Our proximity to each other makes the dominant political order easy to reinforce and hard to change. It makes dissenting voices rare, and opens space to delegitimise opposition and create new tiers in the Us versus Them. In order to combat an authoritarian culture, there must be a disruption to the existing social order.

Social fabrics generally, but especially among civically minded Bermudians, must be cultivated outside of political institutions. As the number of Bermudian youth dwindles, and changes to the public and private schools widen attainment gaps, a social intervention to (1) cultivate and (2) nurture the intelligentsia is crucial.

The term “intelligentsia” came into popular lexicon during the 19th-century Tsarist era — it describes an educated group with a shared sense of public responsibility, patriotism and critical stances against the Government.

However, this term is frequently misapplied in Bermuda. Members of the intelligentsia are unaffiliated with political parties and make scathing public dissent common. A civically minded, educated class is paramount to democratic health. Many regime leaders understand this and have deliberately alienated the intelligentsia or turned them into party loyalists.

Joseph Stalin created a new, reformed and loyal "toiling intelligentsia", which legitimised a specific group of educated professionals who were integrated into the Soviet system. The main goal of this group was to serve the goals of production and the state, rather than a higher academic or moral purpose.

In Bermuda, Eva Hodgson is a poignant example of this shift and described it in our context. Dr Hodgson’s academic gravitas and determination to speak up meant she paid a heavy price, resulting in exclusion, while the loyalists became the new guards, masquerading as racially conscious and labour-minded.

Bermudians live on a cerulean hook of social collision. Where else in the world would the leader of the country down shots in your Cup Match camp, or would your high school friends serve on the board of your child’s school?

Americans need access to all-powerful donors or viral influence to get the attention of legislators, or see their high school friends who have moved across state lines — but Bermudians? Bermudians have open and spontaneous access to each other and information about each other. Our proximity is perhaps the reason Bermudians are notoriously ambivalent towards celebrities — because it is not hard to become a household name here.

There are many ways to get information about someone in Bermuda: a mutual friend, observations when you encounter them, a family member or a former boss — all of which offer an illusion of knowing. However, there is a steep price for this, as the obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance, but rather the illusion of knowledge. If the community as a whole remains fragmented and only superficially connected, the costs of dissent are higher, and educated groups are vulnerable to both public and private attacks.

Our proximity to each other makes our social and political fabric precarious. In previous articles, we discussed (1) delegitimising the official opposition, (2) contempt for opposition and (3) squashing consent. Although these processes are mostly political, there are serious implications for Bermuda’s social landscape, such as social homophily.

Social homophily is the tendency for people to associate only with those who hold the same political views they do. In Bermuda, these patterns are corrosive to our social fabric. These dynamics reveal a deeper truth: authoritarian culture is not built in government buildings alone — it is built at the individual and community levels as well. If partisan identity is fixed in childhood and our social circles exclude ideological differences, then the fragility of Bermuda’s democracy is rooted in everyday life. Strengthening our civic fabric, therefore, requires both co-ordinated community-level work and intentional personal learning, unlearning, and relearning that interrupts these patterns and rebuilds solidarity from the ground up.

At the community level, our civil society must transform from quietly serving the people to loudly mobilising the people. Bermuda’s charities, churches, unions, alumni associations and community groups are often in direct contact with those on the margins, but do very little to empower them politically. In an authoritarian political culture, this kind of apolitical charity is not enough — and may even be counterintuitive to equity, justice and liberation. We need these groups to become incubators of resistance and schools of democracy, organising with the lumpenproletariat instead of merely organising around them. In concrete terms, this looks like:

• Sharing power with the marginalised. It’s time to invite the very people we aim to help into leadership roles. Design programmes and coalitions where the young Black trans kid, the formerly incarcerated or gang-affiliated man, the single mother on government benefits, the disability advocate and the survivor of sexual abuse have a seat at the table — not as token consultees, but as leaders, co-chairs, planners and public spokesmen and women. When those who live the struggle help to lead the battle, our policy solutions become sharper and our political solidarity deeper.

• Uniting across causes and identities. Make intersectional solidarity non-negotiable. A community group should refuse to silo “LGBTQ+ issues”, “racial issues”, “youth violence” or “housing crises” as if they are not interwoven. Our charitable and civic organisations must actively build coalitions across movements, causes and generations — recognising that issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, criminal justice and climate justice are deeply interconnected — especially in Bermuda’s micro society. When a cause affects one group, all of us in civil society should show up, so that no community stands alone and authoritarian forces cannot use their beloved divide-and-conquer tactics.

• Pairing mutual aid with political education. Bermuda’s tradition of helping neighbours in need must evolve into a force that also educates and mobilises. Yes, continue the food drives, scholarship funds and mental health support — but don’t stop there. Explain why so many Bermudians are going hungry, why education and healthcare are inequitable, and why violence takes root in certain neighbourhoods. Community leaders should host teach-ins, public forums and informal workshops that connect the dots between personal struggles and public policies. By combining direct aid with consciousness-raising, we turn recipients of charity into informed citizens ready to demand their rights. And we must funnel some of our generosity into funding grassroots political action itself — helping underrepresented groups with the resources they need to organise and speak out. Glenn Fubler, Bermuda Is Love, Bermuda Youth Connect and others have started this work, but it must spread sector-wide to be successful.

• Speaking up boldly and collectively against injustice. No more tiptoeing around politics for fear of offending donors or government officials. Every charity, community group, union and sports club in Bermuda needs to ask: what do we stand for? If a government policy deepens inequality, if a piece of legislation erodes democratic norms, if a public figure demonises an already marginalised group, our community organisations should be first in line to condemn it publicly. This should mean issuing public statements that call out harmful decisions, publishing manifestos with policy demands from the grass roots, and mobilising members to join protests and town halls. We need more community-led, sociopolitical action to fight sociopolitical apathy. When civil society sheds its fear of being “too political”, it becomes the people’s watchdog — a moral and collective counterweight to any authoritarian, colonial or divisive tendencies displayed among our political class.

Confronting the authoritarianism within

Lastly, but perhaps most crucially, the fight against creeping authoritarianism must also be internalised to the personal level. This means refusing to treat politics as a polite performance for the respectable few, and instead embracing a radical empathy for those whom society tries to lock out of the political arena. Each of us must decide whether we are content to look away from the people our society labels “problematic”, or whether we will see them as central to our collective survival. In practice, this starts with:

• Knowing where you stand. Take stock of your own political values and biases – your true moral compass, not just your party’s talking points. Do you prefer libertarian or authoritative leaders? Are you economically conservative? Or do you lean towards socialism? Find out by taking the test at politicalcompass.org. Use what you learn about yourself to interrogate why you may hold such beliefs, and if they would lead us towards a society where everyone can flourish if converted to policy.

• Reading to learn, not to posture. Dive into the rich traditions of thought around politics, radicalism and social change. Study the Black radical tradition, intersectional feminist theory, queer theory and anti-capitalist critiques — not to virtue-signal on social media or among your friends, but to genuinely understand how systems of oppression work and what is required for holistic, meaningful and long-lasting political change. Deep reading and learning are the key to political awakening and, ultimately, mobilisation.

• Listening with empathy and humility. Seek out the stories and perspectives of those Bermuda marginalises. Have real conversations with Black queer youth fighting for acceptance, with street-involved young men and disenfranchised workers, with people who have no home or live one paycheque from disaster, with disabled neighbours and survivors of violence. Ask them — sincerely — what safety, dignity and power would look like for them, rather than assuming you know best. This kind of listening is quite revolutionary work, breaking down the illusions we hold about “knowing” one another in our small island.

• Speaking out and taking risks for the truth. Refuse to laugh along at the bigoted joke in your WhatsApp group. Challenge your friend or colleague when they scapegoat “gang kids”, LGBTQ+ people or immigrant workers. And if you are in a position of privilege — a secure job, a respected family name, a role inside a political party — use that privilege to blow the whistle on corruption and wrongdoing behind closed doors. True public service means putting truth and justice above loyalty or social ease. Yes, it may cost you comfort, status or relationships. Do it anyway. In a culture of silence and secrecy such as Bermuda’s, speaking out is a truly revolutionary act — our political leaders, and those who fill various roles within political party apparatuses, should honour, protect and embody this principle. At present, they do not.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it anyway because conscience tells him it is right.” — Reverend Martin Luther King Jr (A Proper Sense of Priorities)

And with that, we close. Thank you all for reading and engaging with us throughout this five-part series. We have received an unexpectedly wide and overall positive response from various sectors across the Bermudian community. To us, the response shows that the “on the ground” feeling is aligned with our analysis and arguments. We will take some time to reflect on our experience and what that means for our work going forward. It’s possible that this will not be the last time you hear from us, but in the meantime, stay woke!

• Taj Donville-Outerbridge and Tierrai Tull represent Bermuda Youth Connect. Taj is an award-winning Bermudian human rights activist, writer and student studying a double masters of public administration and global affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He also has a decade of involvement in Bermuda’s political system under his belt. He can be reached via Instagram @_king.taj_ and e-mail at tdonvilleouterbridge@yahoo.com. Tierrai is the founder of Bermuda Youth Connect, studying at Oxford in the Department of Politics and International Relations on the Rhodes Scholarship