Eyes Open / On Living in Truth
In the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to get more focus as to why I’m writing here and what I’ll be writing about. I came of age academically studying authoritarian government in China, but of late I can’t help but see parallels between the authoritarian practices I’ve studied in China and the tactics used by Donald Trump and his faction of the GOP.
I’ve decided this will primarily be a place to write about authoritarianism, in all its forms. Think of me as a C+ version of Anne Applebaum or Ruth Ben-Ghiat, with a stronger dose of China and political science.
In my work as a China scholar, I have been fortunate to get to know many folks in the overseas dissident and pro-democracy community. They were the ones who introduced me to the concept of “living in truth”— the rights protection lawyer Teng Biao used to have it on his business card. It originates from Czech dissident-turned-president Václav Havel in his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless. He argues that the core element of authoritarian rule is the perpetuation and acceptance of falsehoods:
The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government... the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available...farcical elections become the highest form of democracy. 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. (p. 136).
Individuals within such systems are expected to behave as though they believe these lies, as though they support the government and its policies. Havel calls this “living within the lie.”
Havel’s broader point in the essay is that there is power and dignity in everyday authenticity. “Living in truth” means refusing to simply lie down and accept the lies or ideas perpetuated by those in power or those in society, but to behave consistently with your own values and seek the actual truth in the world around you.
In many places, spreading lies and using those lies to dominate has become a key feature of governance and control. Democracy worldwide is in recession, and now over 70% of the global population lives under authoritarian rule. In the U.S., we are governed by a party and people whose unifying characteristic is to perpetuate Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 election and the countless lies he spews on a daily basis. We are living in what some refer to as a “post-truth” society, where “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
As a concept and life philosophy, living in truth is more relevant now than ever. I’ve renamed this little space in honor of that idea.
Another common theme in dissident writing is that there is real pain in living in the opposition. Day in and day out, you wake up reading the news about people in power who you think don’t deserve to be there, doing things they shouldn’t be doing. It is emotionally taxing, if you are paying attention. Just reading pretty much any Trump tweet can bring you down.
This is why people stop paying attention. There is an old argument in the China field that Chinese citizens suffer from political apathy, which seems to have really set in earnest in the post-Tiananmen period. Why pay mind to politics if you have no voice, and if doing so can only get you into trouble? In these types of places, living in truth is exhausting and dangerous. It is easier to just tune out or go along with things.
In the U.S., there are more and more folks calling for a “political detox,” and judging by viewership of many news networks, people are tuning out post election. There are good arguments for this— excessive news consumption can lead to political polarization and disdain for the opposing camp, not to mention it crowds out the simpler joys in life. There is such a thing as overdosing on politics.
But it also worth noting that bad governments feed on political apathy. Exhaustion breeds apathy, and apathy begets domination. Bad governments want their citizens to tune out, because it’s easier to plunder the state, repress political enemies, and otherwise govern poorly. I worry that compared to 2016, the mood from the opposition to Trump is more muted, and much of the country is gripped by a certain resigned hopelessness. While tuning out may feel easier, we should be tuning in, eyes wide open, watching and documenting the abuses of power that will unfold in the years to come.
Thanks for reading today. And best wishes for the new year. As always, if you find my writing useful, please share with a few others. I appreciate it.
Rory
I've heard you on a couple of podcasts recently talking about the importance of getting American students back to China. I'm generally fine with that idea although I don't really see why Taiwan is not a perfectly acceptable alternative for language study. You can study German in Austria too etc.
But I do think this recent article by the China Media project highlights some potential risks with study in China.
https://chinamediaproject.org/2025/01/07/total-war-for-global-minds/
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'In his first major speech on propaganda policy in August 2013, Xi referred to the need for CCP victory in the “public opinion struggle” (舆论斗争), a phrase that for many bore uncomfortable shades of the disastrous pre-reform era. The “struggle,” he made clear, was about raising China’s voice — the Party’s voice — over that of the West, a challenge state media have steadily called “a smokeless war.”
Over the past three years, however, China’s steely determination to remake global public opinion, and to enlist the whole of Chinese society to do so, has been delivered with another conflict term: total war. '
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'As we have noted previously in our coverage of China’s treatment of foreign students as propaganda resources, this tactic raises serious ethical issues, not just about the priorities of Chinese higher education but about the integrity of academic exchanges. '
Amazing quote. Such a strong rhyme between Havel and Orwell.
I've been trying to tell people that Trump's greatest power is messing with our minds. He keeps saying he's going to do things, most of which never come true, and he degrades our mental health by provoking us to react to him. I tell people, “Wait till he makes an actual move.”