Death and lies in an age of ideology

ON FEBRUARY 12, 1974, Russian dissident and author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn published his essay "Live Not by Lies." In it, he described what he calls "the ideological lie.

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In several of Solzhenitsyn's other works, he describes the ideological lie as 'the intentional substitution of ideology for truth." He writes that ideology creates fabricated worldviews - especially utopias - that justify violence and the suppression of consciences.

Much damage has been done in the world through ideology, whether through fascist, autocratic or democratic ideologies. The idea that once a vision of an ideologically-induced utopia has been crafted and endlessly repeated from podiums, its inevitable end is either violence to stop it or violence to serve it. Those who believe it and those who fight it are both seen as committing the ultimate betrayal.

Most of the ideological lies come in the form of either religious or socio-philosophical visions of a grand future, promising a bliss that is grabbed by people too tired to interrogate its guarantees and its truth.