I've thought about this a lot over the last 7 years. It's human nature to ignore or downplay inconvenient truths that are obstacles to getting what you want, or even to distort the truth for the same reasons. We all employ 'the ends justify the means' thinking to some extent, we make compromises including moral ones towards important goals. The stakes and pressures of politics bring these tendencies to the boil. I'm not excusing such behaviour, but just trying to understand it.
Nevertheless most people know what they are doing, and they know that such tactics are wrong and carry a cost. They still need to justify it to themselves,
still have limits they would not cross, and can still be genuinely contrite when they go too far.
The problem with post-truth politics is there is a class of politicians that don't care about the truth at all. They may not even believe there is a truth, and employ desensitising their followers to the existence of truth at all as a policy. They will demand their followers profess things they know for sure to be completely false, starting with relatively minor ones and working up to big ones, as a training tool and loyalty test to 'free' them from the constraint of truth. This is not at all a new tactic, it's what Orwell was warning about in 1984. If truth, or even reality are obstacles to your goals, they are the enemy.
One example - nationalists cannot accept climate change. You'd think there's be no reason why not, climate change affects them as much as anyone else and it harms the national interest. The issue is that if human generated climate change is a real problem, it cannot be tackled at the national level. It would require co-ordinated action internationally. That sort of co-ordination is anathema to nativist politics, so nationalists have to refute climate change as a globalist conspiracy. Reality is an obstacle to their goals, so reality must be fought or refuted. We see similar forces acting in the other direction though as well with internationalists. Everything has to be solved internationally.
simonh|1 year ago
Nevertheless most people know what they are doing, and they know that such tactics are wrong and carry a cost. They still need to justify it to themselves, still have limits they would not cross, and can still be genuinely contrite when they go too far.
The problem with post-truth politics is there is a class of politicians that don't care about the truth at all. They may not even believe there is a truth, and employ desensitising their followers to the existence of truth at all as a policy. They will demand their followers profess things they know for sure to be completely false, starting with relatively minor ones and working up to big ones, as a training tool and loyalty test to 'free' them from the constraint of truth. This is not at all a new tactic, it's what Orwell was warning about in 1984. If truth, or even reality are obstacles to your goals, they are the enemy.
One example - nationalists cannot accept climate change. You'd think there's be no reason why not, climate change affects them as much as anyone else and it harms the national interest. The issue is that if human generated climate change is a real problem, it cannot be tackled at the national level. It would require co-ordinated action internationally. That sort of co-ordination is anathema to nativist politics, so nationalists have to refute climate change as a globalist conspiracy. Reality is an obstacle to their goals, so reality must be fought or refuted. We see similar forces acting in the other direction though as well with internationalists. Everything has to be solved internationally.