True Believers, Dissidents, and Doublethinkers

"In any place where dissent is banned, society fractures into three groups. One group is those who remain committed to the prevailing order because they agree with it--the true believers. Another group is made up of those who are willing to defy the prevailing order despite the risk of punishment--the dissidents. For members of these two groups, there will be little or no gap between their private thoughts or public statements. Unlike true believers or dissidents, members of the third group do not say what they think. This group is comprised of people who longer believe in the prevailing ideology, but who are afraid to accept the risks associated with dissent. They are the 'doublethinkers...' 

Doublethinkers live in constant tension from the gap between their thoughts and their words, They always avoid saying what is not permitted but also try to avoid saying what they do not believe. But fear societies do not generally leave their doublethinkers such a luxury. They demand from the 'cogs' constant expressions of loyalty...

If a fear society is repressive enough, it will appear to an outside observer to consist of only true believers when in reality it may have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of doublethinkers living in terror. Moreover, while it is impossible to know how many doublthinkers there are in a fear society, one thing is certain: With every passing day, the number of doublethinkers in a fear society always increases...

In Saudi Arabia, one can definitely be arrested or imprisoned for expressing one's views. While many people who grew up in liberal democracies would regard life in Saudi Arabia as oppressive, can it be said that the people of Saudi Arabia, who appear to agree with the prevailing ideology, live in fear? Aren't the Saudis simply living according to their age-old traditions?...This question assumes that the people of Saudi Arabia agree with the policies of the regime. But how do we know that? Because of what the Saudis say publicly? Can we assume that what people living in a fear society are willing to say publicly is the true expression of their beliefs? The books of dissidents describing how how Saudis flying to Europe hurry to change into their Western clothes while still on the airplane and adopt different modes of behavior when they are abroad are enough to convince me that Saudi Arabia is steeped in doublethink. Even if these stories only refer to the Saudi elite, the process of internal decay, when more and more people are conforming to a world they no longer believe in, is clearly under way. We must always keep in mind that the public statements of those who live in fear societies are motivated by fear. If we fail to recognize this, we will only be deceiving ourselves."

--Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy