Truth, freedom, aggression: when words change sides
There are independent journalists, citizen reporters, and ordinary people armed with smartphones who manage to slip through censorship and surveillance. They capture events as they unfold and publish a version of the truth—one that happens to be inconvenient for those in power.
The response comes swiftly: create another narrative, flood every available platform with countless articles, videos, and posts proclaiming the truth, until their truth is gradually drowned out by repetition. Then repeat the process, over and over again. Tell me, Mister Dictionary, wasn’t there a word missing somewhere between truth and trust?
Because these days, everyone seems to have their own truth. If truth is the state of what is true, then freedom is the state of being free. Yet here again, meaning and contradiction become strangely intertwined. In the country where Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty proudly proclaims Liberty Enlightening the World, some political leaders argue that Europe’s rules—its regulations governing commerce, public debate, and the spread of information—are obstacles to freedom.
They criticize Europeans for imposing limits. But without rules, freedom itself can become meaningless. Consider the familiar image of the free wolf among free sheep. The wolf enjoys complete freedom. So do the sheep—free to be devoured. To prevent the inevitable slaughter, a higher authority must either restrict the wolf’s freedom or protect the sheep by limiting their exposure to danger.
Depending on whether one identifies more with the sheep or with the wolf, the word freedom takes on an entirely different meaning. It is worth noting that the leaders making such arguments generally see the world from the wolf’s perspective. The word aggression suffers from a similar confusion, recalling the familiar playground retort: “It takes one to know one.”
Here is a head of state who threatens the world with his nuclear arsenal, launches drones and missiles without hesitation, continually sends thousands of soldiers across a neighboring border, wages repeated cyberattacks, and yet appears before the cameras—wearing that carefully practiced expression combining injured innocence and simmering outrage—to complain that others are obsessed with attacking and invading the country he claims to cherish and protect.
As Blaise Pascal wrote in the mid-seventeenth century: “Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond.”
In his Pensées, in a reflection entitled The Economy of the World, Pascal questioned whether any universal law or universal truth could truly exist. What one society accepts as self-evident may be dismissed elsewhere as error.
Four centuries later, his observation feels remarkably contemporary. When words such as truth, freedom, and aggression become weapons in the struggle for influence, their meanings no longer remain fixed. They bend according to interests, perspectives, and power. Language itself becomes a battlefield, where competing narratives seek not merely to persuade but to define reality.
No wonder it can leave us completely blaffed!
Michel SEYRAT
