Descriptions:
Video Description
The Big Lie is not just a slogan — it is the engine of every totalitarian system. This lecture from Academy of Ideas shows how a lie that touches every corner of life does more than hide corruption: it builds an entire fake reality. Drawing on Solzhenitsyn, Havel, and Arendt, it explains why tyrants need a bed of lies to survive. And it offers the simplest, most powerful act of resistance: personal refusal to participate in the lie. One ordinary person who resolves to live within the truth can, history proves, help bring a tyranny down.
Full Video Transcript
And the lie has, in fact, led us so far away from a normal society that you cannot even
orient yourself any longer. In its dense, grey fog, not even one pillar can be seen.
Lying has always been used for political purposes. Lies cover up corruption, past
mistakes and hidden motives. And they are an essential ingredient in political campaigning.
Sometimes, however, political lies take on a much more sinister form.
The lies become all-encompassing, embrace all aspects of life and infect every corner of
society. This occurrence is a sign that totalitarianism may be rising,
for as the political philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, totalitarianism, at its essence,
is an attempt at transforming reality into fiction. It is the attempt of corrupt and
pathological state actors to impose a fictional account of the world onto the entire population.
In Nazi Germany, it was the idea of a superior race and an unclean people that formed the Big
Lie. In the Soviet Union, it was the belief that state communism could work and that all could be
made equal. And from the Big Lie trickled down a stream of endless little lies. Referring to
communist Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, In our country, the lie has become not just a
moral category but a pillar of the state. Describing Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule,
Vaclav Havel similarly explained,
Life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies.
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past,
it falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics.
When a political system rests upon a bed of lies, what can be done to turn the tide back towards
truth and freedom. In this video, drawing from the insights of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel,
we are going to explore this question. The day before he was exiled from the Soviet Union,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn published a short essay titled, Live Not by Lies, and in it he wrote,
We are approaching the brink. Already a universal spiritual demise is upon us.
A physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children. While we continue to smile
sheepishly and babble. But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength. But we can do
everything. Even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not they who are guilty
of everything, but we ourselves. Only we. When a state turns totalitarian, the individuals who
live in these societies are not merely its victims. All the totalitarian regimes of the
20th century rose to power amidst thunderous applause, as many citizens openly called for
the brutal control that defines this form of rule. Without mass support and compliance,
the minority in the ruling class would be but paper tigers. The responsibility for the oppression,
suffering, and loss of life that comes in the wake of totalitarianism, therefore,
cannot be placed exclusively on politicians and bureaucrats. A large portion of responsibility
must be placed on the citizens who support this form of rule, or else do nothing to resist.
Václav Havel explains in his book The Power of the Powerless,
There is obviously something in human beings which responds to this totalitarian system.
Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so
only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore, not only does the system
alienate humanity but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own
involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own
failure as individuals. If the fuel for the growth of totalitarianism is weak and fearful individuals
then a cure is a personal revolution that takes place in hearts and minds and leads to an
an awakening of self-responsibility, courage, and strength. The best resistance to totalitarianism
is simply to drive it out of our own souls, our own circumstances, our own land, to drive
it out of contemporary humankind. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s writings played a major role
in toppling the communist Soviet empire, and he advised we engage in such a personal revolution
by transforming our life in a way which targets the most vulnerable part of the totalitarian
and system, the lies upon which it is built. In Live Not by Lies, Solzhenitsyn explains,
And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation,
a personal non-participation in lies. Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their
rule, let us resist in the smallest way. Let their rule hold, not through me. Václav Havel was a
dissident in communist Czechoslovakia and he later became president. And he echoed Solzhenitsyn’s
sentiment that the most effective key to liberation from totalitarian rule is to commit to a non-participation
in lies. Havel called this commitment, living within the truth.
If the main pillar of the totalitarian system is living a lie, then it is not surprising
that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why the truth must be suppressed
more severely than anything else.
To engage in a non-participation in lies, or in Havel’s terminology, to live within
the truth, is to stop parroting the lies of the state and to refrain from acting in ways
which conform to state propaganda.
It is to resolve to live as freely and authentically as possible, to boldly express our individuality
and spontaneity.
Spontaneity, with its incalculability, wrote Hannah Arendt, is the greatest of all obstacles
to total domination over man.
It is to follow our conscience and place morality above unjust laws, to fearlessly pursue personal
and communal values, and to give voice to our thoughts undeterred by ridicule.
To live within the truth is to act in ways which promote a cultural reawakening, thus
serving as a counterforce to the totalitarian system’s course of march towards cultural
stagnation, suffering, and death.
Our way must be, never knowingly support lies.
In communist Czechoslovakia, the Velvet Revolution, or non-violent fall of totalitarianism, depended
not so much upon political reform, but upon the existence of growing numbers of individuals
who were willing to live within the truth, even when things were at their worst.
They could equally have been poets, painters, musicians, or simply ordinary citizens who
were able to maintain their human dignity.
One thing, however, seems clear.
The attempt at political reform was not the cause of society’s reawakening, but rather
the final outcome of that reawakening.
As an example of how living within the truth can revitalize a society, Havel recounts the
story of a rock band, the Plastic People of the Universe.
In communist Czechoslovakia, musicians were required to register with authorities, and
were banned from creating music deemed too provocative or threatening to the political
system.
Plastic People of the Universe refused to toe the line, and following a concert in 1976
they were arrested, and the ensuing trial gained enormous public interest.
The state media branded the band members as drug addicts, mentally ill, extremists and
traitors to the country.
However, many of the citizens had grown tired of living within a lie, and they supported
the young musicians, and as Havel notes, in many respects the trial marked the beginning
of the end of totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia.
Havel writes,
The plastic people of the universe were unknown young people who wanted no more than to be
able to live within the truth, to play the music they enjoyed, and to live freely in
dignity and partnership.
They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo, to accept the principles
of living within a lie, and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities, yet they
decided on a different course.
In some ways, the trial was the final straw.
People came to realize that not standing up for the freedom of others meant surrendering
one’s own freedom.
Along with demonstrating the real-world impact that can result from the actions of ordinary
individuals who live within the truth, that a young rock band sparked a movement that
toppled the totalitarian system in Czechoslovakia unveils an important but underappreciated
characteristic of this type of political system.
Despite appearances, it is by its nature weak, brittle, and in need of constant infusions
of fear and lies in order to prevent it from collapsing.
This weakness is why totalitarian regimes constantly slander and persecute anyone, even
harmless musicians, who engage in even a modest attempt to live within the truth.
For truth is the primary enemy of totalitarianism, as it erodes the foundation of lies upon which
it is built.”
Havel explains,
The crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff.
As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone.
But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, the emperor
is naked.
When a single person breaks the rules of the totalitarian game, thus exposing it as a game,
everything suddenly appears in another light, and the whole crust seems then to be made
of a tissue, on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.
The brittleness of the totalitarian system is also why it is so important for as many
people as possible to stop being servants to state lies.
For just as our failure as individuals fuels the totalitarian system, so too it is a renewed
courage of individuals to live within the truth which weakens and eventually destroys
it.
Totalitarian systems condition their citizens to believe that the individual is powerless
to effectuate social and political change, but history has repeatedly shown otherwise
and as Solzhenitsyn notes, one man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.
What we choose to say and how we decide to act influences not just the state of our character
but the state of society, and when living in the midst of totalitarian rule, the fundamental
choice to make is whether we are going to stand on the side of truth and freedom or
on the side of lies and malevolent authority.
For those who choose the latter, whether out of fear, apathy, or merely to take the path
of least resistance, Solzhenitsyn had the following to say.
Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a
recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general.
Let him say to himself, plainly, I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth, and to
eat my fill.
Thank you.
Source: Academy of Ideas