The Empire of Empty Promises

How Official Fantasies, Dubious Growth, and Manufactured Miracles Trap a Nation in the Ritual of the Lie

The recent slide into “fully authoritarian” status, according to The Economist, reflects as much political repression as the triumph of fantasy over fact, ritual over reality. In his seminal essay The Power of the Powerless, Nobel Laureate Václav Havel exposed how late Communist regimes clung to power not merely by brute force but through weaving a web of lies. They promised miraculous economic growth, technological marvels, and bright futures always just out of reach. Havel argued that control stemmed from forcing everyone, officials and citizens alike, to “live within a lie,” upholding elaborate narratives that few truly believed. Closer to home, the current predicament mirrors this dynamic, as hollow promises and fabricated progress dominate the public sphere.

There’s the grandstanding on foreign investment and economic triumphs, claims like many billions of dollars of influx from the Gulf, stories of a “desert bloom” miracle, sudden crypto riches, or the discovery of “massive oil reserves”, which echo the empty promises of Communist-era Central Europe. None of these miracles ever seems to materialize, yet each new claim appears, even more fantastical, in the face of economic distress. Alongside this, the government touts questionable GDP figures and miraculous quarterly recoveries in sectors that have suffered visible decline: electricity, construction, mining, and agri-commodities. The system’s need to project a picture of progress and strength, regardless of ground realities, becomes the guiding ritual.

According to Havel, such regimes “falsify everything”: the past, the present, and the future. Unreliable economic statistics and wild forecasts serve as modern equivalents. Officials perpetuate and perform belief in these stories. Bureaucrats, media amplifiers, and aligned economists echo these optimistic projections, and dissent is effectively silenced, whether through intimidation, censorship, or social exclusion. The consequence is a society in which many participate, wittingly or unwittingly, in the maintenance of a “pseudo-reality”: a collective fiction that shields the system from the corrosive power of truth.

The essay emphasizes that the most profound threat to such a system lies not in organized revolt or political parties, but in “living within the truth.” When the false narratives are openly rejected by exposing statistical manipulation or even refusing to engage in empty rituals, they momentarily “break the spell”. These acts of authenticity, however small, illuminate the charade, disrupt the panorama of official fiction.

This is why it is imperative to sideline such truth-telling by critical economists, journalists, and analysts. The self-defense mechanism thus deepens its reliance on performative optimism, at further expense to its credibility.

Havel saw ordinary people as both victims and unwitting accomplices to the system of lies. Those who amplify the dubious narratives, whether for material gain, fear, or simple inertia, hold up the edifice of pseudo-reality. This applies to bureaucrats who might help fudge statistics, media anchors who trumpet official successes, or citizens who passively repeat optimistic talking points while seeing the bleak realities all around them. The alienation and powerlessness that result only deepen the grip of the hollow empire.

However, systems built on lies are, at heart, fragile. The moment enough people choose authenticity and begin “living within the truth,” the spell will break, the edifice will tremble, and the possibility of change, however distant, becomes real again.