In Milan, during a demonstration in support of the Iranian people, I witnessed something that goes beyond routine or symbolic solidarity. Different communities — Iranian, Jewish, Ukrainian, Venezuelan and Georgian — gathered in the same public space to affirm a simple yet radical idea: freedom is not a partisan banner, it is a principle. And when it is attacked, in any part of the world, those who believe in the free world cannot look the other way.

This convergence is not accidental. It is the product of a geopolitical context in which authoritarianism is no longer merely a domestic issue confined to individual states, but an interconnected phenomenon. Authoritarian regimes observe one another, imitate each other, support one another, and share tools of propaganda and repression. On the other side, civil societies and diasporas build moral and political alliances, often earlier — and more effectively — than governments themselves.

photo by: Andrea Maniscalco (L’Europeista)

A common thread: freedom versus repression, not ‘West’ versus the ‘rest’

Let us start with Iran. The protests spreading across the country — met with repression, information blackouts and an official narrative aimed at isolating the demonstrators — show how contemporary authoritarianism has learned to control not only the streets, but also networks, communications, and ultimately the reality that reaches the outside world. The blackout becomes a political weapon: it silences testimony and renders violence invisible.

This is the first key point: democratic battles can no longer be confined to the national space. The information ecosystem is global, as global are the effects of repression (migration, regional destabilisation, radicalisation, hostility towards the West). This is why a demonstration in Milan is not ‘symbolic’: it is a piece of the dispute over legitimacy.

Ukraine and Georgia: Europe as a political, not a geographical border

Ukraine is today the most obvious frontier of the confrontation between liberal order and imperialism. But it is not alone. Georgia, with its political crises, pro-European protests, and tensions related to ‘foreign influence’ regulations (which many observers trace back to logics similar to those used by authoritarian regimes to suppress civil society and the media), shows a crucial element: European enlargement is not just a bureaucratic dossier; it is a battleground between state models. (link to Emanuele Pinelli’s interview with the legitimate President of the Republic of Georgia Salomé Zurabishvili)

Here a second insight emerges: authoritarianism does not only advance with tanks. It also advances with legal and administrative instruments that ‘normalise’ repression: registers, labels, accusations of foreign agents, selective controls. The form changes, the substance remains: reducing the space for dissent.

Israel: democratic identity and strategic vulnerability

The Israeli case is often treated only in emotional or identity terms. Yet, in the framework we are describing, Israel also represents a point of structural friction: a democracy under threat, the target of delegitimisation campaigns, embedded in a Middle East where state and non-state actors – often supported or armed by hostile regimes such as Iran – test the boundary between security and institutional resilience.

Without oversimplifying: the presence of the Jewish community in the square, alongside those who support the Iranians and Ukrainians, tells one thing that is worth more than a thousand communiqués: there is a common awareness of the fragility of democracies when they are attacked from outside (and from within) with hybrid tools; such as terrorism, disinformation and multi-level intimidation.

Venezuela: American leadership as a compass for the free world

The Venezuelan case represents, in this sense, a decisive political step. The United States’ action against Nicolás Maduro ‘s regime – beyond ideological readings and knee-jerk reactions – should be interpreted for what it is: an act of leadership. In an international system increasingly marked by the audacity of authoritarianism, Washington has chosen not to limit itself to verbal condemnation, but to take responsibility for intervening against a dictatorship that has been suffocating its own people for years, destabilising the area and relying on repression, corruption and alliances hostile to the West.

Read our insights and analyses following the US action on 3 January (Palma, D’Andrea, Brioschi, Lo Monaco, Verdoliva, Vivenzi, Hausmann)

As a pro-European and an Atlanticist, I believe this choice clarifies a point often removed from the European debate: the free world does not defend itself. The values that the West proclaims – freedom, rights, self-determination – need a political and strategic force to make them credible. Without leadership, those values risk being reduced to moral language without consequence. The United States, even under President Trump, has shown that it is still the only actor willing to exercise this function of deterrence and, when necessary, action.

Europe appears hesitant precisely because it is struggling to accept this reality: there is no opposition between values and force if force is put at the service of freedom. The real risk is not intervention, but inaction; not political precedent, but the idea that dictatorships can be tolerated in the name of apparent stability. In this perspective, Venezuela is not an exception, but a signal.

And it is difficult not to draw a broader conclusion: if the West intends to be consistent with itself, it cannot ignore the fact that the same determination shown in Caracas will sooner or later be needed elsewhere – from Iran, where a theocratic regime brutally represses every demand for freedom, to all those contexts where authoritarianism relies on the absence of a credible response. American leadership, with all its limitations, remains today the pivot around which the defence of the free world can still revolve.

The alignment of diasporas: a geopolitics from below

Within this framework, the image of Milan – Iranians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Venezuelans, the Jewish community – is a small lesson in geopolitics ‘from below’. Diasporas are not simply cultural communities: they are political actors that influence agendas, sensibilities, electoral choices, media priorities. And they often function as antibodies: they keep attention alive when institutional politics gets distracted or when public opinion gets tired.

There is also an interesting aspect, which recent political science has begun to measure: major international crises can generate a ‘rally for democracy’, i.e. a strengthening of identification with democracy as a global ideal, not just a domestic preference.

This is exactly what one perceives when communities with different histories recognise a common pattern: repression, propaganda, political prisoners, exile, censorship, external aggression, criminalisation of dissent.

An idea of the West beyond nostalgia

In uncertain times, the temptation is to reduce “the West” to nostalgia or empty rhetoric. Yet if the West is to remain politically meaningful, it must once again become a project: the defence of democracies, collective security, open economies, the protection of rights, resilience against hybrid warfare, and sustained investment in free information and civil society.

This requires a strong transatlantic policy — yes — but also a mature one: capable of distinguishing alliances from subordination, interest from opportunism, strength from abuse. Above all, it must be capable of not abandoning those peoples who demand freedom, and of preventing Europe from retreating into its worst reflex: permanent ambiguity.

Because the line connecting Tehran, Kyiv, Tbilisi and Caracas is not an abstract map. It is a question addressed to us: what do we do, concretely, when freedom is under siege?