History shows that popular movements have repeatedly challenged concentrated power
If the erosion of the rules-based international order creates vulnerability for smaller nations like the Philippines, the question becomes: who defends multilateralism and democratic values when major powers abandon them?
The answer lies in the organized power of civil society, mass movements, and progressive political forces resisting unilateralism and rising fascism.
Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney warn of a world drifting toward the law of the strongest. But history shows that popular movements have repeatedly challenged concentrated power.
From anti-colonial struggles to people power movements that toppled dictatorships, organized citizens have confronted forces far more powerful than themselves.
The Philippines faces not only external pressures from great power competition but internal threats from authoritarianism, corporate capture of institutions, and normalized extrajudicial violence.
Civil society organizations, labor unions, environmental defenders, and human rights advocates form the frontline resistance.
Their work defending press freedom, documenting abuses, and holding power accountable becomes critical as formal institutions weaken.
Non-governmental organizations provide essential counterweight to state and corporate power. They monitor environmental destruction, provide legal aid, document human rights violations, and build alternative economic models prioritizing community wellbeing.
In a world where rules matter less, NGOs serve as crucial documentation systems, creating records that survive political transitions and demanding accountability when institutional mechanisms fail.
Mass movements generate the political pressure necessary to force change.
Climate justice movements, anti-corruption protests, labor organizing, and Indigenous rights campaigns demonstrate that organized people retain power even when formal channels close.
The challenge is building movements capable of sustained mobilization rather than episodic protest.
Progressive political forces must navigate difficult terrain.
Electoral politics remains important, but rising fascism demonstrates that democracy cannot be defended through elections alone.
Progressive parties must combine electoral strategy with grassroots organizing, popular education, and alternative institutions demonstrating viable alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and authoritarian nationalism.
The obstacles are formidable.
Funding constraints threaten organizational sustainability as international development assistance declines and domestic philanthropy remains limited. Northern governments increasingly prioritize security partnerships over human rights.
Corporate foundations impose ideological constraints, favoring technocratic solutions over structural change.
Organizations face impossible choices between maintaining independence and accessing resources.
The shrinking of civic space poses graver threats. Governments worldwide deploy anti-terrorism laws, foreign agent restrictions, and criminal defamation suits to silence dissent. Environmental defenders face assassination.
Human rights lawyers experience harassment.
Community organizers confront surveillance and intimidation. These pressures intensify when resistance becomes most necessary.
The Philippines exemplifies these dynamics. Red-tagging systematically delegitimizes activists by falsely linking them to armed insurgency, creating conditions for violence.
The anti-terrorism law criminalizes broad categories of advocacy. Community organizers defending ancestral lands face death threats.
Press freedom deteriorates.
Yet resistance continues because the alternative is surrender.
Building resilience requires multiple strategies.
Organizations must diversify funding sources, developing grassroots support rather than depending on external donors.
Solidarity networks across movements create mutual protection and resource sharing. International alliances amplify local struggles and provide some shield against repression. Legal defense networks prepare for increased criminalization.
Movement building demands long-term perspective.
This means investing in political education, leadership development, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.
It requires building democratic cultures within movements, avoiding hierarchies that reproduce the power structures being challenged. It demands centering marginalized voices.
For the Philippines, the path forward requires connecting struggles.
Environmental defenders protecting forests fight the same battle as labor organizers resisting exploitation, Indigenous communities defending ancestral domains, and urban communities resisting displacement.
These are interconnected resistance to a development model concentrating wealth while destroying ecosystems and communities.
The alternative to organized resistance is clear.
A world without rules becomes a world where might makes right, where corporations and authoritarian states divide spoils while the majority suffers increasing precarity, environmental collapse, and violence.
Civil society and mass movements cannot prevent all harm, but they can contest it and build power toward different futures.
The changed world Macron and Carney describe did not arrive by accident.
Neoliberal policies weakened states and unions, creating conditions for authoritarian backlash. Climate change destabilizes societies.
Inequality breeds desperation that fascists exploit. Reversing these trends requires not defending the old rules-based order but building something better, a democratic international system based on justice.
This work falls disproportionately on those with least power. But history suggests it can succeed. Every right we take for granted was won through struggle.
The task now is building movements capable of defending what exists while reaching toward what could be, organizations resilient enough to survive repression, and solidarity strong enough to sustain long struggles for justice.
Originally published on February 6, 2026, on Manila Standard
