By ADEILDO OLIVEIRA*

The communicative and informational context of mass societies has created an environment where frauds and lies are placed in the same category of information alongside truths.

1.

In “Truth Coming Out of the Well,” from 1896, French sculptor and painter Jean-Léon Gérome portrays the parable “of truth and lies.” In short, the parable tells how truth and lies met and decided to walk together until they found a well, where the lie convinced truth to get into the water. Taking advantage of a mistake, the lie stole truth’s clothes and ran away, dressing like her.

Truth, refusing to wear the clothes of lies, stood naked, but as it walked the streets in this way, it was rejected and judged by the people, who preferred the lie disguised as truth. In one version of the parable, truth, disillusioned, hides forever; in another, it continues its journey naked, realizing that many prefer the illusion of lies to the reality of the naked truth.

It is understood that this work can be seen as a portrait of the historical conflict between truth and politics. In the last decade, there has been no shortage of concrete examples of this historical tension in the global political scene, proving the validity of a phrase attributed to Oscar Wilde: “art imitates life more than life imitates art.”

Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009 was attended by over 1,8 million people and had a 67% approval rating. Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017 was attended by around 600 people and had a 45% approval rating. Even so, spokesman Sean Spicer claimed that it was the largest inauguration in history. Official images and figures showed otherwise, contradicting his statement. When asked about the matter, counselor Kellyanne Conway defended Sean Spicer. She claimed that he was presenting “alternative facts.”[I]

An expression emerged that became a symbol of the denial of evident facts and that, from our perspective, exposes the permanence of the historical clash between factual truths and opinions at the beginning of the 21st century. Other examples that corroborate this understanding can be cited.[ii]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been widespread denial of deaths across the planet and a systematic attack on the effectiveness of vaccines and their importance in containing deaths. In Brazil, politicians are building their careers on social media and monetizing their profits by spreading lies.

While attending an event related to President Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk made a gesture – unusual, to say the least – that generated great controversy and questions on social media. The fact is that the gesture was a notorious Nazi salute (sieg heil ou Hitler salute) and any defender of fundamental rights and democracy, with minimal knowledge of all the historical issues that the gesture may raise, would normally avoid doing so in contexts of overt political demonstrations.

On the other hand, those who seek the spotlight – thirsty for attention – and whose political goals are marked by the absence of republican and democratic values ​​can easily disguise acts of this nature. In the case of Elon Musk, a simple phrase – “my heart is with you” – between the gesture and its repetition was enough for those who are more sympathetic to the government of Donald Trump and the richest man in the world to completely ignore the underlying symbolism.

What should have been something relegated to the past and ostracized those who repeat it, then took the form of a dog whistle (dog whistle), all thanks to the emotional polarization that has affected a large part of the world's electorate for some years now.[iii]

I will not speculate on the possible reasons that led Elon Musk to make a gesture that he and anyone who knows the slightest bit about 20th century history knows what it means. I will leave that to the personal judgment of the readers.

The issue on which this reflection is proposed is that the reported events generated a wave of reciprocal virtual accusations of lying, manipulation and distortion of reality and the facts underlying the infamous act. Denials of notorious facts and gestures. Denials of information that could easily be verified with a simple virtual search committed to the truth. In short: a general picture of denial or distortion of facts and images.

2.

This picture of political myopia – accentuated by a crisis in the informational authority of the press – is aggravated by the influence of the business model of big tech and its new information technologies in public debate, such as the internet, platforms and social networks.[iv]

These information technologies have democratized debate, giving a voice to anyone with access to the World Wide Web. These people, often without any fact-checking, share information that is at odds with reality as if it were unquestionable truths. Worse, they see blatant and obvious gestures and yet deny their historically proven meanings. The reasons for this are the most varied, from confirmation bias to political and economic interests.[v]

We therefore propose a reflection on the situation. As citizens, we must focus on the facts, ideas and messages, not on the messenger. I know that it is difficult for many to face facts and reality when they collide with our desires, passions and ideologies – as Freud rightly pointed out.[vi] –, but it is something necessary.

Here, it is not “who” that matters, but “what is said and done”. What matters is not the supposed intentions, but the actual actions. The concern, therefore, must focus on the factual reality. This is because politicians have been lying since politics existed, as Hannah Arendt pointed out when she stated that “truthfulness has never been among the political virtues, and lies have always been seen as justifiable instruments in these matters”.[vii]

Factual truth, well, it also enters the political game, but it is most commonly brought to the forefront only when it serves political interests. George Orwell had already denounced these practices in the middle of the last century, when criticizing ideological relativism in the United Kingdom. For Orwell, “no one seeks the truth, everyone is defending a ‘cause’, with total disregard for impartiality or truthfulness, and the most patently obvious facts end up ignored by those who do not want to know about them”.[viii]

Eugênio Bucci describes this denial of factual reality as a phenomenon sustained by two strategies: blackouts of reality and suicide of consciousness. In blackouts of reality, technology is used by those in power to virtualize facts, transforming them into data and creating a separation between man and reality. This process replaces the concrete experience of life with a virtual version, erasing reality. In suicide of consciousness, people deny concrete and verifiable facts when they collide with their personal convictions, be they political, religious or ideological. Thus, critical judgment is blocked and reality is rejected in favor of beliefs.[ix]

Political philosophy has been debating this issue for a long time. In the allegory of the cave, Plato contrasts the illusory world of the cave with reality, which can only be accessed through education (paideia). Machiavelli, in turn, emphasized the relevance of factual reality to political affairs. In his analysis of the behavior of rulers, particularly princes, he argued that it seemed to him “more appropriate to seek truth drawn from facts, and not from imagination.”[X]

Max Weber, when speaking of the qualities of a politician, highlighted passion, responsibility and a sense of proportion. The latter, specifically, is seen as an essential psychological quality for a politician with a calling. For Weber, “[t]his means that he must have the ability to allow facts to act upon him in the seclusion and inner calm of the spirit […]”.[xi]

3.

It is clear, therefore, that there is concern about the importance of facts for political thought. It is also inferred that lies have always been part of the political arsenal and their use as a tool for political action is not characteristic of this “post-truth era”. However, despite the fact that lies have been and still are used as a tool for political action, in the historical context of the last hundred years there has been an increase in lies and an even greater threat to facts than before. This threat is the massive manipulation of facts and opinions that, more than deceiving, has erased the very dividing line between what is believed to be facts and opinions.

When analyzing this phenomenon, Hannah Arendt argues that there are distinctions between political lies of the past and those of contemporary times. She carries out this reflection by pointing out the distinctions between traditional lies and modern lies. She states that traditional political lies dealt with secrets, hiding data and intentions from the adversary. They were, therefore, directed only at the political adversary.

In other words, it was not intended to deceive everyone. They were common in politics and diplomacy, and were restricted to the circles of statesmen and diplomats. Thus, traditional political lies did not have the capacity to destroy the truth itself. At most, they were capable of hiding it, deceiving only political adversaries by causing a fissure in the fabric of facts. [xii]

On the other hand – and according to Hannah Arendt – modern lies deal with facts that are known to everyone or almost everyone. They are more damaging to factual truth because, more than deceiving political adversaries, they seek to rewrite the very fabric of facts, constructing images and destroying the truth itself, turning it into a lie. Arendt argues that modern political liars deceive themselves and others, recreating reality in a way that fits seamlessly into it. To accomplish this task satisfactorily, the liar also convinces himself of his story.[xiii]

Here, unlike the fictional Orwellian “doublethink”, in which the subject would have the capacity to “[…] simultaneously defend two opinions that cancel each other out, knowing that they are contradictory and believing in both […]”[xiv], the modern political liar does not believe in reality, he denies it completely and, by becoming completely convinced of his own lie, destroys the truth.

Put in these terms, the distinction between traditional and modern political lying represents, in most cases, “the difference between concealing and destroying.”[xv] The modern political process, therefore, is no longer content to hide reality; it actually intends to annihilate it completely.

Therefore, the most damaging effect – for the formation of political thought – of the massive manipulation of facts and opinions by the modern political liar is, therefore, the mental destruction of the dividing line between truth and falsehood. Thus, deprived of this mental faculty, men would no longer be able to identify truth and reality and distinguish it from what is false. For Hannah Arendt, there is no solution to this problem.

In the current scenario, with hyperconnectivity, digital media end up becoming – as can be inferred from reflections made by Arendt – substitutes for reality, since they would build a new reality, replacing the original.[xvi]

Giovani Sartori, in turn, claims that, in the television universe, information is everything that circulates in the media. In this communicative context, Sartori states that “[…] information, misinformation, truth, lies, it’s all the same thing”.[xvii]

4.

In short: the communicative and informational context of mass societies has created an environment where frauds and lies are placed in the same category of information alongside truths, favoring the breaking of the dividing line between truth over facts and opinions, as the liar gains a power of dissemination and persuasion never seen before.

The diagnoses of Hannah Arendt and Giovani Sartori were made in the second half of the last century, but they are clearly relevant today and scary.

In the age of social media, this scenario has been amplified to the extreme and has taken on dramatic consequences for democratic politics. In this world of post-mass digital technologies (internet, platforms, apps, social media, etc.), the real has been increasingly replaced by the digital, from human relationships to political thinking about the reality that surrounds us.

In this contextual framework, the formula that states that “we choose our love” disguises itself as “we choose what to believe.” And, just as suggested in the parable of “truth and lies,” we are choosing the limiting illusion of lies over the reality of the naked, yet liberating truth.

Perhaps it is this behavioral stimulus that makes politicians increasingly more likely to use lies as an instrument of political action, which demonstrates the success of Alan Moore and David Lloyd in the comic book turned into a film.v for Vendetta”, which states that “[a]rtists use lies to reveal the truth, while politicians use lies to hide it”. This is the state of the art in the digital age of democracy.

*Adeildo Oliveira He has a master's degree in constitutional law from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC).

Notes

[I] MELLO, Patricia Campos. The hate machine: notes from a reporter on fake news and digital violence. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2020, p. 126-130.

[ii] OLIVEIRA, José Adeildo Bezerra de. Data economy, surveillance capitalism and the erosion of facts in democratic politics. Dissertation (master's degree) – Federal University of Ceará, Faculty of Law, Postgraduate Program in Law, Fortaleza, 2023, p. 28.

[iii] Iyengar, Shanto; Sood, Gaurav; LELKES, Yphtach. Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization, 76 Pub. Opinion. Q. 405 (2012).

[iv] OLIVEIRA, José Adeildo Bezerra de. Data economy, surveillance capitalism and the erosion of facts in democratic politics. Dissertation (master's degree) – Federal University of Ceará, Faculty of Law, Postgraduate Program in Law, Fortaleza, 2023.

[v] OLIVEIRA, José Adeildo Bezerra de. Data economy, surveillance capitalism and the erosion of facts in democratic politics. Dissertation (master's degree) – Federal University of Ceará, Faculty of Law, Postgraduate Program in Law, Fortaleza, 2023, p. 28.

[vi] FREUD, Sigmund. Civilization's Discontents. New York: Penguin Classics, 2011.

[vii] ARENDT, Hannah. Crisis of the Republic. Trans. José Volkmann. New York: Routledge, 2010. p. 15.

[viii] ORWELL, George. About the truth. Translated by Claudio Alves Marcondes. London: Cambridge University Press, 2020. p. 115.

[ix] BUCCI, Eugene. Is there democracy without factual truth? Barueri: Station of Letters and Colors, 2019. p. 81.

[X] MACHIAVELLI, Nicholas. The prince. Barueri: New Century Publishing, 2018. p. 85-6.

[xi] WEBER, Max. Science and politics: two vocations. New York: Routledge, 2010. p.

[xii] ARENDT, Hannah. Between past and future. Trans. Mauro W. Barbosa. New York: Routledge, 2009. p. 312.

[xiii] ARENDT, Hannah. Between past and future. Trans. Mauro W. Barbosa. New York: Routledge, 2009.

[xiv] ORWELL, George. 1984. Translated by Alexandre Hubner. London: Cambridge University Press, 2019. p. 77.

[xv] ARENDT, Hannah. Between past and future. Trans. Mauro W. Barbosa. New York: Routledge, 2009. p. 312.

[xvi] ARENDT, Hannah. Between past and future. Trans. Mauro W. Barbosa. New York: Routledge, 2009.

[xvii] SARTORI, Giovanni. Homo videns: television and post-thought. Bauru: EDUSC, 2001. p. 84.

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