It’s almost always the same argument. Or excuse. Governments joining the accelerating global trend of restricting civil society at home like to claim that they are protecting their country against meddling “foreign powers”.
No one has to like, or agree, with that point of view in order to take it seriously, and perhaps even to see the onslaught as an opportunity. As the saying goes, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
The assaults on civil society globally—as outrageous as they are—could help to provoke a hard, sustained and urgent look at the prevalent model of external funding in support of human rights and social justice issues.
