Taking a stand, living in truth

"[Let's look at] the example of the greengrocer, living in an authoritarian state [who] habitually puts a sign 'Workers of the world, unite!' in his shop window each day even though he doesn’t believe the slogan but understands it is necessary to demonstrate his loyalty to the regime and ensure he stays out of trouble.

"One morning he decides he will no longer put out the sign .... His seemingly trivial action enables him to live more honestly even if he risks official penalties. ... 

"Czech playwright Václav Havel ... who became President of his country in 1989 after the Soviet-backed, communist government collapsed. ... argued that private individuals [lie our greengrocer] can help overturn repressive systems simply by refusing to participate in expected rituals of obedience, no matter how minor.

"And random acts of resistance like the greengrocer’s can give courage to others similarly tired of enforced conformity in totalitarian states — or in liberal democracies. ...

"What Havel saw so clearly is that totalitarian systems don’t primarily run on violence — they run on the complicity of the population. Each person who goes along with the ritual reinforces the illusion that the ritual reflects genuine consensus. Each greengrocer who puts up the sign makes it harder for the next one to refuse.

"New Zealand’s version of this operates through social rather than state coercion, which in some ways makes it harder to name and resist. ... The country is small and the networks are tight; the social cost of being known as a dissenter is higher in a place where everyone knows everyone.

"The result is a kind of pre-emptive self-censorship that Havel would recognise immediately. ... The New Zealand consensus is not a single monolithic ideology but a cluster of positions that have achieved a kind of sacral status ...

"Some of the most charged include the application of Treaty principles across virtually all public policy, certain framings within debates about Māori sovereignty and co-governance, consensus around specific approaches to climate and housing policy ... To question them is to be located, socially and professionally, as the kind of person who questions them, which is itself a disqualifying mark.

"Havel’s prescription is deceptively simple and genuinely demanding: live in truth. ... It means saying plainly, in your own sphere, what you actually think.

"The greengrocer who refuses to put up the sign does something that seems trivially small but is in fact a profound disruption — he breaks the illusion of consensus ...

"In a New Zealand context this looks like the scientist who publishes findings that complicate the preferred narrative, even knowing it will generate institutional discomfort.

• It looks like the journalist who covers a story the consensus would prefer left alone.
• It looks like the professional who declines to sign the ritual statement and explains why calmly and without apology.
• It looks like the historian who prefers to deal in objective facts rather than subjective “stories” and won’t bow to a critical theory neo-Marxist dialectic.
• It looks like the council member who won’t participate in a prayer (disguised as a karakia) before a meeting because of its religious significance.
• It looks like your author who will not use Aotearoa for New Zealand or insert te reo words into a narrative written in English.
• It looks like the ordinary person who says at a dinner table, 'I don’t think that’s quite right,' and is willing to sit with the social discomfort that follows.

"What Havel emphasises is that this is not heroism in any dramatic sense -- it is simply the refusal to participate in the agreed-upon falseness. And its power is precisely that it is available to anyone. You do not need a platform or an institution or a movement. You need only the willingness to say what you see."

~ David Harvey from his post 'Above the parapet'