The day he was arrested by the KGB, Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released Live Not by Lies. It is a short exhortation to his fellow dissidents to continue their struggle by resisting the ideological state at its most vulnerable point – lies. I read it now as equally relevant to our own increasingly ideological Western societies. It deserves to be widely read, and not just because deception is at the heart of Labor’s approach to politics…

Across much of the Western world, especially the Anglosphere, we live under ideological regimes increasingly intolerant of questioning or dissent. Witness the almost unanimous institutional animosity to (and undermining of) Brexit in the UK and to Trump in the USA; the violent put down of anti-lockdown protesters in Victoria, with police firing rubber bullets at peaceful Australians; Trudeau freezing the bank accounts of Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates; the denigration as ‘deniers’ of anyone who questions the narrative of an existential climate emergency demanding a rapid transition to renewables; and the vilification as racist or phobic of anyone who questions or dissents from the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda that has no democratic mandate. And, finally, the denigration of citizens who did not support the proposal to enshrine in Australia’s Constitution an Indigenous-only representative assembly, the Voice, as racist, ignorant, or stupid. The Voice proposal had near-universal backing from Australia’s governments and institutional elites in the media, arts, sporting, and business organisations. Fortunately, more than 60 per cent of voters at the referendum said emphatically ‘No’, backing the I-am-you-are-we-are-Australian spirit of civic constitutional equality that underpins our success as a multicultural democracy.

This ideology goes by a variety of names. Political correctness – the use of approved language. Virtue signalling – the overt show of fealty. Cancel culture – the no-platforming and hounding of dissenters. Diversity – the hiding of ideological uniformity behind a rainbow flag of bodies and sexualities. Equity – the promotion of favoured ‘victim’ groups. And inclusion – a cover for the exclusion of dissenters. But ‘Woke’ has become the term most often used for the ideology that has taken hold across much of the Western world. Even with nominally centre-right governments in the UK and Australia for much of the last decade, the Woke ideology has extended its reach and tightened its grip.

I first heard of Solzhenitsyn in my early teens when his novel The First Circle, published in 1968, was all the rage. My parents had a copy. He’s now better known for The Gulag Archipelago, which documents life in the Soviet Union’s vast system of labour camps. The manuscript was seized by the KGB in 1973, but Solzhenitsyn got his hands on a microfilm of the book and brought it to the West. Vintage Classics published a new, abridged version with a foreword by Jordan Peterson in 2018. His promotion of the work has given it renewed popularity. On the day the KGB arrested Solzhenitsyn – February 12, 1974 – he released his essay, Live Not by Lies.

Solzhenitsyn acknowledges the power of the ideological State and says that ‘to make them reconsider – is impossible’. He also acknowledges such a State’s capacity and willingness to inflict punishments on dissenters, and our reluctance to forgo the comforts that compliance affords. But he rebukes the cowardly excuse that we can do nothing, saying:

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!

He tells us to ‘recoil’ from the ideological State’s ‘most vulnerable point. From lies’.

Solzhenitsyn’s exposition of the necessary connection between violence and lies is worth quoting at length:

When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance, it displays on its banner and proclaims: ‘I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!’ But violence ages swiftly, a few years pass – and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally – Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: it demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit – and this suffices as our fealty.

And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation 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!

He doesn’t mean avoiding the white lies of ordinary civility. He means our refusing to participate in the lies of the ideological State.

There follows a list of nine things an honest man, one worthy of respect, should commit to. It’s not exhaustive and anyone ‘who begins to cleanse himself will, with a cleansed eye, easily discern yet other opportunities’. It includes obvious things like not uttering or writing lies and not making works that ‘depict, support, or broadcast a single false thought, a single distortion of the truth’. It includes not consuming media that ‘distorts or hides the underlying facts’. That rules out most of the mainstream media including, of course, public broadcasters.

Given what we are now routinely subjected to, Solzhenitsyn’s list has more challenging instructions. We are not to attend a meeting ‘where a forced and distorted discussion is expected to take place’. Do our large organisations, public or private, now have any other kinds of meetings? Our honest man is to ‘walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play, or film as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda’. No more going to events, or flying on airlines, with a welcome to country. Attending a school or university is out too, full as they are of ideological drivel and shameless propaganda. As are most events with ‘climate’ in their title. Taking seriously this personal non-participation in lies brings into sharp focus the extent to which our societies have become ideological.

Solzhenitsyn is honest enough to say that none of this will be easy, will likely cost us our jobs and make life complicated.

But there is no loophole left for anyone who seeks to be honest: not even for a day, not even in the safest technical occupations can he avoid even a single one of the listed choices – to be made in favour of either truth or lies, in favour of spiritual independence or spiritual servility. And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognised 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.

It is not an easy path but, according to Solzhenitsyn, it is the easiest of those before us – and it is the only one for the soul. There are those among us who already live by truth. Jordan Peterson is one; Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is another. We need not be the first. Ours is but to join, to become a multitude the ideological State will be unable to touch.

Dr Michael Green has a PhD in Systems Engineering.

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