Mad Thinking

By Akriti Mehta

It feels like authoritarianism is in the very air we breathe. In recent months, almost every webinar, conference, blog, newsletter, or discussion landing in my inbox—whether from academic groups, activist networks big and small, or disability focussed mailing lists—has circled back to the urgent question: how do we resist authoritarianism? 

Across the world, openly authoritarian governments are violently targeting minorities, dissidents, and just about anyone they deem ‘too political’. Whenever I ask comrades and colleagues how disability movements are responding to this violence, the answer is almost always: they are not responding in any meaningful way. Instead, most disability spaces are not much more than a collection of internationally funded NGOs with prominent leaders. Whether this is the movement or a movement at all is a question for another day. The question that I find myself asking is one that haunts many of us—why is it so hard to build meaningful resistance to authoritarianism in the disability movement?

Authoritarianism never functions alone. It relies on patriarchy, queerphobia, imperialism, white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, and so many other systems of oppression. And the current shape of many disability movements–hierarchical, donor-driven, and fragmented–make it hard to build the cross-issue, cross-movement, and cross-border solidarities we need to resist it. 

In this piece, I want to focus on one particular obstacle—the ways in which authoritarianism and its biggest partner in crime (often literally!), neoliberalism, work together to depoliticise our disability spaces.

By neoliberalism, I do not mean just the economic policies but also one of its foundational premises–everything should be run in the image of business corporations. Within State policies, this leads to privatisation and austerity. Moreover, neoliberal logics like professionalisation, efficiency, incorporation within global capitalism, and individualisation permeate the social and political context. Movements and activism are not exempt from the internalisation of these logics.  

Within the many facets of authoritarianism, the one I am focussed on is the use and misuse of State power by governments to inflict violence upon targeted communities and peoples and anyone who objects to it. While the target of this violence changes depending on time and geography, the tools are eerily similar. And as such, I hope that the insights I have learned from my work and research with disability movements in the global South will be useful.

What I have found in my work and research is that authoritarianism and neoliberalism come together to create and encourage a depoliticised disability space. This is clearest to me when I look at three different aspects of the disability movement—proliferation of NGOs; dependence on international funding; and star individual leaders.

From resistance to registration: the dominance of NGOs

When asked what I do for a living, I find myself answering “I work for a disability activist organisation”. It is an easy short answer for strangers, but I always battle a little feeling of discomfort as I put the words ‘activist’ and ‘organisation’ together. The tensions between activism and a legal formal entity are not new or exclusive to disability movements.  

We create organisations not only because funders require them, but because governments, United Nations (UN) agencies, and other power-holders only engage with formal entities. The primacy given to legal formal entities by those in power is bound up in the neoliberal ethos which equate legitimacy with markers of corporations and businesses–efficient, professionalised, formal, and structured.   

In theory, registration gives us legitimacy and the ability to coordinate work; in practice, it often reshapes us in the image of what we are all marinating in—a neoliberal ethos. We internalise ableist work cultures, create rigid hierarchies, aspire towards a culture of hyper-productivity, and in this process we lose sight of the radical political aims we started with. The issues of professionalisation, formalisation, hierarchies, and NGOisation in the disability movement is covered brilliantly by Alberto Vásquez in his recent article.

While these issues are in no way unique to disability activism, the centrality of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has had a curious side effect. The mandate that Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) should be involved in the CRPD’s implementation has led to a web of international and national organisations, platforms, donors, and mechanisms that followed its ratification. 

Disability movements that emerged with and through the CRPD didn’t slowly become institutionalised–they began as professionalised formal organisations. Lacking deep roots in radical revolutionary politics, they are especially susceptible to depoliticisation.

In these authoritarian times, formalisation of an organisation, as a registered and legal entity creates a particular set of vulnerabilities which limits what it can do. Organisations which engage or work on issues which challenge an authoritarian government face a host of consequences—frozen bank accounts, repeated and punitive financial audits, revocation of registration. 

To politicise or rather re-politicise this space is incredibly hard in the context of authoritarianism and neoliberalism working together. A neoliberal ethos encourages the formation of formal organisations, and authoritarianism makes them vulnerable to State interference. So, you need to have a formal organisation to survive in the disability ecosystem, but as soon as your organisation become ‘too political’, the State will punish you.

From political mobilisation to project cycles: the influence of donors

The professionalisation and formalisation of the disability ecosystem is deeply linked to funding systems—donors often require a legal professional entity. A more insidious effect of neoliberalism on the funding system is its increased focus on tangible outcomes and short timelines, i.e., a project-based way of working with an identifiable and bounded problem requiring interventions with measurable outcomes. Political mobilisation, especially when founded in solidarity, is a much longer and far less linear process. It does not work on short timelines, is messy, and has no guarantee or certainty of results. 

Structured the way it is, disability movements depend on a constant cycle of incoming funding. Successfully raising funds is contingent on aligning our organisational goals with the funder’s priorities and ways of working. Instead of the funding ecosystem supporting the work of a movement, organisation, or a sector; it drives it, shaping what can and cannot be done, and the ways in which it can be done. In other words, the organisation and by extension the movement begins to focus on specific results and funds, rather than on ethics or shared values. And more often than not, this blunts the radical edge of activist ideas and actions. 

Restrictions on foreign funding, a common tactic of authoritarian governments, create an additional vulnerability. Organisations have been forced to shut down and funders have withdrawn their support for explicitly political work like anti-fascism, anti-militarisation, and environmental justice. For disability movements which are completely enmeshed with global funders, this has a significant impact. The process of approval for foreign funding is often lengthy and expensive and demands that activities must comply with vague and loosely defined terms such as “national interests”. To navigate this, disability activists must exclude/shy away from topics deemed ‘too political’. This slowly and steadily depoliticises the work of disability activists.

The current shape of movements which resemble the project-delivery machines demanded by neoliberal logics cannot survive without a continual incoming cycle of funds. Resourcing, this, takes on the capitalist logic of constant expansion and growth. In other words, a constant cycle of incoming international funding is required by the neoliberalisation of the movement. This in turn is made a liability by authoritarianism which successfully uses the threat of restrictions on funding. 

From shared struggle to spotlight: the rise of the ‘star activist’

We all know the importance of informal relationships within the disability movement or what many call networking. These are often forged and fostered at international gatherings of privileged disability actors. Personal relationships between activists leading organisations and funders are critical to access funding. 

For an organisation to survive, they need to send the same person to all such events to sustain the soft power essential to its existence and ability to effect change. This consolidates power within a small group of individuals rather than within a movement. More often than not, they tend to be those with social and cultural capital, i.e., they tend to be privileged, in terms of race, class, and other socio-political positions. 

The neoliberal logic of individualisation which permeates even activist spaces is evident in the rise of ‘star activists’. This type of individualised leadership is focused on visibility, personal recognition, and the performance of a tireless and unflaggingly productive person. Visibility in and of itself is not a problem; in fact, it is often a prerequisite for effecting change. However, visibility as an end-goal (rather than a means), visibility of an individual (rather than an issue or movement), and visibility of the privileged at the expense of those multiply marginalised results in, and is a result of, a depoliticised disability sector. 

So, we have a situation where leadership is disconnected from what leaders are supposed to be leading, and they become accountable to their structured organisations and funders rather than the movement. 

Across the world, we see States criminalising dissent. For activists, the very real fear and threat of imprisonment is everywhere. This has a chilling effect; activists/organisational leaders are reluctant to talk about ‘political’ issues. Individual visibility, which is demanded by the neoliberal logics of the disability landscape, is punished by authoritarian governments. Those most invested in ‘political’ issues, are unable to find the room to address them safely in the disability movement because it is structured around visibility. And those who are visible do not wish to risk the ire of the government and hence avoid ‘political’ issues.

Neoliberalism demands visible and prominent leaders, and authoritarianism punishes them, particularly when they raise their voice against political issues.

The demands of the neoliberal underpinning of disability movements—visibility and individualism, formalised legal organisations, and access to international funding—are in turn punished by authoritarian States. Neoliberalism and authoritarianism work in concert to depoliticise disability movements. They particularly make it difficult to build a disability movement based on the leadership and concerns of targeted marginalised communities.

The status quo is not a refuge: changing our movements

To effectively fight authoritarianism, we have to ask difficult questions of ourselves, question the shape of our movements, work strategically, and use a multiplicity of tools. 

If legal entities are vulnerable, can we find different ways of organising? If funding ecosystems are hindering rather than helping our work, can we not only educate funders but find different ways of resourcing our work? Can we design leadership models that resist the neoliberal cult of the individual such as co-leadership and decentralised decision-making?

As much as I would like to hope that the authoritarian tide will turn soon, I think we all know in our hearts of hearts that the years and decades ahead are going to be tough. For disability movements to survive and resist, we have to be committed to reclaiming the political roots of our movements from neoliberal logics. 

We have to work in a way that is underpinned by a disability justice politics that is anti-ableist but also anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian. A disability politics that is intersectional and focuses on multiple marginalisation. And then we need to do those politics in our activism and movements.

The problems outlined above are real and challenging. But they are not entirely new or exclusive to disability movements. Many activists in many settings have come up against them and devised ways and strategies to address them. We have to learn from them and teach them in turn. For me, the first step is to simply create a space to do that.

In that vein, Mad Thinking is launching a series of webinars for disability activists focussed on building resistance and resilience in authoritarian contexts. We will have frontline activists from across the globe and embedded in diverse activist movements who have faced the issues above and many more. They will discuss the different facets of activism under authoritarianism: the specific tactics and tools States use to repress activism; building security protocols to navigate surveillance; re-thinking fundings and resource models; building alternative organising strategies; fostering cross-movement solidarity; and sustaining care, trust, and community amidst hostile conditions. 

We hope that these conversations will provide an opportunity for exchanging practical strategies and tools to sustain activism in challenging contexts. And we hope that you will join us. 

Register now!