"The Power of the Powerless" - How to Unravel an Authoritarian Regime

Hope from Václav Havel

By Jiří Jiroutek, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27531732

Just recently, I had a conversation with a friend who is a strong supporter of Donald Trump. We are still friends and speak civilly to one another, so that is a plus. I mentioned to this person that Trump’s demolition of the East Wing was illegal, and they challenged me by pointing out that many prior Presidents have renovated the White House. I agreed but pointed out the fact (and it is a fact) that those construction projects followed set rules and laws, and as a National Historic Landmark, the White House cannot be changed without review processes. None of that happened under Trump; he just did it without Congressional approval.

(I laid out the case in What Trump Is Doing To The White House Is Criminal.)

Apparently, facts are not what this person wanted to hear. They responded by saying, “There is no discussion that could convince me otherwise, as I am a diehard Trump follower of his polices.”

There it was… don’t tell me the facts; I will follow Trump no matter what reality or the truth may be. There really is not much discussion that can take place with someone in that bubble. It is frustrating to try to have a civil conversation with someone who has abandoned truth for loyalty to a person. That frustration can grow into passivity in the face of what seems insurmountable.

The abandonment of truth and reality is a frightening phenomenon, as millions of supporters of Trump have followed suit. In their bubble, where loyalty to the leader outweighs loyalty to the truth, lies infiltrate social media with ease and are assimilated into the mainstream. Alternate realities and alternate facts emerge to create a fantasy world where Trump is right because, well, he says so. Those who fact-check the leader are deemed disloyal, treasonous, and a threat. It can seem overwhelming.

But that is the point. Trump’s so-called power resides in a series of lies. Lies about the 2020 election, lies about his opponents, lies about immigrants, and lies about his ability to tear down portions of the White House. It is an administration that governs by the lie.

The lie is meant to wear you down to where telling the truth seems pointless. Telling the truth often feels powerless because so many have swallowed the lie. What are we to do when we feel so powerless?

Havel’s The Power of the Powerless

Shortly after that conversation, which ended amicably, I ran across an essay written by the Czechoslovakian resistance leader and eventual President, Václav Havel. He was an author, poet, playwright, and dissident for those who may not remember him. I remembered him and admired him from the 1980s.

Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992, before its dissolution on 31 December, and then became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president after the fall of communism. He led his country during the unraveling of Communist authoritarianism.

However, before Havel’s rise to power, he was imprisoned several times for speaking out and telling the truth in the 1970s and early 80s. Living under a totalitarian regime gave him keen insight into the moral power of truth-telling.

Václav Havel wrote an essay, The Power of the Powerless (1978), which resonated with me as the ideology of the lie has expanded in the United States. When Havel wrote his famous essay in 1978, he lived under a regime that sought not only to control behavior, but to control meaning, truth, and reality itself.

Ritual Affirmation of The Lie

Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party did not merely demand obedience; it demanded ritual affirmation of an official truth that everyone knew to be false. It is not much different from the Trump administration’s commitment to the lie, which requires ritual affirmation through the wearing of red hats and vulgar t-shirts and allows no dissent.

Havel argued that totalitarian regimes are sustained by citizens who comply with everyday acts of “living in a lie,” such as the “greengrocer who puts up a false political slogan.” The performative ritual resembles MAGA red hats that extol making America great again, or flying an American flag with Trump’s image on it. These performative rituals sustain the lie.

His essay is a meditation on what happens when truth becomes the casualty of public life. Havel described it as “living within the lie” — the condition of participating, often passively, in a system of falsehoods that sustains itself precisely because people fear what might happen if they stop pretending to believe.

One can only think of the cowering Republicans in Congress who know Trump peddles lies but are afraid to speak out in support of the truth. How many Trump supporters are also scared to speak out, so they continue to pay homage to the lie for fear of social ostracism? Or maybe, to save face.

Havel’s diagnosis was directed at a totalitarian state, yet its moral insight travels far beyond the iron curtain of the 1970s. It speaks to any society where the distinction between truth and falsehood, conscience and convenience, becomes blurred. Welcome to MAGA America 2025.

The Green Grocer & Social Media

As for everyday US citizens living in the lie, they resemble Havel’s greengrocer, who obeys the ritual of conformity not because he is a bad person but because he is human. He wants peace, safety, and a sense of belonging. What makes the system durable, Havel observes, is not the fanaticism of its leaders. Still, the small accommodations of ordinary people who repeat slogans they don’t believe, teach what they don’t respect, or stay silent when falsehood becomes policy. The lie survives not only because of terror but also because of the quiet rationalizations of daily life.

Today, the demand to perform loyalty and sustain the lie now comes through different channels than it did in communist Czechoslovakia. It comes from social networks, media tribes, or professional circles. Loyalty is demonstrated by reposting the right meme or performing indignation in the comments section. Truth becomes secondary to display; the gesture of outrage matters more than the substance. Spectacle replaces meaning, and cruelty substitutes for empathy. This type of manipulation has deadening consequences. Once citizens internalize the habit of performative belief, public life drifts toward manipulation and cruelty, aided, of course, by digital algorithms.

Creating “Spheres of Truth”

The essay’s core argument is that individuals can resist and dismantle this system by creating “spheres of truth,” as Havel called them, through living authentically and refusing to participate in the regime’s false ideology, thereby threatening the system from the ground up.

Creating spheres of truth is not an ideology or a program. It is an existential posture, a refusal to participate in the lie. When the greengrocer takes down his sign, he has not joined a political party or written a manifesto. He has merely decided to stop pretending. That small act, Havel writes, “breaks through the charade of the system and exposes it for what it is.”

In creating spheres of truth, individuals can develop genuine freedom by acting on what they believe is right, rather than what the system demands. By living authentically, these individuals become an existential threat to the regime, which cannot tolerate a challenge to its make-believe alternative moral reality.

The No Kings rallies are a case in point. They are a sphere of truth. The public display of truth-telling through signs, chants, costumes, joyful singing, and peaceful protest challenges the lie that undergirds Trump’s paper-thin power. Trump’s deranged AI-generated reaction to No Kings shows just how thin that power really is.

To live in truth in any society means to act in ways consistent with one’s conscience and evidence, even when the cost is social rather than physical. It requires courage in small things: telling an uncomfortable fact, refusing to amplify misinformation, standing by principle when expedience would be easier, or spending a few hours at a No Kings rally.

Truth Telling is Moral Hygiene

Our culture is saturated with manipulation from Trump’s lies, so truth-telling becomes a form of moral hygiene. Havel’s insight is not only political but spiritual: truth has a redemptive power because it restores integrity to the person who speaks it. The reward is not an immediate victory but the retention of dignity. That is where our power resides. A commitment to truth imparts dignity, empowering the individual regardless of their level of power.

That is Havel’s power of the powerless. This strategy argues that the powerless can dismantle the system not through overt political action, but through quiet, individual, and collective acts of living in truth, repeated millions of times by millions of people.

Truth Telling in Apolitical Spaces Creates A Parallel Polis

So, what does the power of the powerless look like? How do individuals exert their commitment to truth when the systems they live in are saturated with the lie?

One of Havel’s most compelling ideas is that genuine resistance begins in “apolitical” spaces: the arts, community, and daily life. “The dissident,” he wrote, “is not necessarily an activist but someone who insists on living authentically in an inauthentic world. The folk musician who refuses censorship, the teacher who tells unapproved truths, the family who raises children to think freely.” These form what Havel called a parallel polis, or a “second culture” of honesty and trust.

In democratic societies, the parallel polis might take the form of independent journalism, such as the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, civic education that supports democratic institutions, or local institutions that prize truth over ideology. For me, teaching my students an authentic history of the United States helps create a parallel polis. Teaching, for me, is an instrument of resistance to the lie.

The parallel polis reminds us that freedom does not begin in Congress or the courts but in the conscience of individuals who will not yield their minds to the convenience of a lie. In that sense, Havel’s essay offers an ethic of citizenship for democracies under strain like ours. The health of a free society depends not only on laws but on habits of truthfulness that precede politics. When those habits erode, when citizens retreat into cynicism or tribalism, institutions falter. Therefore, living in truth becomes not a heroic act but a daily discipline.

The Power of Hope

Havel knew firsthand how exhausting it can be to live truthfully in a world that rewards falsehood. The dissident’s life, he wrote, is “infinitely more difficult” because it exposes one to isolation and failure.

Yet he also believed that meaning itself arises from responsibility, not success. “Hope,” he famously said, “is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”

This form of hope is the antidote to despair. It is this type of hope that we need to dispel the despair that tempts citizens to disengage, to decide that truth no longer matters because no one listens anyway. When lies saturate public life, cynicism becomes a kind of pain relief or an act of escapism. Havel warns against that too. The moment we give up on meaning and truth, we yield the ground to those who manipulate meaning for power.

Belonging vs. Truth

Although Havel’s essay was born in a one-party state, the “post-truth” conditions of modern America make his insights very relevant. In recent years, the U.S. has seen truth itself become politicized. Public debate increasingly revolves around narratives of loyalty and betrayal rather than verification and facts. Political identity functions almost like a secular-religious faith, complete with martyrs (think, Charlie Kirk), heresies (think, the US is not a Christian nation), and rituals of purity (think, Trump rallies).

This environment does not require a dictator to thrive; it merely requires citizens who find comfort in belonging more than in being right. That is the message my friend gave me. They would rather belong to the Trump cult than embrace truth and facts. Disinformation campaigns exploit precisely that human weakness—the desire to be part of something larger—often even if it means surrendering evidence and facts.

Power Rooted in Truth Telling

If there is one lasting lesson from The Power of the Powerless, it is that moral power often resides in those with no formal power at all. The essay’s title is not an oxymoron. When the powerless act from conscience, they expose the lie that authority depends on: obedience.

Each act of truth-telling weakens the illusion that the lie is inevitable. Such acts appear minor, such as a journalist insisting on accuracy, a citizen refusing to believe a conspiracy, or a teacher defending inquiry and truth. Yet history suggests that societies are renewed precisely by those who refuse to live the lie.

Havel himself went from playwright to prisoner to president, but his political authority rested on moral credibility grounded in truth rather than ambition. He embodied the paradox that power rooted in truth is the only kind that endures.

That gives us hope and the responsibility that comes with it. In Havel’s 1986 autobiography, Disturbing the Peace, he defines hope not as optimism but as a moral stance.

This hope, grounded in truth-telling and integrity, is what will sustain us through this dark period in American life. Let’s form communities of resistance based on a commitment to the truth. We can develop a parallel polis to give support and courage to those who are exhausted and need to know they are not alone.

In closing, Havel said:

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good…”

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