How to Respond to Propaganda
Part 3: Why holding fast to the truth is the answer
The following four-part series is my tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay, Live Not By Lies, based on what I am observing in the West. Here are links to the other parts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4.
It is directly inspired by Solzhenitsyn’s form and format.
After his exile from Russia to the West, Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned of the dangers of staying silent in the face of shameless propaganda and, worse, agreeing to lies.
How will you respond to what you see happening around you?
The most basic way to regain our forgotten freedom is this: holding fast to the truth.
Though unchallengeable dogma pervades academics, politics, and corporate offices, hold fast to this one thing: we will not help them by abandoning what we know to be true.
We are held captive by our own thoughts, yet our own thoughts provide the key to our escape. Not giving in to groupthink and lies is the simplest place for us to start, and the most harmful to their ideology.
Because when people embrace truth, it gives lies no room to spread. As with a pandemic, false ideas cease to have power when they no longer have vulnerable hosts to infect.
