Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The Georgian government blocked a nonprofit’s grant on April 9th, the same date Soviets massacred Georgians for demanding freedom.
Irakli started the Ayn Rand Center Georgia during COVID with nothing but a Facebook page and a $1,000 grant. By 2022 it had grown into a real organization bringing classical liberal ideas to a post-Soviet country still shaped by collectivist thinking.
The government’s foreign grant law requires organizations to get government approval before using foreign funding. They applied. They got rejected. The official reason? Against national interest.
This is how modern censorship works. Governments don’t ban ideas directly anymore. They cut off the money. No funding, no events, no reach. The ideas die quietly without a single law explicitly banning them. And once governments get to decide which ideas are in the “national interest,” free thought is already over.
Now they’re taking the government to court. Because free speech doesn’t need government approval.
LEARN LIBERTY:
Your resource for exploring the ideas of a free society. We tackle big questions about what makes a society free or prosperous and how we can improve the world we live in. Watch more at learnliberty.org/.
The Georgian government blocked a nonprofit’s grant on April 9th, the same date Soviets massacred Georgians for demanding freedom.
Irakli started the Ayn Rand Center Georgia during COVID with nothing but a Facebook page and a $1,000 grant. By 2022 it had grown into a real organization bringing classical liberal ideas to a post-Soviet country still shaped by collectivist thinking.
The government’s foreign grant law requires organizations to get government approval before using foreign funding. They applied. They got rejected. The official reason? Against national interest.
This is how modern censorship works. Governments don’t ban ideas directly anymore. They cut off the money. No funding, no events, no reach. The ideas die quietly without a single law explicitly banning them. And once governments get to decide which ideas are in the “national interest,” free thought is already over.
Now they’re taking the government to court. Because free speech doesn’t need government approval.
LEARN LIBERTY:
Your resource for exploring the ideas of a free society. We tackle big questions about what makes a society free or prosperous and how we can improve the world we live in. Watch more at learnliberty.org/.
