The suggestion - or worse, the order - to maintain silence about something is frequently used by totalitarian and authoritarian states as a means for preserving power. Knowledge is power, as the saying goes, so the less information people have the tighter the grip the state can have on them. Secrecy and silence should thus be viewed with great suspicion by any people who wish to remain free.

In The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life, Eviatar Zerubavel writes:

[S]ilencing is also used "as a weapon of subjugation...the suffocation of the Other's voice." Thus, during Argentina's infamous "Dirty War" against its political dissidents in the late 1970s and early 1980s, any discussion of "disappearances" one may have witnessed was strictly prohibited by the authorities — "a sad example of double silencing. First, a group of individuals is kidnapped and there is no record of their tragic fate, and then their existence is tabooed so that no genuine talk about them is possible."

Specifically designed to disempower people, such prohibitive silence also surrounded the Nazi and Soviet concentration and labor camps and is indeed one of the hallmarks of the totalitarian police state, as so chillingly portrayed by Orwell: "Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he was missing from work; a few thoughtless people commented on his absence. On the next day, nobody mentioned him... Syme had ceased to exist; he had never existed."

There are many ways in which a government might use silence as a means for retaining power over people. It may encourage silence about uncomfortable topics, telling people that it's inappropriate or irresponsible to openly discuss certain things. It may enforce silence on certain topics, banning the public or private dissemination of ideas, images, or information which the state deems secret. It may impose silence on itself, refusing to allow citizens access to basic information about what the government is doing, where it is doing it, and why. If people don't even know what the government is doing, then it's unnecessary for the government to make the effort to force them to be silent about it.

The ultimate means of imposing silence is removing a person entirely. If they aren't around to complain or spread unpleasant information, much of the government's problem is solved. All that's left is to make people too afraid to discuss the absence the person in question — and once the government has the power to indefinitely detain people without arrest or trial, possibly in secret prisons, then creating such fear in the rest of the population isn't much more of a step.

Religious institutions frequently make use of the power of silence as well. Scandals are covered up and silence encouraged lest people lose confidence in their religious leaders. Difficult questions are silenced and set side lest they encourage doubt, skepticism, and perhaps even lead to disbelief entirely.

Fear is the critical factor: people are commonly silent about things because they are afraid of causing offense, creating a confrontation, becoming embarrassed, or simply afraid of possible retaliation. A government that is able to keep people silent about certain subjects or ideas is a government that has become successful in making the people afraid. Religious institutions use fear as well, for example fear of God's wrath against those who question orders.

This is why encouraging silence and encouraging fear usually go hand-in-hand — an institution doing one is almost always also doing the other at the same time. It may be that only one is immediately obvious to people, but they should look around and see if the other is occurring as well, unnoticed in the background.

If so, they should probably be even more afraid — afraid of where their government is going.

 

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