If You Want To Know Who Is In Control, Ask Who You’re Not Allowed To Criticize

 

The line “If you want to know who is in control, ask who you’re not allowed to criticize” has become one of those sentences that feels as if it has always existed.

It appears on social media graphics, protest placards, comment threads, podcasts, and late-night conversations between people trying to make sense of the world. It is often attributed to someone else - Voltaire, Orwell, Twain, take your pick - but it belongs to no one famous. And that matters more than people realize.

Because the power of the phrase is not in its authorship. It is in its accuracy.

A sentence without a passport

Historically, aphorisms like this tend to get retroactively “promoted” to famous thinkers. We like our truths to arrive with credentials. A quote feels safer when it comes stamped with a philosopher’s name. But this line resists that instinct.

It is not poetic in a classical way. It is blunt. Functional. Almost forensic.

That suggests its true origin is not a lecture hall or a book of essays, but lived experience. It is the kind of sentence people arrive at after noticing a pattern repeatedly, often at personal cost. The phrasing feels less like theory and more like discovery.

And that is precisely why it has spread so effectively in the modern era. It is not telling people what to think. It is telling them where to look.

Power and the invisible fence

The phrase exposes a fundamental truth about power - real power does not need to announce itself.

Traditional power announces itself loudly. Kings, dictators, governments, and institutions have historically relied on force, law, or fear. You knew who ruled you because they said so, and they backed it up with visible consequences.

Modern power is quieter.

In contemporary societies, control is often exercised through social pressure, reputational harm, economic leverage, algorithmic suppression, and moral framing. You may technically be allowed to speak, but certain criticisms carry consequences so severe that most people self-police before ever opening their mouths.

That is the invisible fence.

The phrase cuts through abstraction by offering a simple test. Not “Who has authority?” or “Who makes the rules?” but “Who cannot be questioned without punishment?”

That reframing is devastatingly effective because it bypasses official narratives entirely. It looks at behavior, not declarations.

The modern relevance

In the digital age, this idea becomes even more important.

Online platforms present themselves as neutral spaces, yet certain topics trigger immediate backlash, shadow banning, demonetization, professional consequences, or social exile. The punishment is often informal but coordinated. No single authority needs to act when the crowd has been trained to do the work for them.

What makes this era different from earlier forms of censorship is that it often masquerades as virtue.

Criticism is no longer silenced solely by law. It is silenced by framing dissent as immoral, dangerous, or harmful. Once criticism is morally redefined as violence, power no longer needs to argue. It only needs to accuse.

This is where the phrase becomes uncomfortable, because it invites people to examine not just institutions, but themselves. It asks whether we participate in enforcing those invisible fences. Whether we instinctively recoil from certain questions. Whether we have internalized the rules so thoroughly that no external enforcer is required.

Orwell without the quote

It is no accident that this line is frequently misattributed to George Orwell. Orwell never said it, but he understood it.

His work consistently explored how power shifts from physical coercion to psychological conditioning. In 1984, the most terrifying control is not surveillance or punishment, but the rewriting of reality itself - the moment when people stop trusting their own perceptions.

The phrase under discussion operates in that same territory. It points to the moment where discourse collapses. Where certain ideas are not debated, only denounced. Where asking the wrong question marks you as suspect.

Orwell warned that when language is controlled, thought follows. This modern aphorism simply updates the warning for an era where language is not centrally controlled, but socially enforced.

Why claiming ownership makes sense

Given the absence of a suitable owner, I have made the decision to claim ownership of the phrase. This is not arrogance. It is almost poetic justice. The next time you hear the phrase, tell people it's one of mine.

Anonymous truths tend to be absorbed, diluted, and eventually neutered by repetition. By attaching my name to it, I'm not claiming invention so much as responsibility. I'm saying: I stand behind this idea. I am willing to be criticized for it.

That alone should reinforce the message.

In a culture where people hide behind anonymity while enforcing conformity, ownership becomes a form of resistance. It reminds people that ideas do not need institutional permission to exist. They only need someone willing to speak them aloud and accept the consequences.

The quiet warning inside the sentence

Perhaps the most important implication of the phrase is the one people often miss.

It is not saying that those who cannot be criticized are evil. It is saying that unquestionability itself is the danger.

Any group, ideology, institution, or belief system that becomes immune to criticism - regardless of its stated values - has crossed a threshold. Once criticism is forbidden, corruption becomes inevitable. Not because people are wicked, but because unchecked power always decays.

The sentence does not demand rebellion. It demands vigilance.

It asks us to pay attention to silences, not slogans. To notice where conversations abruptly stop. To ask why certain questions make people angry rather than thoughtful.

That is why the phrase matters now.

Not because it tells us who is in control, but because it teaches us how control hides.

And once you see that, you cannot unsee it.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell