Dustin Gilbreath

🔵 Check out my piece for Democracy Without Exception, exploring electoral authoritarian strategies, countermeasures, and how to prevent authoritarian entrenchment, with lessons from Georgia and parallels to Hungary: ✔️ Autocratic transformation may not happen through a dramatic rupture. Modern autocrats gradually hollow out democracy while preserving its formal appearance, including through elections. ✔️ The Georgian Dream government has gradually captured election integrity guardrails, cracked down on election watchdogs, and disseminated disinformation and false propaganda, patterns mirrored from Orban’s Hungary. ✔️ The ultimate goal of these strategies may be the dismantling of the system of election integrity. Thus, if the opposition, civil society, and media underestimate long-term intentions, miss the broader picture, and respond tactically rather than strategically, countries may end up as electoral autocracies. ✔️ Preventing authoritarian entrenchment requires aligning tactics with an overarching anti-authoritarian strategy and shifting from being reactive to proactive. Pro-democracy actors must: ▶️ Recognize the early signs of authoritarianism; ▶️ Understand the coherent long-term logic behind seemingly isolated authoritarian actions;  ▶️ Coordinate across the opposition, civil society, and media;  ▶️ Build effective counter-narratives that directly tackle the core messages of authoritarian leaders;  ▶️ Organize large-scale grassroots mobilization; ▶️ Develop long-term strategic responses. A huge thank you to an incredible team of Democracy Without Exception @JonTemin, Scott Warren, Elizabeth Ramey. open.substack.com/pub/democracyw…

Lots of good news in here - also notably appears that in many cases that are potentially p-hacked the effect size is about where it would be if it wasn't.

Beautiful tbilisi evening

According to the Freedom in the World 2026 report by Freedom House, Armenia has overtaken Georgia in total freedom scores for the first time ever. 🔴 Georgia suffered a 4-point drop this year—the largest decline in the Eurasia region.

facing public critique, some German profs at KIU defend saying it was "Fehlinformation" /false information that a course of "Astrolinguistics" was on offer at KIU. 1/ This misses how prominent Aliko Tsintsadze is & was at KIU. Here clip from Sept 2025 oc-media.org/how-a-german-b…

TV Pirveli, one of Georgia’s major opposition-leaning channels, said late on March 11 that its satellite broadcasting had stopped due to unpaid fees. civil.ge/archives/724693

Celebrations outside Iranian Embassy in Tbilisi happening right now.

This fella is growing on me as a tbilisi dog personality. Don’t know his name but he spends the day hanging out in a coffee shop and the evening at a bar. Almost always asleep (this a rare live action shot with his eyes open).

Meanwhile, you can now get a degree is astro-linguistics and astro-archeology, and Iberian history in Kutaisi (sounds like a lovely double major). ganatleba.substack.com/p/quackery-wit…

The OSCE #MoscowMechanism expert mission on 🇬🇪#Georgia takes up its work today. Any relevant information may be submitted to moscowmechanism-georgia@odihr.pl until 24 February. Find out more: buff.ly/CR0Yrdd

Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said Georgia’s Technical University (GTU) will no longer merge with Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU), scrapping a controversial plan opposed by students and academic personnel at both institutions. Read more: civil.ge/archives/720624

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Don’t like trump but this is great

Well…

Hi @GReschenthaler, one of your constituents here, and as it happens a pollster. Have to say this is about as bad a set of survey questions as I’ve seen in my career. Do hope you do better in the future rather than distributing push polls.

I have a message from Bahruz: "Azerbaijan must honor the Washington agreement and fully commit to the agreed peace agenda. My imprisonment is unlawful and stands in direct contradiction to the very principles of peace that were promised".

The European Parliament is to debate a new resolution on the human rights crisis in Azerbaijan this week 🇪🇺⚖️🇦🇿 @Europarl_EN should use it to adopt benchmarks aimed at fixing a roadmap for the Commission and EEAS’ engagement with Azerbaijan ➡️ Learn more free-anar.site/the-european-p…

5 medical breakthroughs this week (🧵) 1. The 10th patient in history to achieve long-lasting HIV remission nature.com/articles/s4158…

So, the @BBC has now published its investigation. I was among the protesters sprayed by the water cannon laced with a WW1-era chemical that night. This is me afterwards. The symptoms didn’t go away: the burning, the coughing, the shortness of breath stayed with me and so many others for weeks. My jacket had to hang outside for days because the smell and irritation wouldn’t fade. What was done to us should not be just ignored. Those responsible must be held to account. Thank you, BBC, for digging for the truth and giving our experience the attention it deserved.

On the very first day of the protest, I was poisoned by the substance mixed in the water canon. I was in the middle of Rustaveli, standing very close to the riot police. The water sprinkled all over my face, I lost coordination, couldn't move. My colleague recognized me and walked me to the ambulance, where I spent around 15 minutes to regain my senses. Face, throat, everything was burning. For 4 or 5 months since being poisoned, I had very frequent, almost daily nose bleeds, which started on that day. Georgian Dream never disclosed what substance was mixed in water canon that day despite many efforts from various groups. Dozens reported some sort of long effects they experienced after being poisoned on that day. BBC investigation now suggests that WW1 toxic compound was used on us. youtube.com/watch?v=z4-koO…