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Key insights from
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian
Dissidents
By
Rod Dreher
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What you’ll learn
Courageous dissenters of
totalitarian Soviet Russia offer Americans a harsh warning: Our consumerist
comforts are soothing us into a form of “soft totalitarianism.” This kind
of oppression doesn’t require prisons or brute force, though. Rather, this
encroaching soft totalitarianism slips in quietly under the guise of an oppressive
“social justice” ideology that destroys our ability to think and live
freely. Renowned author of The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher interviews
former Soviet dissidents to draw illuminating parallels to the American
condition and embolden people to defy this tyranny of mind with biblical
truth.
Read
on for key insights from Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.
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1. The past is a
lighthouse: Former Soviet dissenters reveal America’s blind spots.
History isn’t static or
stationary. Rather, history leaks into the present. This is the case for a
large number of former Soviet-era Russian radicals. After receiving a
call from Dr. John Schirger, a well-known doctor who initially asked to
remain anonymous, the author was informed of a terrifying fact: An
increasing number of people who resisted the hand of a totalitarian regime
in the past are sounding alarms for America’s present. Milada Kloubkova
Schirger, the doctor’s mother and a former political rebel in
Czechoslovakia, warned her son that the state of America was strikingly
similar to that of early communist Czechoslovakia. The author took this as
a formidable warning sign and ventured out to consult the perspectives of
other Soviet dissidents familiar with American culture. What he found is
far from consoling.
In order to first discern
the growing clutch of totalitarianism, the author advises all Americans and
Christians alike to follow the example of a quiet revolutionary priest
named Tomislav Poglajen. After leaving Croatia before the impending arrival
of the Nazi Gestapo, the Jesuit priest changed his name to Kolaković and
moved to Czechloslovakia where he would ignite a small flame of Christian
resistance. After years of studying the Soviet Union, the priest knew the
deal that the formerly Nazi-operated vassal state of Czechloslovakia made
with totalitarian Soviet Russia would wreak havoc in their already crushed nation.
Kolaković rightly discerned that the Czech government was making yet
another deal with the devil, falling prey to Soviet Russia’s false promise
of freedom from Nazi imposition. One form of totalitarianism would simply
slip into another one. He decided that it was time to inform others.
Kolaković taught Catholic youth about the ideological danger of
totalitarianism, cautioning them with the advice to: “See. Judge. Act.”
After years of religious persecution and imprisonment, the small circle of
informed believers eventually grew in the 1960s into a powerful movement of
political dissenters known as the underground church. With their
collective action informed by an education in history, philosophy, and
theology, they planted the beginnings of what would be a nation-shaking
resistance.
The cultural situation of
Americans, though drastically different than that of the imprisoned Czech
believers, requires the same depth of knowledge concerning the content and
trends of totalitarian regimes. The political philosopher and brilliant
author of the 1951 work The
Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, unfolds her wisdom
on the subject to protect the future from its horrific past. According to
Arendt, totalitarian regimes push a particular ideology with the aim to cut
and replace any other competing way of thinking. The author notes that the
harsh totalitarian regime of Russia is coincident with George Orwell’s
novel 1984,
whereas the soft totalitarian ideology espoused by contemporary America
parallels Aldous Huxley’s cautionary tale Brave New World. The difference in the
two centers upon the regimes’ means of oppression: Hard totalitarianism
threatens dissidents with imprisonment and violence, whereas soft
totalitarianism eases people into enjoying their oppression through
illusory comforts. In other words, Americans are subdued with lullabies
that sing them to a soft, deceptive sleep.
The warnings of Soviet
émigrés are undeniable signs that Americans should peer deeper into the
content of their country. Perhaps what seems gentle and reassuring on the
surface is in fact a weapon of ideological control?
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2. The soft
totalitarianism of “social justice” tries to fill an existential gap.
One of Arendt’s signposts
for an evolving totalitarian state is pervasive in contemporary America. In
the midst of illusory relationships, each American is becoming an island
within herself, or her phone, more precisely. Fragmentation and isolation
are close friends that cultivate the ideal breeding ground for an
oppressive ideology to flourish. Some other mentalities that Arendt argues
predispose nations to accepting totalitarian regimes include: a growing
disregard for institutional tradition, a blind loyalty to ideology, a
desire to politicize everything, and the tendency to gravitate to a form of
confirmation bias. The trend that’s most pressing and conducive to the
growth of totalitarianism in America today involves the dissolving place of
God in contemporary culture. Pre-totalitarian Russia witnessed a similar
disillusionment with organized religion. Both nations experienced a chink
in their existential armor, namely the loss of God and organized religion
as valid sources of meaning.
After the failure of the
autocratic government to effectively provide for its people during the 1891
Russian Famine, its people dreamed of reform. Marxism promised this kind of
people-centered reform, while also offering the intellectual elite a way to
see their revolution as a religion in order to fill a God-sized gap.
Czesław Miłosz, the Nobel Prize-winning poet who wrote against the hold of
the Soviet regime, notes that the communist ideology offered the
anti-religious elite a new way to conceive meaning. According to the
author, Marxism began in the tight-knit circles of the cultural figureheads
and intellectual institutions, but the evangelization of the communist
message in the famine-ravaged lives of factory workers is what caused it to
really expand.
This shift parallels the
growth of “social justice” ideology in contemporary America. Similar to the
pre-Soviet nations, the United States is in the grip of a gap in its
beliefs and source of meaning. This outcome was prompted by a gradual
evolution produced by the Enlightenment period of the 18th century, one
which sought to laud the progress of science and technology in place of
religion and belief in God. The author notes that the growth of positivism,
or the assumption that all knowledge is found in the empirical data of
science, fueled the cry for progress to relieve the burden of material
lack. This is the same thinking that powered Marxism, and today it’s
practiced unconsciously throughout America. Critic Philip Rieff’s 1966 book
The Triumph of the
Therapeutic contrasts the former “Religious Man” with the
modern “Psychological Man” to assert that while in the past people found
meaning in religious belief, in the present people turn to personal
wellbeing and desire as lifelong pursuits. In other words, relieving
material discomfort is the meaning of life.
Enter “social justice”
theory. In the same way that Marxism tried to fill the existential gap for
intellectuals who shunned religion, “social justice” attempts to do the
same. “Social justice” promises illusory relief from oppression through
force, granting its followers a warm, moral feeling lost in the rejection
of God. Now, it’s easy to feel good—simply make a politicized social media
post in favor of the trending “social justice” campaign and you’re moral
gold.
That’s what makes the
ideological sway of “social justice” so dangerous. It promises a shining
and just new world through underhanded oppression and gentle manipulation.
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3. Corporations
manipulate discourse in the guise of necessary luxuries.
The nearly dystopian dream
of asking your house to turn off the lights for you, or check on the
weather without stepping a foot outside is here: Smart speakers are a
popular household fixture and a loyal family assistant. In fact, 70 million
Americans fall asleep with one of those brave little attendants in their
home, or worse, right by their bed. The family of Kamila and Václav Benda
are wary of this development after experiencing an intrusive communist
government in Prague. Email, smartphones, smarter speakers—the Bendas said
no to allowing these into their homes even while living in a new,
relatively free liberal government. In the wake of their experience under a
totalitarian regime which diminished any kind of personal privacy, the
Bendas are vigilant to maintain the freedom they have now. Their warning to
Americans is the same: Preserving privacy preserves truth.
Still, going “off-the-grid”
sounds like a modern day nightmare. But the potential consequences of our
reliance on consumer comforts may be costing us and corrupting our near
future. The author notes that the source of America’s impending soft
totalitarianism is not in the government; rather, its source is in big
business fueled by big data. Now, businesses incorporate the Google
practice established in 2003 called “data extraction,” a method that tracks
browsers’ habits in order to sell that data to other companies and more
effectively market to consumers. Fears concerning big data might sound like
an over-exaggeration of a shrewd marketing method, or an apocalyptic movie
plotline, but they aren’t unfounded. The author observes that the rise of
big data in business coincided with the movement of corporations towards
“social justice” ideology. The government isn’t pushing manipulative
creeds; corporations are, and in the process, we’re buying into them.
Take a moment and think
about the retailers that rittle your day: Maybe you ordered a package from
Amazon, or stopped at Walmart for a few groceries. Apple, Microsoft,
Google, Facebook—the list of impactful corporations is nearly endless. And
they all have something key in common: They manipulate and exploit shoppers
by espousing a superficial version of the “social justice” credo. Corporations
simultaneously mold and market with ideology. In other words, they know
what consumers want to hear, and they shape what consumers will eventually
know.
Technology might make life
easier, but it takes an exploitative amount of information to do so. This
information is readily available to big businesses that harness the
potential to use this gathered data against consumers who may threaten an
established belief system. This isn’t a far-fetched future, either; the
same principle is evident in today’s “cancel culture.” Similarly, the
People’s Republic of China, a technologically-developed totalitarian state,
uses artificial intelligence and big data to fuel a social credit system in
which people must act a certain way in order to partake in society.
Like the Benda family,
Americans must cultivate secure places in which their privacy is safe and
truth is possible. Authentic living requires sacrifice; the transition
isn’t easy, especially when advertising saturates culture so heavily.
Leaving your smartphone at home, unplugging your smart speaker, or going
for a walk away from the noise might be a good start, though.
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4. Truth and
memory thrive in small groups.
Cultivating resistance
doesn’t have to be massive or violent, requiring thousands of people to
fight together against one common enemy. That might be how movies portray
resistance and freedom-fighters, but many real-life dissidents stray from
that mold. Even a small resistance can be earth-shattering. Instead of
those thousands, a rebellion might only require 10 or five or even two.
Instead of weapons, it may simply involve the ability to speak the truth
and bring the memory of the past into the present. During his research, the
author unearthed a common trend in Soviet dissenters: The strategy of the
small group. The Benda family is a prime example of a seemingly tiny
gathering of people motivated by the desire to practice truth apart from
oppressive ideology.
Empowering their children
with the imaginative works of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Bendas sought to
preserve the traditional notion of the Christian family unit in the midst
of the extremely atheistic Czech portion of Czechoslovakia. Under a regime
which sought to dissolve the bonds of family, the Bendas maintained their
hold on one another, instilling Christian values in their children through
setting idyllic moral examples and incorporating them into the resistance
by holding lectures on philosophy, literature, and politics at home. These
talks comprised their “parallel polis,” intellectual discussions which
stepped outside the realm of totalitarian ideology. The author notes that
creating these units and preserving cultural memory within them remains a powerful
force against ideologies that seek to displace and rewrite the past to
justify the future. By living their biblically grounded truth in the
presence of family first, the Bendas were empowered to do even greater
things to spark their resistance efforts.
Living in the presence of
others is powerful. While this effort can begin and continue in the family
unit, it shouldn’t stop there. The small group, led first by Father
Kolaković and borne up by intellectual lectures much like the Bendas,
extended its influence into the 1980s. František Mikloško, a man who would
later become a prominent Slovak politician, led the underground church in
one of the most important resistance events in Czechoslovakia. The 1988
Candlelight Demonstration in Bratislava involved a peaceful protest for
religious liberty by members of the underground church, a powerful movement
shaped by a shared belief in the truth of God. Speaking, standing, and
acting together even on the small-scale of the family unit, a book club, or
a biking group instills unified meaning into members and enables them to
remain loyal to each other and to the cause of biblical truth.
Small groups are
diminishing in contemporary America, though. The author notes that with the
dissolution of the family structure, the spread of social media, and
mounting mistrust and loneliness, small groups are vital. Meeting
face-to-face with even just a few people elevates something within all of
us: It enables authenticity and strength found only in a community of
people. It’s much easier to withstand oppression and sift through lies with
the help of others. Community doesn’t entail opening your social media page
and leaving a comment on a distant friend’s photo, though—that’s an
illusion that prevents us from seeking something deeper. Piercing the
surface of superficiality is potent: Maybe you’ll lead a resistance, stoke
an intellectual flame, or perhaps simply make a new friend.
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5. Faith
transforms suffering into freedom.
The most powerful means of
resistance is belief. When entire nations railed against them, plunging
them into the violently cold, crushing echo of the jail cell, Christian
political prisoners drew peace from their faith in God. With God at one’s
back and a Bible in hand, suffering becomes purposeful and in many cases,
liberating. When one knows where meaning, purpose, and truth come from,
withstanding moments of suffering and identifying authentic truth is
possible. As Solzhenitsyn explains in his work The Gulag Archipelago, the unthinkable
suffering he underwent turned into a tool that shaped him spiritually and
instilled in him an even greater capacity to love and foster compassion for
others.
The famous dissident
Alexander Ogorodnikov experienced the same revelation during his time as a
Soviet prisoner. Before he was held in solitary confinement, Ogorodnikov
discovered the purpose of his suffering: God meant for him to minister to
prisoners on death-row in order to lead them from earthly death to eternal
life. Even while trapped alone in a dark cell, Ogorodnikov found peace in
God’s purpose for him. Many nights he would wake up to a vision of a
prisoner walking toward his inevitable death. In that moment, he knew that
God wanted him to pray for the prisoner’s salvation as he walked. Only God
can take these seemingly disjointed lives and brutal experiences to
manifest His presence and power. Though the world grew bleaker with every
prison cell slammed shut, God replaced Ogorodnikov’s suffering with freedom
and purpose.
In contemporary America,
faith is prone to stagnate in the presence of suffering. The author notes
that people confuse the absence of pain with the presence of freedom,
creating an ideal ground for soft totalitarianism to grow. If one is
constantly fleeing from anything that gives her discomfort, she falls prey
to the message that freedom is found in pleasure. Freedom is much bigger
than that, though—it transcends the self. Though Christians should never
seek suffering, they should accept its presence as a weapon of spiritual
renewal. The existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard distinguishes the
difference between “the admirer” and “the follower” regarding one’s
relationship to Christ. While the admirer treats Christianity as some
unattainable ideal, or a beautiful theory, the follower allows the truth of
Jesus to fill her and expand into her daily actions. The way of Jesus is a
way of being in a world fraught with suffering; the way of Jesus is a way
of nurturing peace in otherwise painful circumstances.
“See. Judge. Act.”
Kolaković’s motto is a model for Christians to seek and establish truth in
times of testing. With the wisdom of God and the knowledge of His Word,
Christians are empowered to view the world apart from any number of
ideological lenses it wishes to impose. Truth remains stitched into the
world despite the murkiness of the contemporary moment. Action that follows
the illumination of truth might not always be easy or comfortable, but it
always leads to deeper freedom, peace, and joy beyond the superficial
comforts of this world.
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