buckled to every Trumpian whim. America appeared unable to resist authoritarianism. There were no dissidents.

Thus How to Be a Dissident. Beckerman’s new manual of resistance is inspired by history’s more insistent dissenters — from Mandelstam and Solzhenitsyn to Navalny, Ai Weiwei, Thoreau, Havel, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and demonstrators on the streets of Minneapolis. The quiet manifesto focuses on ten essential qualities: Be alone. Be pessimistic. Be funny. Be reckless. Be watchful.

Pessimism, above all. Not fatalism — the belief that things will always necessarily be worse — but the belief that things will probably get worse. Optimism undermines urgency and enables passivity. Pessimism forces resistance. It’s the first lesson in how to be a dissident.

Five Takeaways

• Moral Nausea. Beckerman’s term for the feeling most of us recognise and most of us suppress — seeing a wrong and knowing ourselves implicated. The dissident is the person who doesn’t look away. Hannah Arendt, studying Germans who resisted the Nazis, found one common thread: they had asked themselves “can I live with myself?” and answered honestly.

• The Pre-Political. Havel’s definition of dissidence: not ideology or revolution, but the defence of whatever allows a human life to feel normal. A rock band playing unauthorised concerts. An Iranian woman who wants to drive unaccompanied. The man at Tiananmen just trying to get home. The dissident defends those conditions when the state moves to violate them.

• Mandelstam’s Answer. He composed a poem mocking Stalin in the early 1930s and never wrote it down — repeating it to his wife Nadezhda until she memorised it. When the secret police came, they asked why he had done it. He said: I wrote it because I hate fascism. It’s as simple as that.

• Navalny Goes Back. After surviving Putin’s poisoning and recovering in Germany, Navalny returned to Russia knowing he would almost certainly die there. In a prison corridor, away from the cameras, he told his wife Yulia: I’ve accepted I’m probably not getting out alive. She said: I know. I’ve accepted it too. He kissed her. He needed to know she wasn’t engaging in magical thinking.

• Be Pessimistic. Beckerman’s most counterintuitive prescription and his favourite. Fatalism says things will always be worse. Pessimism says things will probably be worse. The “probably” is where all action lives. Optimism enables passivity. Pessimism forces the question: what do I do right now, today, with the time I have? It is, Beckerman suggests, akin to accepting death — the only thing that makes each day matter.

About the Guest

Gal Beckerman is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of How to Be a Dissident (Crown, April 21, 2026), The Quiet Before, and When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone (Sami Rohr Prize). He lives in Brooklyn.

References

How to Be a Dissident by Gal Beckerman (Crown, April 21, 2026)
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope
Alexei Navalny, Patriot

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Chapters:

00:00:31 Why dissidence? Watching people comply in Trump II
00:02:19 Are we all being asked to become dissidents?
00:06:43 The romance of dissidence — and why most of us trend toward conformity
00:07:29 Moral nausea: what we feel and what we do with it
00:09:19 Thoreau goes to jail: presumptuousness and the higher standard
00:12:11 Hitler as a dissident? The value-neutral definition
00:15:11 Havel and the pre-political
00:21:49 Why Navalny went back to Russia
00:24:44 Mandelstam: “I wrote it because I hate fascism”
00:29:55 Jafar Panahi: making his condition the subject of his art
00:34:48 Minneapolis and the pre-political response
00:35:37 The Tiananmen tank man: just a man trying to get home
00:41:23 Navalny and Yulia in the prison corridor
00:43:55 MLK, RFK, and the children of Birmingham
00:47:57 Be Pessimistic: the most im