"We are whispering through the walls, hoping we avoid the eyes and ears of Big Brother. But not being able to have a dialogue out in the open invites its own set of problems whose consequences, if viewed through a critical lens, should not be understated."

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Disclaimer: This is a difficult read, and if you’re not in a good place emotionally, perhaps you should come back to this article when you’re more well. This piece, despite the flavour of it, is also a call to action. For all of us.
 

 

I wish you could see the texts. And I wish you could listen in on the conversations. Boy have we been talking – my friends and family and I. And their friends and their families. Colleagues as well. All of us have been talking. About that stuff. The stuff happening over there, across the world, in the Middle East. But I can’t say which stuff and where.

 

We’re not allowed to talk about that. And therein lies the problem. 

 

Never in my more than 30 years on this planet have I witnessed such large scale obfuscation of facts and information. Never have I witnessed such a unified and concerted effort to tell only part of the story. Never have I witnessed such complicity with murder and injustice, at the cost of so many thousands of civilian lives.

 

Never have I been so sad.

 

Never have I been so jaded.

 

Never have I been so faithless.

 

I should also mention that I’m angry. We all are. My friends, my family members, and so many others. Of all ethnicities and faiths. We see what’s happening in front of our eyes. It is a reality that those who have traditionally shaped narratives would attempt to gaslight us into disbelieving.

 

But now we have social media.

 

Yes, we most certainly shouldn’t believe everything we see on the internet. After all, cyberspace is a home for nefarious actors who would hope to radicalize others to join their ‘team’, so that they can grow their followings and more effectively advance harmful agendas. But what choice do we have? Social media, despite the presence of misinformation and corruptors, has been a much more reliable source in providing objective facts, of journalism, than Western journalists themselves. Can you blame us for turning off the TV and radio, for putting down the newspapers, and for picking up our smartphones instead?

 

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a media awards ceremony for an international NGO (I can’t mention which) whose mission is to provide aid to citizens who have been disenfranchised and displaced by the machinations of political leaders, or more often, their oppressors. At this award ceremony, a speaker (again, I won’t tell you who) uttered some words I made sure to record. Those words were, “truthful, but never neutral. We must tell the whole story.”

 

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"Why? For daring to speak the truth of what we can all see happening, for daring to condemn all civilian casualties, whether at music festivals or at hospitals, for daring to denounce savagery, regardless of justification and perpetrator, and for daring to acknowledge the geopolitical roots of

this conflict."

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That’s what they aren’t doing. They’re not telling the whole story. And they don’t want us – no, no, that’s wrong – they won’t let us talk about it.

 

So we text our friends, have private conversations, discuss our true views anonymously on X, TikTok, Instagram and Reddit, while trying not to like or repost the ‘wrong’ messages. We are whispering through the walls, hoping we avoid the eyes and ears of Big Brother. But not being able to have a dialogue out in the open invites its own set of problems whose consequences, if viewed through a critical lens, should not be understated.

 

To start, while social media has been helpful in disseminating accurate information, in its most absolute sense, whispered truths lack the potency that speaking those truths to power in a public forum would otherwise represent. Furthermore, when truths are relegated to an admittedly dodgy cyberspace, unsupported or omitted by trusted purveyors of the news, these truths become susceptible to questions of credibility, rightfully so. We all should be verifying what we see on the internet through multiple credible sources before believing what we see and reposting. That said, when certain verifiable truths have been introduced into public discourse, the truth speakers have often been met with harsh consequences. This has made it hard to say the truth out loud. Some of us, like myself, feel we have too much to sacrifice. Some of us, again like myself, don’t possess the bravery. We are protecting ourselves from social and professional destruction that might come as a result of speaking the wrong kind truth. It would seem that some truths are more acceptable than others.

 

And so we whisper.

 

Those who have publicly dared to stand up to injustice – to state facts that have been supported by institutions like the United Nations, facts that are undeniable by the record of actual historical events – they’ve been forced to bend the knee and expose their necks to the proverbial executioner’s sword. Jobs have been lost. Titles revoked. Voices censored. Reputations pilloried. Why? For daring to speak the truth of what we can all see happening, for daring to condemn all civilian casualties, whether at music festivals or at hospitals, for daring to denounce savagery, regardless of justification and perpetrator, and for daring to acknowledge the geopolitical roots of this conflict. Which is again, historical fact.

 

But that stuff from 1948, or 1917, or 722 BCE – and everything that’s happened before, after, and in-between – we’re not allowed to talk about that either. The thing is, though, we need to talk about these things – how both players in this conflict got to this point. To solve any problem it is absolutely necessary to understand it fully, inside and out. And with a problem this complex we need to be able to talk about it without fear of losing our livelihoods, our friends, our families, and connection to our communities.

 

We need to be able to speak our truths, both factual and ideological. We need to be able to weigh our truths against the truths of our opponents, examining these truths through our lenses and theirs. We need to understand each other’s histories. Finally, we need to work together to build bridges that lead to more peaceful futures for all. This is the way forward.

 

But instead we live in an environment  where the truth now comes with life altering risk attached. Shame on them for making it this way. Shame on us for accepting it.

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"Truthful conversations, however difficult, are necessary to move toward peace. And if the media, our employers, our governments, and our academic institutions won’t make space to have these conversations then we need to make that space for ourselves."

 

       

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In a truly just and democratic society, bravery shouldn’t be required to speak the truth. And if it is, what does that say about those who hold the power to tell the stories, to shape the narratives, and to ensure that we repeat them…or else? How are we supposed to still trust them?

 

How are we supposed to feel free?

 

I write this not in support of either ‘team’. The only team I unanimously support is humanity. Instead, I write this to encourage the open presentation and dialogue of the facts from our elected leaders and the media outlets that represent them, because the risk of not doing so is dire. Historically speaking, manipulating the veracity of the facts, or outright hiding them altogether, has been a major contributing factor to every large scale human rights disaster experienced by our species. When we generalize the thoughts, beliefs, actions, and motivations of a few as if they represent the whole, the results can be grim. This is how hate is spread. And when hate goes unchecked and is supported by military as well as ideological dominance, it sometimes leads to widespread massacre and death. Facts provide nuance, nuance works against hate, and an absence of hate mitigates the potential for human rights disaster.

 

In this conflict, one fact remains true above all others. This has been horrible for the civilians. Full stop. I refuse to specify a side. They should all be provided the same humanity. If we as a species can agree on that, then maybe we can get to a point where we can publicly talk about the thing we’re all talking about in private because what is at stake here is the preservation of truth, and indelibly linked to that, the preservation of our collective humanity. Let us interrupt the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as the tensions between groups before things really get out of control. Now is the time.

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Truth and facts should always be on the agenda for conversation. This effectively not being true during this moment in history is rapidly eroding the public trust in political institutions. I am not sure we grasp the magnitude of danger presented by an international populace that does not believe they’re being told the truth by those who govern them, and now have evidence to prove it. Again, history informs us that collective mistrust of government is the groundwork for revolution. The thing about revolution is that it often leads to ugliness and violence. And personally, the fear of revolution and continuing violence rattles my bones more than the fear of retribution for saying my truths out loud, publicly.

 

Yet I still write this in vagaries and half-statements.

 

I am not ready to suffer the consequences of having the necessary conversations that we’re not allowed to have, even as I recognize that our collective commitment to dialoguing our truths, as is true in all relationships, is a requirement for the potential of anything resembling a harmonious resolution. So, despite my fears, I write this with my name attached, hoping it gets us to start talking the realest of talks. Truthful conversations, however difficult, are necessary to move toward peace. And if the media, our employers, our governments, and our academic institutions won’t make space to have these conversations then we need to make that space for ourselves. If not, the bombs will keep dropping, terrorists will keep terrorizing, and many others will be writing their version of this statement, over and over again, for generations to come.

 

We have the power to walk a different path, independent of whether our elected leaders and media support us. With social media and the ability to communicate, organize, and dialogue with each other, we don’t need their permission anymore. We get to shape the narratives. We can discuss the facts and tell the truth. For the sake of all of us, it’s time to be brave.

 

It’s time to have a conversation.

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