The video opens with a provocation—What if we weren’t afraid to get arrested? It’s time to learn about OTPOR!—but skips over the basic context of the organization being invoked. Angela Baker’s recommendation fits a pattern I’ve seen before: presenting Otpor as a neutral protest model while leaving out the political landscape that shaped it. Blueprint for Revolution, the book she cites, was written by Srđa Popović, one of Otpor’s leaders. The group received support from the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and pro‑democracy funding networks that included George Soros’ foundations, which Soros later acknowledged supporting during the 2000 uprising against Milošević. None of this automatically discredits the material, but it does mean the playbook isn’t organic or context‑free.
A similar dynamic appears in reporting on recent Anti‑ICE actions in Minnesota. When the Trump administration sent roughly 2,000 immigration agents to the Twin Cities, activists confronted them outside hotels; several of the groups involved have received significant funding from major liberal foundations and donor networks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund. The presence of that support doesn’t prove coordination, but it does show that these protests operate within well‑resourced national ecosystems rather than emerging solely from spontaneous local mobilization. If we’re being asked to “learn about Otpor,” then understanding how these models travel—and the institutions that help them travel—is part of the lesson.
Sources:
Regime Change Assets: Peter Zeihan & Srđa Popović
Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?
Otpor was a recipient of substantial funds from U.S. government-affiliated organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency for International Development (USAID).
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — It’s an accomplishment that Hungarian-born financier George Soros doesn’t flaunt. Bragging about it, after all, could just make his global democracy-building mission more difficult.
But the multibillionaire philanthropist quietly played a key role in the dramatic overthrow last year of President Slobodan Milosevic. His Soros Foundations Network helped finance several pro-democracy groups, including the student organization Otpor, which spearheaded grass-roots resistance to the authoritarian Yugoslav leader.
Major lefty foundations fund Minnesota anti-ICE protests
When the Trump administration sent some 2,000 immigration agents to the Twin Cities area, they were met by activists who trailed their movements and harassed them outside their hotels. The activists are members of radical groups that together have received millions of dollars from the Left’s premier foundations and dark money networks, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 