Speaking truth to power is a

non-violent Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...

political tactic, employed by

dissidents A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...

against the received wisdom or propaganda of governments they regard as oppressive, authoritarian or an

ideocracy Ideocracy (a portmanteau word combining "ideology" and ''kratos'', Greek for "power") is "governance of a state according to the principles of a particular (political) ideology; a state or country governed in this way". It is government based ...

. The phrase originated with a pamphlet, '' Speak Truth to Power: a Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence'', published by the American Friends Service Committee in 1955. Speak Truth To Power is also the title of a global

Human Rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

initiative under the auspices of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Practitioners who have campaigned for a more just and truthful world have included Apollonius of Tyana, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela,

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Desmond Mpilo Tutu (7 October 193126 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbisho ...

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

, the

Dalai Lama Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current D ...

and Elie Wiesel.

History of the concept

In classical Greece, "speaking truth to power" was known as ''

parrhesia In rhetoric, parrhesia is a figure of speech described as "speak ngcandidly or ... ask ngforgiveness for so speaking". This Ancient Greek word has three different forms, as related by Michel Foucault. ''Parrhesia'' is a noun, meaning "free speec ...

''. The tactic is similar to '' satyagraha'' (literally, "truth-force") which

used in seeking independence from

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. Historian Clayborne Carson attributes the popularizing of the phrase in America to civil rights organizer and peace activist

Bayard Rustin Bayard Rustin (; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an African American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement, ...

, reporting that he adapted it in the early 1940s from a saying of the Prophet Muhammad. Rustin adapted and condensed this concept as part of co-writing the pamphlet ''Speak Truth to Power: a Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence'', published in 1955. In 1970, Albert O. Hirschman wrote that subordinates have three options: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. However, according to Michel Foucault, only the courageous may pursue the truth-to-power course, as they risk losing their friends (as

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

did in the 1930s,) their liberty, even their lives (as Liu Xiaobo did). Noam Chomsky is dismissive of "speaking truth to power". He asserts: "power knows the truth already, and is busy concealing it". It is the oppressed who need to hear the truth, not the oppressors.

Examples

Alexander Solzhenitsyn and

Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov ( rus, Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, nobel laureate and activist for n ...

are among those who suffered for speaking out against the USSR. In 1936, Japanese finance minister

Takahashi Korekiyo Viscount was a Japanese politician who served as a member of the House of Peers, as Prime Minister of Japan from 1921 to 1922, and as the head of the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance. Takahashi made many contributions to Japan's developm ...

was assassinated after suggesting that Japan could not afford its planned military buildup.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...

in Nazi Germany, and

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

in the US, were people who lost their lives for speaking truth to power. Ex-

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

employee

Katharine Gun Katharine Teresa Gun (''née'' Harwood) (born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to ''The Observer'', concerning a request by ...

was charged under the UK Official Secrets Act 1989 with leaking a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

delegates prior to the Iraq invasion of 2003. Together with Daniel Ellsburg,

Coleen Rowley Coleen Rowley (born December 20, 1954) is an American former FBI special agent and whistleblower, and was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional dist ...

and

Sibel Edmonds Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a former contract translator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent news website NewsBud. The FBI hired her as a translator shortly after 9/11 but fired her a ...

, she set up the Truth-telling Coalition to encourage more of their former colleagues to ‘tell truth to power’.

In education

The reverend Nick Mercer, an assistant chaplain at Sherborne School, believes that

and morality should be taught in all schools. Mercer, who gave evidence on mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, once served as a military lawyer. According to Vaclav Havel, politics should not be ignored because it attracts bad people. It follows that politics requires people of exceptional purity, higher sensitivity, taste, tact and responsibility. "Those who say that politics is disreputable help make it so... Those who claim that politics is a dirty business are lying to us." Michel Foucault spoke and wrote about power and oppression by examining how "technologies of power and knowledge have, since antiquity, intertwined and developed in concrete and historical frameworks".

Paulo Freire Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work '' Pedagogy of the Oppressed'' is generally considered one of the found ...

in his seminal work ''

Pedagogy of the Oppressed ''Pedagogy of the Oppressed'' ( pt, Pedagogia do Oprimido) is a book by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, written in Portuguese between 1967–68, but published first in Spanish in 1968. An English translation was published in 1970, with the Por ...

'' explains how "oppression has been justified and how it is reproduced through a mutual process between the "oppressor" and the "oppressed" (oppressors–oppressed distinction). Freire admits that the powerless in society can be frightened of freedom. He writes, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion". According to Freire, freedom will be the result of praxis—informed action—when a balance between theory and practice is achieved".

In popular culture

Books

Anita Hill Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and ...

's book ''Speaking Truth to Power'' (1998), is a candid autobiography in which Hill reflects on her experience of testifying at the 1991

Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination On July 1, 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement. At the time of his nomination, Thomas was a judge on the United Sta ...

hearings, gives details on her earlier professional relationship with

Clarence Thomas Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1 ...

, and explains her motivation for going public with her sexual harassment accusations against Thomas.

Kerry Kennedy Mary Kerry Kennedy (born September 8, 1959) is an American lawyer, author and human rights activist. She is the seventh child and third daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. During her 15-year marriage to former New York Gove ...

's book ''Speak Truth To Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World'' (1st edition 2000), with photographs by Eddie Adams, features interviews with dedicated human rights campaigners including:

José Ramos-Horta José Manuel Ramos-Horta (; born 26 December 1949) is an East Timorese politician currently serving as president of East Timor since May 2022. He previously served as president from 20 May 2007 to 20 May 2012. Previously he was Minister of For ...

from East Timor,

Dianna Ortiz Dianna Mae Ortiz (September 2, 1958 – February 19, 2021) was an American Roman Catholic sister of the Ursuline order. While serving as a missionary in Guatemala, she was abducted on November 2, 1989, by members of the Guatemalan military, det ...

of Guatemala,

Baltasar Garzón Baltasar Garzón Real (; born 26 October 1955) is a former Spanish judge. Garzón formerly served on Spain's central criminal court, the ''Audiencia Nacional'', and was the examining magistrate of the ''Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5'', ...

of Spain and Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

Films

The story of

Sophie Scholl Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having bee ...

and the

White Rose The White Rose (german: Weiße Rose, ) was a Nonviolence, non-violent, intellectual German resistance to Nazism, resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students (and one professor) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, ...

non-violent, intellectual resistance group in the Third Reich has been filmed four times, including ''Die Weiße Rose'' (1982), and '' Sophie Scholl: The Final Days'' (2005). Richard Attenborough's film ''

Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

'' (1982) was a worldwide success, despite one Hollywood mogul's opinion that the central character was a "little brown man in a sheet whom nobody wants to see." More recent films exemplifying speaking truth to power include the biopic '' Snowden'' (2016), about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, and '' Official Secrets'' (2019), about the story of

Television

The phrase "truth to power" is often used in the HBO series ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2 ...

''. For example, for a reality check, politician

Tommy Carcetti Thomas J. "Tommy" Carcetti ( ) is a fictional character on the HBO drama ''The Wire'', played by Aidan Gillen. Carcetti is an ambitious and venal Baltimore politician who begins the series with a seat on the city council. Biography Season 3 To ...

frequently asks his trusted advisor Norman Wilson to speak "truth to power" (e.g., in season 5, episode 1).

References

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