The following is an extract from Bernard Keane’s new book Lies and Falsehoods: The Morrison Government and the New Culture of Deceit.
One striking aspect of the emergence of blatant political liars in their respective countries is that their lies haven’t undermined their rise. In fact, as we’ve seen with Trump, lies may have helped his rise by binding his base more tightly to him.
Similarly, even when a leader like [Boris] Johnson or [Scott] Morrison clearly and demonstrably lies, it creates barely any impact within the electorate and none among their supporters. Yet these are people who would also insist they value truth and truth-telling, that public policy should be based on evidence, that they fiercely resent being misled by politicians.
A key reason for the success of political lies is growing partisanship and polarisation. There’s a direct link between lying and greater polarisation: the more strongly people identify with a particular party, or cause, or identity, the more likely they are to reject information that doesn’t fit with the preferred narratives associated with those parties, causes or identities.
Rather than consider information objectively, they engage in what’s called motivated reasoning, which selects favourable information, accepts favourable misinformation as true, and rejects unfavourable information. They are also more likely to accept statements that enforce a distinction between their own morally correct group and the morally objectionable out-group to whom they are opposed.
That is one of the keys to Trump’s rhetoric: statements that bind him to his supporters, statements that distinguish them from out-groups. Alternatively, supporters may understand perfectly well that their leader is lying and simply not care — or they may even believe it’s a good thing.
There is a name for this phenomenon: “blue lies”. Derived from the US (inevitably), it refers to police being willing to lie for one another to convict criminals or protect the force. People more readily accept lies when they are directed at out-groups. If you regard the out-group as an enemy, then lying is an acceptable tactic to use against them, just as no one baulks at the use of deception and lies in wartime.
A more nuanced version of “blue lies” was advanced by Australian academic Stephan Lewandowsky, one of the foremost authorities on responses to information and disinformation, in a 2019 piece for The Conversation: the willingness of people who feel excluded or marginalised from political systems to tolerate, or even support, lies told against the “elites” who marginalise them. These variations on the theme of polarisation provide us with an important tool in understanding why lying is tolerated and even liked by certain groups.
If such polarisation creates more liar-friendly conditions in politics, what has driven us further apart? While polarisation is much written about, solid work on its causes is quite rare and often confuses why with how or blames social media/ echo chambers without evidence. But there is substantial peer-reviewed evidence that finds one recurring factor associated with polarisation in the US and Europe: economic inequality and hardship. This is what encourages people to engage with people like themselves, economically and socially, whom they are more likely to trust and be trusted by.
And they engage less with groups unlike themselves, who may be perceived as a greater risk or threat — automatically creating or reinforcing in-groups and out-groups This kind of in-group identification is consolidated when the status of the group is perceived to be threatened — for example, by immigration, refugee arrivals or foreign competition. The threat may not merely be economic, but cultural and social in areas like anti-discrimination laws or growing female workforce participation that undermine the privileged position of groups such as white males.
Another version of this theory, advanced over several works by Polish social theorist Zygmunt Bauman, sees neoliberalism and globalisation as a transition from a “solid” society, in which individual freedom was constrained by economic security and the removal of uncertainties, to a “liquid” society, in which security was traded off for individual freedom, introducing more uncertainty, greater risk, constant change and much more economic insecurity.
Wage stagnation has been a characteristic of most developed economies over the last decade: average wage growth at the end of 2017 in the OECD was half of what it was in 2007. Moreover, low-income wages in most countries have stagnated to a greater degree than high-income wages. Greater hostility towards immigration is also linked to wage stagnation and perceptions of broader economic stagnation. The result is a greater adherence to local identities and non-economic forms of certainty, and perhaps even more slipperiness around meaning and facts.
Lies and Falsehoods has sold out. Pre-order to get a copy of the next print run.
It’s the lying in the face of exposed truth (“I never said Shanghai Sam!”) that is so enraging to people who follow what is being said in Parliament and other public places. In normal life there are ‘little white lies’ – mainly to save hurt feelings or prevent family altercations but when it is public figures barefacedly lying when the truth is out there for everyone to see, then I think it is criminal that we are all so accepting of these lies. And the media is complicit!
Politics is never squeaky clean, but surely there should be a basic level of truthfulness in what people say and that the media should call out blatant lies.
(Yes, I know, I’m not living in the real world – but Australia is very ugly at the moment.)
Th media is only complicit when its the Liberal lie machine at work. If Labor gets caught even making a suggestion of a lie then the media is down on them like a tone of bricks. Murdoch – he who must be obeyed.
Even with the Murdoch media on his side, I get the strong feeling that the general populace is starting to resent Morrison’s propensity to lie and distract on such a continuous and blatant basis – especially when things remain relatively grim economically.
Of course, the hard core Right don’t object because Morrison is lying to protect the status quo they enjoy so much – one where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
But I remain hopeful swinging voters might this time see through this corrupt, misogynistic, elitist and self-serving Federal government and replace them with more honourable representatives.
I am not sure that lies are suddenly more acceptable now than at other times. The foundational stories of Australian settlement were pretty much based on lies. As one old enough to remember the disgrace which was our participation in the Vietnam war (and to have protested it) I remember the endless stream of lies from Canberra and our media about the origin, nature and reasons for our entry into that frightful war. Many of the people retailing those lies were, perhaps, doing so in good (although credulous) faith, however there were also plenty, in government and the media, who knew perfectly well that they were telling untruths.
It might be that one of the reasons the cacophonous discord of competing narratives seem now so raw and unsettling can be found in the (entirely self-inflicted) loss of authority of the traditional media. Do you remember the weapons of mass destruction? Do you recall how our political leaders and monopoly media solemnly amplified every one of those utterly dishonest claims? Do you also recall how none of them were prepared to admit their role in that disgrace? More recently we have witnessed the fraudulent “Russiagate” concoction – still being regaled by elements of our monopoly media. Is it any wonder that when people find they have been deliberately deceived by institutions they had trusted they are inclined to believe the opposite of anything those institutions now say.
Politics is euphemism in practice. Here’s a few:
people’s republics aren’t.
democratic people’s republic (north korea)
The liberals are conservative.
conservatives are better economic managers.
nation building as corporate welfare.
public-private partnerships. Socialise the costs and privatise the profit.
aged care.
I know that we have had our differences in the past Billy but on this one, let me express my support for you sentiments!
Neoliberalism has destroyed society not just indirectly through polarisation and changing our thinking from a ‘solid’ (economic security is more important than individual freedom) to a ‘liquid’ society (individual freedom is more important than economic security), but directly by denying the very existence of society (we all share responsibility for each other’s welfare and the common good). Margaret Thatcher, the most important disciple of neoliberalism, was quite explicit decades ago when she asserted ‘There is no such thing as society’. Why are we surprised at the unbridled selfishness we now suffer (from JobKeeper and other rorts, to wage theft, to anti-vaxers who so passionately believe their unbridled individual freedom is more important than other people’s lives?
Agree, Thatcher and Reagan were the first proponents of James Buchanan’s ‘public choice theory’, now promoted via Koch linked think tanks inc. IPA e.g. retail message is personal ‘freedom & liberty’ for individuals (and Covid ‘freedom’ protests), but really about big business or the top end of town.
Further, it’s masking radical right libertarian ideology, after Thatcher especially, joined at the hip with eugenics of white nationalists for wedge politics; it’s been szalami tactics ever since leveraging ageing monocultural electorates aka Brexit and Trump.
Seems to be a part of nativist and/or conservative libertarians schtick or modus operandi to mask policies with infantile, misogynist, bigoted and offensive messaging to create divisions; not an organic or natural phenomenon but a politicla tactic.
Dog whistling expert Prof. Ian Haney Lopez, like UK Tory Baroness Warsi, complains that dog whistling is destroying the middle class while Warsi claims it’s destroying the nation; Haney-Lopez has elaborated further that it’s also attacking liberal democracy.
Following is a quote from GoodReads on his research in ‘Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class‘:
‘Ian Haney Lopez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.’
Hence. it’s why radical right libertarian ideology is joined at the hip with eugenics, far right, white nationalists, Evangelicals and now QAnon, for sociocultural agitprop; aka astroturfed ‘grassroots’ Tea party, Capitol Hill and Covid ‘(Kochian) Freedom’ protests to intimidate liberal democracy aka protests in Melbourne against the state Labor govt.