Power fears those who write honestly.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

These words from George Orwell cut to the heart of freedom of expression—the necessity of speaking uneasy truths. As a writer who observes humanity’s contradictions and hypocrisies, you have a duty to challenge authority, expose injustice, and disrupt the status quo—even when your words seem futile, mere acts of resistance against overwhelming forces.

In Politics and the English Language, Orwell warns that vague, euphemistic language serves to obscure reality and protect those in power. “Political speech and writing,” he observes, “are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Writers who refuse to get lost in this linguistic fog pose a direct threat to authoritarianism and propaganda. Clear, honest, uncensored writing becomes a window through which readers might glimpse realities they would otherwise ignore.

Authoritarian power thrives on misdirection, vague language, and the suppression of dissent. To write boldly is to refuse complicity in this silence. Consider the moment on January 22, 2017, when Kellyanne Conway defended false claims about Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd by calling them “alternative facts”—a phrase that perfectly epitomizes Orwellian truth distortions. American journalist Chuck Todd immediately countered: “Look, alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.”

A writer’s role is to sharpen and reveal, not to dull or obscure. This is why Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, emerging from her fascination with American Puritanism and totalitarian regimes, resonates so powerfully as a warning. It’s a risky position—history is rife with horror stories about those who challenge power—but the alternative is surrendering language to manipulation.

George Orwell and Margaret Atwood understand that writing is not merely a craft but a flame thrower against oppression. The world teems with unbearable lies and semantic noise, but writers possess both the ability and the responsibility to refute and clarify them.

For a writer, true liberty can only be achieved by writing boldly and speaking truth to power.