Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Justine Poplin, Teaching Associate, Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University

The Chinese Year of the Fire Horse has a new, unexpected mascot: Draco Malfoy.

Associating the Harry Potter antagonist with China’s Year of the Fire Horse might seem odd or whimsical. But it has much to teach us about the complexities of Chinese Mandarin wordplay, online participation and meme-making culture.

A search for Malfoy memes manifest his youthful head floating jubilantly, amid a background of red, gold and black calligraphy.

Meaning in images

In China, Lunar New Year decorations are designed to summon luck, prosperity and protection into the home – and visual puns and homophones are a common feature.

Classic New Year prints often include images of names that sound like phrases for good fortune or prosperity. You will commonly see images of the Zodiac, red lanterns, golden carp, fleshy pink peaches and gold ingots – all symbolising abundance.

Prior to the annual festival, the Chinese character fu 福 (good fortune) is often displayed upside-down on doors and walls in Chinese homes.

This is because the word for “upside-down” (倒, dao) is word play on the word “arrive” (到, dao) in Mandarin. Hanging the fu 福 upside down means “Good fortune has arrived”.

There is other word play, too. Yu 魚 (fish) sounds like the word for surplus, so fish imagery suggests abundance.

During last year’s Year of the Snake wordplay used snake (蛇, shé) and earthly beings/humans (巳, sì) to pair snake imagery with phrases about time, events or letting go.

This Year of the Fire Horse is historically linked with energy, momentum and breakthrough.

In Mandarin, Malfoy 马尔福 (Ma er fu) contains phonetic elements that resonate with words associated with horses (马, ma) and good fortune (福, fu). Hanging Malfoy upside-down on a door or wall extends the same pun, suggesting “good horse fortune has arrived” in your home.

In this way, Malfoy sheds his snake skin from villain to a serendipitous linguistic fit for a year defined by fiery horses and potential prosperity: a modern good luck poster.

Visual remixing

Humour, wordplay and visual remixing are a key feature of Chinese internet culture.

Memes thrive on shared visual references, which can be easily remixed. Malfoy’s titanium white hair and sharp features make him iconic, even in small or edited images.

Another example of homophonic wordplay was during the #MeToo movement.

Facing political sensitivity in China, activists embraced phonetic wordplay to visualise the phrase #MeToo, juxtaposing images of a bowl of rice (米饭, mi fan) with a rabbit (兔子, tuzi). The Chinese meme, Mi Tu (literally rice bunny) is visually coded “cute” on the surface, yet functions with the potency and strategic agility of a Trojan Horse.

The memes became a political statement, to visually disrupt and address sexual abuse or harassment.

The Grass Mud Horse (草泥马, cǎonímǎ) is a mythological alpaca co-created in 2009 as a linguistic and visual protest symbol.

Its name is a homophone for a well known insult, enabling users to express defiance while circumventing censorship. It became a playful yet powerful emblem of resistance to information control, widely circulated through music videos, memes and satirical narratives.

The homophonic wordplay of Draco Malfoy performs a similar cultural function – with celebration that evolves tradition, rather than political protest. Users paste Malfoy’s face onto fire horse emojis, Chinese calligraphy or zodiac themed layouts. Others animate him riding red horses or link his image with auspicious greetings.

Culturally specific memes

Visual culture is culturally specific: meaning cannot be transported across contexts without interpretive friction.

Chinese culture has a long history of playful symbolism. The Malfoy memes fit into that tradition using humour and visual puns to express good wishes. It does not replace sacred rituals or religious practices.

Lunar New Year is not only about preserving tradition. Malfoy as a literary villain may be ironic through a Western lens. However, his image becomes a shared entry point into cross-cultural exchange.

It is about renewing hope for the future, and memes are a clever example of how language shapes visual culture and how traditions evolve.

Visual literacy enables us to unlock the cultural keys embedded within symbols and myths, revealing layers of meaning that might otherwise remain obscured.

Online spaces are where a fictional wizard can temporarily join a centuries-old symbolic system built on flexible wordplay and visual humour for the Year of the Fire Horse.

Justine Poplin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Who is the new face of China’s Year of the Fire Horse? Draco Malfoy, of course – https://theconversation.com/who-is-the-new-face-of-chinas-year-of-the-fire-horse-draco-malfoy-of-course-275443

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Michael Paarlberg, Associate Professor, Political Science, Virginia Commonwealth University

As protest and military action raised the prospect of regime change in Iran and Venezuela, the voices of both countries’ diasporas were heard loud and clear through the media of their host nations.

Venezuelan exiles in the U.S. were, according to the popular narrative, broadly behind President Donald Trump and his plan to “run Venezuela,” as the nickname “MAGAzuelans” suggests. Meanwhile, the Iranian diaspora rallied behind the Prince Reza Pahlavi as he positioned himself as a leader-in-waiting, projecting an image of unified exile support.

Diasporas are often treated by media and policymakers as monolithic blocs — politically unified, ideologically coherent and ready to be mobilized for regime change. But as a scholar of migration and security in Latin America, I know this assumption fundamentally misunderstands how diaspora communities form, evolve and engage politically.

Iranian and Venezuelan émigrés might broadly oppose their current governments — having left them, this is unsurprising. But they are far from unified on what should replace those governments, who should lead or how change should come about.

Migration waves shape politics

Diasporas are not uniform because their constituent populations did not arrive all at once, from the same places or for the same reasons. Each migration wave carries distinct political orientations shaped by the circumstances of departure.

Consider the Turkish diaspora in Europe. It has a reputation for religious conservatism and nationalism favoring the ruling party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — seemingly paradoxical given that most live in liberal democracies and support center-left parties in their host countries.

The explanation lies in history, as diaspora scholar Eva Østergaard-Nielsen has detailed. Turkish migration to Europe came in successive waves, each marginalized by Turkey’s longtime secular establishment that dominated the country’s politics until the rise of Erdoğan in the early 2000s. Religious conservatives fled discrimination, Kurds fled persecution, and later came economic migrants. Erdoğan’s ruling AKP has capitalized on this with active outreach to these established diaspora communities.

Only recently have those fleeing the AKP government itself begun to establish a foothold in the diaspora. In a working paper, Gülcan Sağlam and I found that sentiment toward the Turkish ruling party is not predictable by demographic profile, nor is it counteracted by integration or support for liberal European Union parties. Rather, members of the diaspora’s politics are informed by individual personal beliefs and perceptions of discrimination.

The Turkish experience also speaks to the tendency of diasporas to become politically frozen at the moment of departure from their home countries. The same pattern appears across contexts. For example, El Salvador’s diaspora in the United States, which first left during the 1980s civil war, developed a reputation for being “stuck in the ‘80s” — mentally still fighting battles that had long since ended at home.

This temporal displacement has consequences. Iranian-American sociologist Asef Bayat, writing about the Iranian diaspora, argues that exile opposition to the ruling government back home “suffers from a political disease, positioning itself against the movement it claims to support.”

In other words, diaspora activists may advocate positions that resonate with Western audiences, but find little support among those actually living under authoritarian rule. This lack of accountability to political consequences back home can rankle the constituencies on whose behalf they seek to advocate.

Research on the Venezuelan diaspora reflects similar dynamics. A 2022 study found that Venezuelan exiles hold more extreme anti-Venezuelan government views than those who remained.

The myth of diaspora influence

Yet despite the presumed disconnection of diaspora groups, homeland politicians often devote disproportionate attention to those who have left. The logic is simple: Emigrants send money home — accounting for as much as 25% of gross domestic product in some Central American and Caribbean countries. Politicians assume that this financial power translates into political influence over remittance-receiving relatives.

One party official in El Salvador told me: “If we get one Salvadoran in Washington to support us, that gives us five votes in El Salvador — and it doesn’t even matter if the one in Washington votes.”

My own research tested this assumption using polling and voting data across Latin America and found it to be exaggerated. Remittances and family communication mostly reinforce existing, mutual partisan sympathies rather than swing votes.

But the belief in diaspora influence matters politically. And the diaspora voters can be weaponized by authoritarian leaders.

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, in his successful and plainly unconstitutional 2024 reelection bid, expanded external voting through online balloting, increasing diaspora votes by 87-fold over the previous election.

He then directed all diaspora votes to count in San Salvador, despite more emigrants coming from the eastern departments of San Miguel and La Unión. This helped swamp the remaining opposition parties in the capital.

Diasporas in opposition

What happens when diasporas oppose rather than support authoritarian governments? The scholarship offers sobering lessons.

Diasporas can influence home country politics through several channels: direct voting, financial support for opposition movements, lobbying host governments and transmitting democratic values through what sociologist Peggy Levitt calls “social remittances” — the ideas, practices and norms that flow alongside money transfers.

Other research has found that remittances can undermine dictatorships by helping fund opposition activities.

Yet authoritarian governments have developed sophisticated countermeasures. Research on Arab diaspora activism documents shows how governments deter dissent through transnational repression. Freedom House, the democracy and good governance nongovernmental organization, recorded over 1,200 incidents of “physical transnational repression” against dissidents – including assassinations, abductions, assaults and unlawful deportation – between 2014 and 2024 involving 48 governments.

The Cuban example

The Cuban exile community offers, perhaps, the most studied example of diaspora political mobilization. For decades, the Cuban American lobby shaped — some would say dictated — U.S. Cuba policy.

Yet even this influence is easily overstated. The exiles who fled immediately after the 1959 revolution for political reasons constitute a smaller share of the overall Cuban diaspora than commonly assumed.

Subsequent migration waves included far more working-class economic migrants with different political orientations. By 2014, polls showed 52% of Cuban Americans opposed the U.S. embargo that their lobby had championed. The lobby’s influence waned after founder Jorge Mas Canosa’s death in 1997, and the Elián González affair – a messy international custody battle involving a 6-year-old Cuban boy – further fractured the community.

The limits of exile politics

For Venezuela and Iran, these lessons counsel caution. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland — the largest displacement crisis in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, Iranian emigration accelerated after the 2022 protests.

Both diasporas contain passionate activists, wealthy donors and would-be leaders positioning themselves for future rule. But passion does not equal unity, and visibility does not equal representation.

The loudest voices on social media — or those amplified by U.S. government officials and media — may represent narrow slices of diverse communities. Certain figures project unified support they do not actually command. There may be a rough consensus on opposing the hated government back home, but far less consensus on what should be done — or how to achieve change.

Nor does diaspora opposition necessarily translate into government vulnerability. Authoritarian states have learned to insulate themselves from diaspora pressure while simultaneously using emigration as a safety valve, turning potential dissidents into remittance-senders – as Cuba did by abolishing exit visas in 2013.

Diasporas can contribute to democratic change through funding, advocacy and the slow work of transmitting democratic values. But ultimately, the path to democratic change in Venezuela, Iran and elsewhere will be determined by those who remain, not those who left. Diasporas can support that struggle; they cannot substitute for it.

Michael Paarlberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Exiled Iranians and Venezuelans may well support regime change – but diasporas don’t always reflect the politics back home – https://theconversation.com/exiled-iranians-and-venezuelans-may-well-support-regime-change-but-diasporas-dont-always-reflect-the-politics-back-home-275112

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jo Osborn, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Texas A&M University

In 1532, in the city of Cajamarca, Peru, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and a group of Europeans took the Inca ruler Atahualpa hostage, setting the stage for the fall of the Inca Empire.

Before this fateful attack, Pizarro’s brother, Pedro Pizarro, made a curious observation: other than the Inca himself, the Lord of Chincha was the only person at Cajamarca carried on a litter, a carrying platform.

Why did the Lord of Chincha occupy such a high position in Inca society? In our new study published in PLOS One, we find evidence for a surprising potential source of power and influence: bird poo.

A potent and precious resource

Chincha, in southern Peru, is one of several river valleys along the desert coast fed by Andean highland waters, which have long been key to irrigation agriculture. About 25 kilometres out to sea are the Chincha Islands, with the largest guano deposits in the Pacific.

Seabird guano, or excrement, is a highly potent organic fertiliser. Compared to terrestrial manures such as cow dung, guano contains vastly more nitrogen and phosphorus, which are essential for plant growth.

On the Peruvian coast, the Humboldt/Peru ocean current creates rich fisheries. These fisheries support massive seabird colonies that roost on the rocky offshore islands.

Thanks to the dry, nearly rainless climate, the seabird guano doesn’t wash away, but continues to pile up until many meters tall. This unique environmental combination makes Peruvian guano particularly prized.

Our research combines iconography, historic written accounts, and the stable isotope analysis of archaeological maize (Zea mays) to show Indigenous communities in the Chincha Valley used seabird guano at least 800 years ago to fertilise crops and boost agricultural production.

We suggest guano likely shaped the rise of the Chincha Kingdom and its eventual relationship with the Inca Empire.

Lords of the desert coast

The Chincha Kingdom (1000–1400 CE) was a large-scale society comprising an estimated 100,000 people. It was organised into specialist communities such as fisherfolk, farmers and merchants. This society controlled the Chincha Valley until it was brought into the Inca Empire in the 15th century.

Given the proximity of historically important guano deposits on the Chincha Islands, Peruvian historian Marco Curatola proposed in 1997 that seabird guano was an important source of Chincha’s wealth. We tested this hypothesis and found strong support.

A biochemical test

Biochemical analysis is a reliable way to identify the use of fertilisers in the past. One experimental 2012 study showed plants fertilised with dung from camelids (alpacas and llamas) and seabirds show higher nitrogen isotope values than unfertilised crops.

We analysed 35 maize samples recovered from graves in the Chincha Valley, documented as part of an earlier study on burial practices.

Most of the samples produced higher nitrogen isotope values than expected for unfertilised maize, suggesting some form of fertilisation occurred. About half of the samples had extremely high values. These results are so far only consistent with the use of seabird guano.

This chemical analysis confirms the use of guano on pre-Hispanic crops.

Imagery and written sources

Guano – and the birds that produce it – also held broader significance to the Chincha people.

Our analysis of archaeological artefacts suggests the Chincha people had a profound understanding of the connection between the land, sea and sky. Their use of guano and their relationship with the islands was not just a practical choice; it was deeply embedded in their worldview.

This reverence is reflected in Chincha material culture. Across their textiles, ceramics, architectural friezes and metal objects, we see repeated images of seabirds, fish, waves, and sprouting maize.

These images demonstrate the Chincha understood the entire ecological cycle: seabirds ate fish from the ocean and produced guano, guano fed the maize, and the maize fed the people.

This relationship may even be reflected today through local Peruvian place names. Pisco is derived from a Quechua word for bird, and Lunahuaná might translate to “people of the guano”.

Poo power

As an effective and highly valuable fertiliser, guano also enabled Chincha communities to increase crop yields and expand trade networks, contributing to the economic expansion of the Chincha Kingdom.

We suggest fisherfolk sailed to the Chincha Islands to acquire guano and then provided it to farmers, as well as to seafaring merchants to trade along the coast and into the highlands.

Chincha’s agricultural productivity and growing mercantile influence would have enhanced its strategic importance for the Inca Empire. Around 1400 CE, the Inca incorporated the Chincha after a “peaceful” capitulation, creating one of the few calculated alliances of its kind.

Although the “deal” made between Chincha and Inca remains debated, we suggest seabird guano played a role in these negotiations, as the Inca state was interested in maize but lacked access to marine fertilisers. This may be why the Lord of Chincha was held in such high esteem that he was carried aloft on a litter, as Pedro Pizarro noted.

The Inca came to value this fertiliser so much they imposed access restrictions on the guano islands during the breeding season and forbade the killing of guano birds, on or off the islands, under penalty of death.

Our study expands the known geographic extent of guano fertilisation in the pre-Inca world and strongly supports scholarship that predicted its role in the rise of the Chincha Kingdom. However, there is still much to learn about how widespread it was, and when this practice began.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How bird poo fuelled the rise of Peru’s powerful Chincha Kingdom – https://theconversation.com/how-bird-poo-fuelled-the-rise-of-perus-powerful-chincha-kingdom-275316

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Richard Baka, Honorary Professor, School of Kinesiology, Western University, London, Canada; Adjunct Fellow, Olympic Scholar and Co-Director of the Olympic and Paralympic Research Centre, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University

The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are Italy’s fourth as Olympic host and come 70 years after the region first welcomed the world’s best winter athletes.

It is Italy’s third Winter Olympics, second only to the United States (four), reinforcing the nation’s long-standing influence within the Olympic movement.

So, what’s changed since 1956?

Looking back: Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956

The 1956 winter games were originally scheduled for 1944 but were postponed due to the second world war, eventually taking place in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

It was groundbreaking in several ways.

The games ran for 11 days, far shorter than this year’s 17-day program.

Italian skier Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo became the first woman to recite the Olympic Oath at an opening ceremony.

For the first time, the Winter Olympics were broadcast live on television, albeit in black and white, to nine European nations.

In 1956, winter and summer games were held in the same year, (Melbourne hosted the Summer Olympics that year).

This changed in 1994, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) moved them to alternating even-numbered years, significantly boosting the profile, commercial appeal and growth of the Winter Olympics.

From centralised to decentralised hosting

Cortina 1956 featured a highly centralised model, with eight venues clustered within the Dolomites mountain range.

In contrast, Milan Cortina in 2026 reflects the IOC’s modern strategy of decentralisation and sustainability.

The spread-out nature of the 2026 event features:

• four main geographical clusters (Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Valtellina and Val di Fiemme) plus Verona (opening and closing ceremonies)
• 15 competition venues
• two host cities – the first time in Olympic history, separated by 413 kilometres
• six Olympic villages
• four opening ceremony locations.

With Milan as a major metropolitan hub, the 2026 games are far more urban than their alpine predecessor.

Growth of the winter games

The expansion from 70 years ago is striking:

New, youth-friendly and broadcast-driven sports such as short-track speed skating, snowboarding and freestyle skiing have transformed the program.

The only new sport in 2026 will be ski mountaineering.

Near-gender parity will be achieved through expanded women’s events and mixed-gender competitions.

Leading nations on the medal table

In 1956, the dominant nations were mainly European – the Soviet Union, Austria, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland as well as the US.

This year, the podium will likely be owned by Norway, the US, Germany, Italy, China and Canada – the latter two making huge improvements in recent times.

Even Australia, a summer games powerhouse, which never made the podium until 1994, has improved dramatically and is expected to have its best result of around six medals, placing it in the top 15.

The Russians will be noticeably absent, forced out by the IOC due to the Ukrainian invasion. They will be allowed to have neutral athletes who can win medals but as a nation they are on the outer.

Paralympics, professionalism and equity

The 2026 Winter Paralympics will follow immediately after the Olympics – something that did not exist in 1956.

The Winter Paralympics first appeared in 1976 and only began sharing host cities with the Olympics in 1992.

Other major shifts since 1956 include:

• expanded women’s participation, including ice hockey (introduced in 1998)
• the end of strict amateur-only participation (phased out after 1986)
• increased financial rewards for medal winners
• the return of professional National Hockey League male players for the first time since 2014 – a major boost for fans and broadcasters.

Media, technology and the fan experience

Media coverage has exploded since 1956 with the ability to follow every sport, every event on television and radio, digital platforms, newspaper and print media, blogs, podcasts and social media.

Technological changes over the past seven decades have been dramatic. This includes:

• extensive new types of media coverage
• use of artificial intelligence
• equipment design
• athlete apparel innovation
• snow-making capabilities
• venue design and preparation
• transportation improvements
• monitoring of athlete performance and training methods.

Fan experience will be greatly enhanced and transformed through:

• fan zones and live sites
• Olympic-affiliated cultural events
• sponsor and National Olympic Committee hospitality venues nicknamed “party houses” spread across all four clusters
• athlete and inclusion-focused initiatives such as Athlete365 House and Pride House.

Costs, sustainability and climate challenges

The 1956 games operated on a modest budget of around US$250,000 (A$350,000).

The 2026 event is projected to cost around US$5.9 billion (A$8.3 billion) for operating and infrastructure expenses.

Cost escalation is driven by inflation, transport and accommodation, security requirements, venue construction and technology.

Balancing this are vastly increased revenues from broadcast rights, sponsorship and ticketing.

Most Olympic hosts end up losing money. The list is long, with Montreal (1976), Nagano (1998), Athens (2004), Sochi (2014), Rio (2016), Tokyo (2020/21) and others all going well over budget.

Sustainability and legacy – barely considered in 1956 – are now central.

The IOC strongly discourages “white elephant” venues, prioritising temporary facilities, venue reuse and carbon reduction.

Climate change remains a long-term concern. While snow was imported for some events in 1956, global warming now threatens the future pool of viable hosts.

Geopolitics, governance and security

The election of Kirsty Coventry as the first woman president of the IOC underscores the organisation’s broader push toward gender equity in leadership.

Under her guidance, the IOC is looking to implement firmer policies on transgender participation.

No major boycotts by nations are expected despite tension caused by the expulsion of Russia and Belarus.

Several international sport federations – supported by some European nations – have even restricted these two banned national Olympic teams from participating as individual neutral athletes.

For the 2026 games, doping controls are stricter than ever, led by the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Security planning is at an all-time high. It now includes cyber-threats as well as physical risks.

Watch this space

Seventy years after Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted a modest, alpine-focused winter games, Milan Cortina 2026 represents a vastly expanded, technologically sophisticated and globally connected Olympic festival.

Despite challenges – climate, cost and geopolitics – all indicators suggest the games will deliver a compelling, inclusive and memorable celebration of winter sport.

Richard Baka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Italy hosted the Winter Olympics 70 years ago. What was it like, and what’s changed? – https://theconversation.com/italy-hosted-the-winter-olympics-70-years-ago-what-was-it-like-and-whats-changed-271838

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Professor of History, Australian Catholic University

When Czech political dissident, playwright and poet Václav Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless in October 1978, he was not offering a manifesto in any conventional political sense. Nor was he outlining a program for opposition or regime change.

Instead, he set out to analyse a distinctive form of domination that did not rely primarily on terror, spectacle or charismatic authority, but on routine compliance and the internalisation of untruth.

His central claim was disarmingly simple.

Systems of coercive power endure not only because of police power or elite control, but because ordinary people participate in them by acting as if they believe what they know to be false. They live, as Havel put it, “within a lie”.

His most famous example was of the greengrocer who displays the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” – not to express revolutionary zeal but to signal conformity. The sign communicates obedience and a willingness to perform the expected ritual – thus helping to sustain a system whose strength lies in habituation. What matters is not belief, but participation. The slogan functions less as political content than as a social password, marking the bearer as safe and nonthreatening.

Havel’s originality lay in shifting attention away from rulers and institutions towards everyday behaviour. Tyranny, in his account, is not only upheld by party elites or security services, but by countless small acts of acquiescence that create what he described as a “post-totalitarian” order.

Such systems normalise untruth.

Havel’s essay, written nearly 50 years ago, speaks with striking force to the present moment. Across a range of democracies, leaders now display increasingly authoritarian reflexes, while public life is sustained by ritualised language masking the erosion of norms and constrains.

Addressing the World Economic Forum last month, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney invoked Havel’s essay, recalling his example of the greengrocer and his sign.

Carney suggested a contemporary “life within a lie” now operates at the level of the international system, where states perform commitment to rules, reciprocity and shared values as those principles are selectively applied or quietly abandoned. The danger lies less in open rule-breaking than in the collective pretence that the system still functions as advertised.

An ethical challenge

The enduring force of Havel’s essay lies in its re-framing of resistance as responsibility rather than victory. Tyranny is challenged not by seizing power, but by depriving falsehood of its audience. Havels’ target is not a particular regime, but a recurring human temptation: the willingness to trade truth for tranquillity.

In an era marked by strategic intimidation, economic pressure and rhetorical cynicism, Havel’s insistence on moral clarity retains its relevance.

To live in truth remains risky, inconvenient and uncertain in its outcomes. Yet Havel’s claim was never that truth guarantees success. It was that systems built on lies are strong only so long as those lies go unchallenged. Once named, their authority begins to weaken.

In this sense, The Power of the Powerless is less a historical document than an ethical challenge. It asks not who governs, but how individuals participate. It insists that even under conditions of asymmetry, the refusal to perform falsehood constitutes a form of power.

‘Living in truth’

According to Havel’s essay, in “post-totalitarian states”, ideology becomes less a doctrine to be argued over than a language to be performed. In this context, the most destabilising act is not armed rebellion or organised protest, but refusal. When an individual ceases to perform the ritual, he exposes it – revealing the emperor is naked.

From this diagnosis follows Havel’s most enduring concept, “living in truth”. This is not a policy platform or a political strategy in the usual sense. It is an existential stance with political consequences. To live in truth is to align one’s public actions with one’s private conscience, even when doing so carries material cost or social risk.

In a system built on universal pretence, even a modest act of honesty acquires disproportionate force. It disrupts the shared fiction on which authority depends, reminding others that alternatives are conceivable.

Havel’s argument was also deliberately unsettling for audiences outside east-central Europe. “Post-totalitarianism” was not a regional anomaly, but an intensified version of tendencies present in modern mass societies.

Comfort could be purchased at the price of indifference and freedom reduced to private consumption detached from public responsibility. In this sense, The Power of the Powerless was a diagnosis of modernity’s susceptibility to moral outsourcing and quiet complicity.

Sceptical of heroics

Havel saw the fall of communism, ultimately becoming the president of both Czechoslovakia (in 1989–92) and of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He died in 2011.

His essay is often misread as a celebration of heroic dissent or moral exceptionalism. In fact, it is sceptical of heroics. The power of the powerless, he suggests, does not lie in spectacle, numbers or immediate success. It lies in example.

Truth operates politically not because it commands obedience, but because it awakens recognition. It speaks to what Havel described as the “hidden sphere” of social consciousness, the half-suppressed awareness that life organised around falsehood is corrosive and degrading.

This helps explain why Havel dismissed conventional measures of political effectiveness in societies dominated by totalitarian power. Elections, parties and platforms mean little when the public sphere itself has been hollowed out and emptied of genuine contestation.

What matters instead is the slow reconstruction of moral agency.

Independent cultural activity, unofficial networks and samizdat publishing, for instance, were not substitutes for politics, but its necessary groundwork. They preserved spaces in which truth could be spoken without immediate translation into slogans or coercive power.

A contemporary invocation

Carney’s argument at Davos turned on a familiar contradiction. Political leaders, diplomats and institutions speak the language of rules, reciprocity, and shared norms, while tolerating practices that hollow out those norms.
Trade regimes are described as rules-based even as economic coercion becomes routine. Security arrangements are framed as collective while asymmetries of power grow more explicit.

The problem, in Havel’s terms, is not simply that rules are broken, but that everyone continues to behave as if they still function as advertised. This collective performance sustains an order that no longer delivers what it promises.

In this reading, the international order begins to resemble Havel’s post-totalitarian system. The slogans differ, but the logic is familiar. Language masks fear, dependency and imbalance. The global greengrocer hangs the sign not because he believes it, but because not hanging it appears too risky.

Carney’s proposed response was not withdrawal or isolation, but a call for what he described as “middle powers” to stop pretending. To live in truth at the level of international politics means acknowledging openly where the system fails, refusing convenient fictions and building coalitions grounded in actual shared interests rather than abstract formulae.

The danger of abstraction

Yet there is a risk that “living in truth” becomes an elevated moral injunction detached from the conditions of everyday life.

Havel’s greengrocer is not a philosopher or an essayist. He is a worker responsible for opening a shop, supplying scarce goods and navigating a collectivised economy. For him, refusal carries immediate and concrete consequences: such as loss of employment, harassment or exclusion.

By contrast, intellectuals such as Havel, writing three decades after the communist takeover, occupied a different position. Their capacity to articulate critique in essays, however restricted the audience, rested on forms of cultural capital and social insulation unavailable to most citizens. Havel understood this tension, but it remains a persistent problem in the reception of his ideas.

The same risk attends contemporary invocations such as Carney’s. Those preoccupied with meeting basic needs, managing precarious employment or coping with rising costs are unlikely to be moved by abstract calls for moral clarity in global governance. For them, the performance of ritual may appear not as cowardice, but as survival.

This does not invalidate Havel’s argument, but complicates its application. Revolutions and transformations do not arise from ideas alone. They occur when ideas intersect with lived experience in ways that make existing arrangements untenable. Havel’s insight acquires political force only when “living in truth’” ceases to sound like moral exhortation and begins to articulate shared grievances and recognisable realities.

The question is not whether truth matters, but how it is made audible to those whose compliance sustains the system in the first place.

In that unresolved tension lies the continuing relevance of The Power of the Powerless. It offers no guarantees, refusing consolation. It insists that participation is never neutral and even the smallest refusal carries ethical weight. Whether that refusal can once again ignite broader change depends on whether truth speaks to the conditions of ordinary life.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Václav Havel’s 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless is eerily relevant today – https://theconversation.com/vaclav-havels-1978-essay-the-power-of-the-powerless-is-eerily-relevant-today-275432