When Truth Becomes a Weapon: The Rise of Narrative Competitive Authoritarian Power
June 24, 2025•677 words
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ~ George Orwell
“The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.” ~ Vaclav Havel
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” ~ Noam Chomsky
“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” ~ George Orwell
“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills truth.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
We live in a time when truth is no longer sacred.
It has become moldable, shapeshifting, twisted by those who understand its most dangerous function: control. In the hands of the cunning, two-faced, backstabbing, power is no longer measured by force or visible dominance, but by the ability to dictate the narrative.
Once, reason and evidence settled public debates. Today, authority, repetition, and intimidation have taken their place. In this new era of creative authoritarian manipulation, facts aren’t uncovered, they’re manufactured. And while you might feel like a passive observer, you're not. You're the target.
The most dangerous leaders aren’t always the ones who storm the gates in revolution; they’re the ones who quietly dissolve the distinction between truth and usefulness. History warned us, totalitarian regimes like the Nazis didn’t just wage war with weapons; they waged war on reality itself. Before the Enabling Acts, the Nazis' blurred the line between true and false during the Weimar democratic Republic in the Reichstag, and beer halls of Germany, turning every conversation into a loyalty test, and every fact into a litmus test of allegiance.
And always, there are scapegoats in such competitive authoritarian led regimes.
We begin to hear elected officials labeled as traitors for dissent. Judges are smeared as corrupt for doing their jobs. Immigrants are painted as invaders. People of colour are blamed, subtly or openly, for society’s challenges. These aren’t isolated tactics; they’re part of a broader campaign to reduce complex truths into simple lies that serve those in power.
When power dictates truth, reality becomes a chessboard. If you're not alert, you’re just a piece, moved, sacrificed, or ignored.
At the highest levels, power doesn’t care about what’s real. It only cares about what works. History is full of rulers who found it more efficient to create their own reality than to contend with the real one. They fabricate. They omit. They smear. They invert good and evil, turning defenders into enemies, and aggressors into victims.
In this warped mirror, even entire populations, immigrants, refugees, academics, and intellectuals, are cast as threats. Not because they’re dangerous, but because they represent complexity, critical thought, and difference in a beautiful democracy. These are things autocrats cannot control, and so they must be silenced.
A state might claim it was attacked, when in truth it struck first. It will wave the flag, and post the flag on their "TRUTH" social media sites, and speak the language of justice, security, and patriotism, while eroding the very freedoms those words once protected.
America’s founders feared this kind of power. They feared a figure who could seize control not through force, but through deception. And yet such figures rise again, not as tyrants, but as “saviors from God,” “reformers,” “protectors.” They don’t break down the gates of democracy, they rot it from within.
Truth doesn’t stand a chance because it’s replaced with something far more potent: belief based on lies. If you can’t see the difference, if you let yourself believe the narrative of power over the evidence of truth, then you’re no longer ruled by law or reason, you’re ruled by illusion and fear.
So, the question remains: will you wake up and clearly understand the manipulation as a master of chess, or will you become just another piece on their checker board?
https://youtube.com/shorts/HLGyUckZFr8?si=ph-aT0qynbcH56At
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/trump-white-house-lies-immigration-economy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/11/trump-lying-politics-polarization/
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/10/nx-s1-5424450/ways-trump-administration-is-going-after-colleges