Reflections on Dorothy Williams and the State of Democracy
In 1963, an intrepid Australian beautician named Dorothy Williams embarked on an extraordinary journey, spending a remarkable 90 days living within the depths of the Ngilgi Cave, a stunning natural limestone chamber revered by the Wadandi Aboriginal people. Nestled 39 meters beneath the earth’s surface, this cave has become a symbol of both natural beauty and human endurance. If you visit the Ngilgi Cave today, near the picturesque town of Margaret River in Australia’s southwest, you’ll find this historical sit-in celebrated as a remarkable feat of perseverance.
Yet, from a modern perspective in 2025, I can’t help but question the merit of such an achievement. In the sanctuary of nature, removed from the chaos of the outside world—free from news and the incessant buzz of our digital communications—Dorothy Williams’s three-month retreat now seems almost enviable. After my own recent exploration of the Ngilgi Cave during a road trip through Western Australia, I emerged into the glaring sunlight to a barrage of notifications on my smartphone. The clips revealed a troubling shift in global politics: Donald Trump and JD Vance were conspiring to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky out of the White House. Faced with this onslaught of disconcerting news, I felt an overwhelming urge to follow in Williams’s footsteps, retreating back down the cave’s steps to escape for another three months.
As Lenin did not quite say, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Recent weeks have certainly felt like a deluge of news; the desire to escape reality is ever-tempting. However, it is a false comfort to think that we have only recently encountered historical upheavals. The disturbing actions of the current American President, aimed at dismantling the very fabric of democracy, should come as no revelation to anyone. From the moment Donald Trump was reelected in November 2024, it was clear that he would pursue the promises made to his base and the world.
This week’s plummeting U.S. markets and headlines warning of a looming “Trumpcession”, primarily due to escalating trade wars, are unlikely to deter him. Trump is a demagogue deeply entrenched in his ideological convictions, making any course correction improbable. Here in Europe, we were acutely aware that Trump would align himself with the most significant threat to democracy on our continent, ultimately ceding portions of Ukraine to the autocrat Vladimir Putin and his brutal army, which has terrorized the Ukrainian populace.
American voters cannot feign surprise as they observe their President pardoning the insurrectionists who violently stormed Congress on January 6, 2021, while simultaneously threatening to retaliate against the officers who sought to uphold the law. It comes as no shock to see Trump signing executive orders that grant him the powers of an autocrat. For instance, Executive Order 69 allows the President to seize control over government agencies funded by Congress and authorizes the disappearance and likely deportation of U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil, a student protester without any criminal conviction. On November 5, 2024, a majority of American voters willingly chose to forfeit the rights-based consensus established by the Founding Fathers of their nation. The unfolding events are merely procedural.
For those of us who oppose living under autocratic regimes shaped by figures like Vladimir Putin, this is a period of mourning. It is also a time to fortify ourselves: the situation is set to worsen. A prevalent coping strategy has been to embrace denial; over the past few months, I have encountered numerous educated, privileged individuals who have admitted, “I’ve stopped reading the news.” If this resonates with you, it is a dangerously irresponsible stance: demagogues flourish in the shadows of ignorance, whether they hail from America or the UK. My recent road trip across the remote stretches of Western Australia made it abundantly clear that disengagement is largely impossible.
In an era dominated by smartphones, information is omnipresent. In our hyper-connected world, the true choice lies in the networks we decide to engage with; however, the option to disconnect entirely has vanished. One effective approach is to limit news consumption to designated times each day, silencing notifications outside of that period and preparing oneself emotionally for the challenges that arise during those sessions. This method helped me navigate the most trying days of the COVID lockdowns.
Many of us in Britain are not directly on the front lines of human suffering during the Trump era, yet we must not underestimate how homophobia, misogyny, and racism will be emboldened on this side of the Atlantic by a U.S. President who chooses to champion figures like Andrew Tate. When we consciously turn our backs on the human suffering perpetuated by this regime—whether on Ukraine’s borders or within the lawless detention centers of the U.S.—we become complicit in that suffering.
While it is easy to identify moral apathy in the face of Trumpism, it is far more challenging to define what active resistance looks like. For those of us who do not hold U.S. citizenship, our options appear limited. The international rules-based order that liberals strive to uphold is fundamentally based on respect for the internal dynamics of other democracies, although this model is increasingly untenable in a world fragmented by transnational digital tribes.
Here in Britain, many of us grapple with feelings of powerlessness. As I reflected in this publication on the day of the 2024 U.S. election, “When historians of emotion look back on this year, I suspect they will identify ‘powerlessness’ as the defining sentiment of our age.” While we may feel powerless, we still possess one critical choice: the choice to engage with the world or to look away. This choice grants us more power than we often realize. If we examine historical surges of fascism—recognizing that Trump is undoubtedly behaving like a fascist within the White House—we will uncover the stories of those who buried their heads in the sand, alongside those who acknowledged, even in private letters and local conversations, that they were living through unacceptable times.
Fascism seeks to mask its anti-democratic nature and reshape our reality. This is why Primo Levi, the esteemed author and Auschwitz survivor, emphasized the importance of “bearing witness” as an act of resistance to fascism itself. Throughout history, individuals have fantasized about hiding away in caves rather than confronting the tumult of the world. The Arthurian legends depict this fate as the ultimate end for Merlin, the legendary wizard, yet they recognize his entrapment among the stalactites as a sign of failure, not liberation. While we safeguard our sanity by acknowledging our individual powerlessness, we owe it to history to bear witness to our times.
