How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa

What I have witnessed and documented over the past decade is technology’s godlike power to infect each of us with a virus of lies, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hatred, and accelerating the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world.

Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, we have no shared reality, and democracy as we know it—and all meaningful human endeavors—are dead.

an invisible atom bomb exploded in our information ecosystem, that technology platforms have given geopolitical powers a way to manipulate each of us individually.

Democracy is fragile. You have to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution, every story.

Meaning is not something you stumble across or what someone gives you; you build it through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.

When you throw in social media and information operations, those same people are targeted and susceptible; they believe the lies.

When you don’t know who you are and your world has been turned upside down, you don’t want to stand out.

always to make the choice to learn. That meant embracing change and mustering the courage to fail; success and failure are two sides of the same coin. You cannot succeed if at some point you haven’t failed.

to embrace my fear.

When you take a risk, you have to trust that someone will come to your aid; and when it’s your turn, you will help someone else. It’s better to face your fear than to run from it because running won’t make the problem go away. When you face it, you have the chance to conquer it. That was how I began to define courage.

All it takes is one person to stand up and fight because a bully doesn’t like to be challenged publicly.

an orchestra was a perfect metaphor for a working democracy: the music gave the people our notes, our systems, but how you play, feel, and follow—and how you lead—that’s all up to you.

the combination of Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk, rational logical analysis tempered by empathy, instinct, and emotions.

that in order to have a clear view of the world, you have to ask yourself the toughest questions.

Staying silent or compliant changed nothing. Speaking up was an act of creation.

there are successful people who, because of their childhood experiences, learn to suppress their emotions as long as their life is peppered with achievements. “They do well, even excellently, in everything they undertake; they are admired and envied; they are successful whenever they care to be,” Miller wrote, “. . . but behind all this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness and self-alienation, and a sense that their life has no meaning.”1

the work of art you’re creating is your life; that the person you are today has been created by all your past selves (for example, the person you were at ten years old), but that your actions today actually change those earlier versions of yourself.

That is clarity—the ability to remove your self and your ego.

We all want to belong somewhere.

Home is about emotional roots: culture, food, implicit values, the warmth of familiarity. You belong there. It has its rituals that mark the passage of time and give it meaning.

during a military takeover one of the first things rebellious soldiers do is seize the government radio or television station to control information.

Media has always been crucial to the maintenance of political power; the airwaves are the first thing any dictator must control.

When you’re vulnerable, you create the strongest bonds and the most inspiring possibilities.

Never, never, never agree to be intimidated by anyone, no matter who he is.

What you choose to do shapes the person you become.

Beautiful people, women and men, have an advantage in the world we live in. They get a lot more for a lot less effort, especially if they are charming. Some of us are born with advantages, which might be part of the reason I work so hard. I didn’t want to live in a world where the only currency is physical beauty.

Transparency International called him the most corrupt leader in modern history, just ahead of Ferdinand Marcos.

Marcos and Suharto left behind similar problems that lay just beneath the surface. In the Philippines, it was cronyism and patronage politics. In Indonesia, it was called KKN (pronounced “ka-ka-en”): corruption, collusion, and nepotism. That top-down oppressive, controlling political system took its toll on the people. Their leaders’ biggest sin was that they failed to educate their people.

What I was seeing in Indonesia was something I had seen in the Philippines and someday would see in countries around the world as the power of disinformation began to devastate the minds, and transform the behavior, of often less educated people or those less familiar with the internet. Education determines the quality of governance. An investment in education takes a generation to bear fruit. Likewise, countries feel the impact of this disregard for education a generation later. That determines their productivity, the quality of their workforce, their investments, and ultimately their gross domestic product (GDP). A nation’s budget line item for education is an investment in its people.

In the past, the information we all got was protected from vested interests. In the cases of some corporate media firms, that information was only slightly affected by vested interests. Now, under the technology companies, the information you get is directly determined by the corporations’ drive for profit. This is the transition we are living through.

Whether in government, at work, or at home, there still exists a system of patronage dating back to our feudal past.

If you try to change a culture, it will fight back.