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Donald Trump and Co.: Perpetual lies as a political concept

2022-09-25T16:34:27.243Z


People like Donald Trump establish constant lying as a basic tool of their politics. The narratives of these enemies of democracy are similar around the world. Nevertheless, real politics remains possible.


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Politicians Putin, Trump, Bolsonaro: Lies unite

Photo: Allison Joyce;

Addressa Anholete;

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It's a cynical cliché that constant lies are part and parcel of politics.

In fact, there is an anti-democratic impulse in it: they all lie anyway, so it doesn't matter who you vote for.

That is – fortunately – a lie: Even in politics in 2022, there will still be a lot of people who are oriented towards the cause itself.

You strive for truthfulness and try to the best of your knowledge and belief to solve or at least mitigate our enormous problems.

The idea that in politics everyone lies all the time anyway is reminiscent of a Soviet-era propaganda strategy: make people doubt everything.

Let the situation appear so confusing that the audience gets the feeling that "it can no longer believe anything anyway".

Flood the zone with shit

Trump's former communications strategist Steve Bannon recently reinterpreted this strategy:

Flood the zone with shit

.

Just spouting so much nonsense, so many competing narratives, lies, conflicting claims that the truth itself eventually just seems like one of many versions of reality.

This strategy is especially useful when you don't intend to tell the truth.

Donald Trump, for example, is known to be a pathological constant liar.

He lies to stroke his own ego, he lies for business reasons, he lies for political reasons - and sometimes it feels like he's just lying out of habit.

A building of lies, complex and confusing

The old lies are constantly giving birth to new ones: Because, for example, the New York public prosecutor's office accuses him of having dramatically exaggerated the value of many of his properties and thus having gained advantages for himself, Trump now has to assert something once again: that he himself is not a criminal gambler , but a haunted innocence.

That the fact that his transgressions may be catching up with him is not just punishment, but the result of politically motivated attacks.

On the other side of the northern hemisphere, a professional liar reigns supreme.

Vladimir Putin and his people have built a huge, now quite complicated construct of lies – after all, the former KGB men have learned to act like this.

As a liar, Trump is a constantly improvising amateur, while Putin and his siloviki are trained professionals.

Jair Bolsonaro is also more likely to belong to Trump's category.

From his allegedly successful handling of Covid (despite hundreds of thousands of real deaths) to the alleged well-being of the Amazon rainforest.

Hopefully his lies will catch up with him at the latest in the Brazilian elections next weekend.

»Great Replacement« as a political carrier wave

In Italy, on the other hand, a woman is likely to be elected to power on Sunday whose political repertoire includes the far-right narrative that the "way of life" of white, Western, heterosexual people is under threat.

That secretive global "elites" were planning a "population exchange."

This "Great Replacement" conspiracy narrative is loved by many from the United States to New Zealand whose basic political tool is constant lying.

And she always has an anti-Semitic undercurrent.

When "globalists", "global elites", the World Economic Forum, George Soros, or whoever is accused of "wanting to replace" the population, these are always codes for the supposed Jewish world conspiracy.

The white rulers' fear of demographic change is a powerful carrier wave for many of those who make politics primarily with lies.

And because many of them are in fact fascists, anti-Semitism always goes well in the cocktail.

It's basically a good sign that fascists today have to lie constantly - because their "truth," frankly speaking, would lead to international ostracism.

The International of Lies

Within the International of Powerful Liars there are many connections, but not complete unanimity.

Giorgia Meloni, for example, who is likely to become Italy's prime minister, is not a fan of the disinformation godfather Vladimir Putin.

Unlike their coalition colleagues Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, who both presumably let Russia pay them.

more on the subject

  • Russia's claim to power: Putin must have believed he could do anything with the WestA column by Christian Stöcker

  • Giorgia Meloni before the election in Italy: The neo-fascist yes-no woman by Patrick Müthing and Frank Hornig

  • "I'm not a scientist": World Bank President under pressure for climate denial theses

Meloni is considered a kind of transatlantic.

Above all, however, she feels connected to the Republicans in the USA, who have long been a party that is not only right-wing extremist, but also built on lies.

The lie that Donald Trump won the election, of course, but also that there is no climate crisis.

Republicans have put people whose worldview includes such lies into positions of responsibility.

Not only in the US Supreme Court, but also at the head of the World Bank.

Its current president has repeatedly questioned climate change in recent years.

Recently, when asked about the greatest crisis in human history, he responded with a well-known Republican phrase: "I'm not a scientist."

The government is embarrassed

The time when Republican politicians reacted to the climate crisis in rows and apparently in a concerted manner with this crazy sentence is actually over, but Donald Trump's World Bank President David Malpass apparently hadn't noticed it yet.

In the meantime, he is also very embarrassing for the Biden government, and it is to be hoped that he will lose office prematurely.

Mankind can no longer afford an institution run by a climate change denier, which is actually supposed to steer global developments, but which continues to invest in the exploitation of fossil fuels.

The liars must be contained quickly whenever possible.

Incidentally, Malpass is married to a woman who chairs the "Daily Caller News Foundation", which in turn was co-founded by Fox News disinformation preacher Tucker Carlson, and has repeatedly attracted attention with blatant lies and right-wing extremist personnel.

Carlson, on the other hand, is one of those who keep the "Great Replacement" conspiracy narrative simmering in the United States.

That's how everything fits together.

Not very original

According to a recent New York Times poll, 38 percent of registered voters in the United States still believe that after losing the election, Trump only made use of his legitimate right to "question the election results" (still 54 percent but find Trump endangered democracy).

Of the two parties, 42 percent believe that the Republicans “feel committed to democracy”, although they have fielded a number of candidates who continue to doubt the election results.

The proportion of those who have been thoroughly and long-term misinformed is apparently particularly large in the USA (also on the subject of the climate crisis).

But of course there are also millions and millions of thoroughly misinformed people living in Russia.

And of course there are also in the states of Europe so unanimous.

More here, less there.

Those who have been lied to are queuing at the border

Russia's lied to are now queuing at the borders as the truth of the battlefield has caught up with Vladimir Putin.

And Britain's disinformed are beginning to realize that the Brexiteers really lied to them.

There are two categories of lies: Some will eventually be unmasked by the irrefutable, physically manifest reality - and some can live on forever because the evidence to the contrary has long been provided but is ignored.

Many people in the United States will take the misconception that Trump won the election with them to their graves.

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The assertion, cherished and nurtured with billions of dollars, that humans aren't heating up the earth lies, belongs to the first category: meanwhile, even those who previously had doubts can only ignore with great difficulty that flood deaths in Pakistan, droughts and rivers falling dry in Germany and Caribbean hurricanes are all real and becoming more common.

That the predictions of science come true, and are often even exceeded.

The politics of lying inevitably collide with reality at some point, whether in Russian recruiting offices or overheated megacities.

Unfortunately, the uninformed often take a long time to wake up - and campaigning with the lie as its central principle is not dying out.

But at least that should now be clearly visible to everyone else: "They're all lying anyway" is just not true.

And truthfulness always leads to better politics in the end.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-09-25

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