I do not always agree with Jonathan Freedland on the Guardian. Today he does, however, suggest a description of the political era we appear to be entering that is well worth considering for wider use. The term is post-truth politics, of which he says:
In this era of post-truth politics, an unhesitating liar can be king. The more brazen his dishonesty, the less he minds being caught with his pants on fire, the more he can prosper. And those pedants still hung up on facts and evidence and all that boring stuff are left for dust, their boots barely laced while the lie has spread halfway around the world.
It is not chance that we have reached this place.
We have been persuaded that tax havens are places where things really happen by serious people who know this is not true.
And that the accounts of the companies that underpin globalisation are true and fair when that is blatantly untrue: 60% of the world's trade that is undertaken by them is not reflected at all in those accounts (which is why we need country-by-country reporting).
What is more, we know that evidence based policy has long been replaced by policy based evidence: that is the story of Jeremy Hunt's NHS.
And the result is post-truth politics where it is the lie and its teller that is rewarded.
George Orwell predicted it.
Now we have it.
The fight for truth has never been so important.
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Reminds me of most corporate business executives I’ve met, the better they lie the higher they go!
Which is probably why so many ex-business leaders make it into politics (usually the Tories but not always).
Richard, you say:
“What is more, we know that evidence based policy has long been replaced by policy based evidence: that is the story of Jeremy Hunt’s NHS.”
Surely this should read:
“What is more, we know that evidence based policy has long been replaced by policy based PREJDICE AND PRE-DETERMINED OUTCOMES: that is the story of Jeremy Hunt’s NHS.”
Maybe I am feeling benevolent today
R
Which brings me back to Game Theory. One feature of this is that in amongst all the flannel, fibs and fanciful stuff there are some facts and truths. Back in the 50’s the intelligence operations against the Soviets were an example. Also, in that period there were exponents of these techniques. Harold Macmillan comes to mind. If as well as the spice if real facts the dressing on the dish is things we like to hear, it makes these people especially dangerous.
I think ‘game theory’ and ‘evolutionary psychology’ have had a vastly damaging effect on our notion of what it is to be human. The last 40 years of ‘homo flagrante mendax’ has been underwritten by game theory and evolutionary biology as a ‘that is the way we are’ ‘factoid.’ It has been the pseudo scientific backing of neoliberalism
Evolutionary psychology is “The Flintstones” without the kernel of scientific accuracy.
Oh, and econometrics is a delight…
one of my favourite fictional charactors sits in front of the White House with a sign that says ‘Tell us The Truth’.
So far as i can see politicians have always avoided telling the truth after all spinning the truth allows for nuance and misdirection. Not so far then to make the small step to outright lies. Hitler’s henchman had it right about ‘tell a big lie often enough and people begin to believe it’. Our current crop of liars seem to have learned this lesson well.
Surely we have had post-truth politics since at least 1979 when the Sun started deciding the results of elections.
@ Demetrius
Game theoty ? Are you Yanis Varoufakis.?
Hmmmmm.
We’ve been in post-truth politics for a long time.
My view is that these lies started in the late 70’s with Thatcher. She told lies because they knew what the effects of policies like RTB and privatisation would do.
Blair told lots of lies and we all know what they are.
And so onto Cameron and Osbourne who are very accomplished liars as were the Lib Dems they shared power with briefly. They also ignore truths.
All these people have and will benefit from their works in some way after they have destroyed what existed previously in the name of change.
Is it any wonder why (1) Politics is seen increasingly as a great career to make money out of and (2) why our politicians are so lamentably bad – they’re bad because they are essentially looking after themselves and their friends – not us.
I see nothing new in Freedland’s assertions.
I just want to see alternatives.
We should be calling it a ‘post-political age’ – because politics as we know it is now effectively dead and has been replaced by what I can only describe as an individualised process of asset stripping and wealth acquisition.
Words fail me as to what to call this phenomenon.
The vulture culture?
Priceless, coming from Freedland the Guardian crown prince, his influence certainly isn’t taking the Guardian anywhere I want to go.
I made my reservations clear
How about this as a truthful Conservative Party slogan. Use your imagination. I am sure you can come up with even better, more hard hitting slogans. It is addictive, and is bit like doing a crossword puzzle.
And we should have them on lampposts all over the country.
The best way to counter lies that you can do nothing about is to ridicule the liars.
Confederation
Of
Nasty people,
Serving
Exploiters
Rip-off Merchants
Villains
And
Tax cheats
Including
Various
Elected MPs
Parasites
And
Rats
Together, destroying
Your NHS
Most effective when the first letter of each line is highlighted and enlarged.
Substitute country for NHS?
I hope that the notion of post-truth politics will prove to be a fiction, and that truth will be recognised as the genuine criterion of human development against the untruthful or misleading assertions of politicians intent on short-sighted policies, or personal or political gain.
Politics has reached an impasse. The inability of Labour to make any headway against a Conservative party in total disarray with infighting over Europe, budget U-turns, the steel crisis, junior doctor strikes (just to name a few things) suggests that people don’t know where to turn.
It’s not that they don’t value truth. It’s that they don’t know what the truth is, or where to find it.
Political science is a human science, but it is being treated as an empirical science. Situations are studied and analysed, the history and psychology is taken into account, and then it is supposed that accounts for everything, it explains the way things are. For example, “the doctors are on strike because they are angry at the government’s proposals.” From an empirical viewpoint that is correct, but it totally overlooks the real reason that the doctors are on strike, which is the nature of the government’s proposals. Longer hours for no extra pay. And where is the evidence that this policy will increase their industriousness and improve patient care? Such questions are conveniently overlooked.
The principle of progress is liberty, and that liberty is being successively undermined. Until liberty is restored as the fundamental notion underpinning society, we will see ever greater manifestations of untruthfulness and manipulation on the political scene, as the ruling classes seek to preserve the status quo. That doesn’t mean we have entered a post truth era. It simply means we have entered a stage of accelerating decline, and the more power we give to these liars, the greater will their demise be.
The trouble is, they will take us all down with them, for they are our leaders.
That is why we urgently need to drop the nineteenth century deterministic outlook of empirical science, and advance to a critical human science. Liberty is the principle of progress and change, and truth is the ultimate criterion by which we can measure and judge politicians by the words they speak. Things don’t have to get worse before they get better, but we do have to work on it.
There was a terrifying example of where we’re heading in last week’s news. A bearded fellow was hauled off a plane in the US because his neighbour on the flight took a look at his workings & assumed he was writing, in Arabic, instructions to fellow hi-jackers.
He was, in fact, a maths professor (not even a Muslim but Italian as it goes), sketching out some differential calculus.
I could understand why some people might think of differential &, even more, integral calculus as a form of terrorism! It terrorised a lot of people in my class. Calculus was, as I recall, the single subject that made most people despair of ever getting Maths O level & turned almost everyone off A level. But terror of maths shouldn’t justify police intervention!
Between Rupert Murdoch’s media & the likes of Trump & Farage we are creating millions of ignorant, terrified & angry people. Is that such a good idea?
PS: I loved calculus. It was the main reason I took Maths to A level. It has such a beautiful purity.
I liked calculus
But I hated trigonometry
We didn’t do calculus for ‘O’ level maths when I sat it (1964) so when I did an economics degree 16 years later I was probably the only person who had to learn it from scratch in one term – from a lecturer who, when I asked him if he could, please, go a little more slowly (I wasn’t familiar with the use of greek letters as variables) told me he hated teaching such dumb people and he couldn’t possibly oblige. I did very much like calculus but found it mortifying to suddenly have to apply it 6 months later. This may be the reason why I have a horror of econometrics to this day.
Econometrics is a horror at any level
I did my ‘O’ Level in 1976 calculus was on the syllabus and I liked the wiggly integration sign and all that dy/dx stuff but I never really understood what it was ‘about.’ Problem was, maths tended to be taught as a mechanical technique to memorise and it was never put in historical context or explanations given for why it was useful.
It would have been great fun to have been taught about how calculus was developed by Newton onwards. I get the impression that Economists love writing Sigma signs to create a pseudo-objectivity-I think ‘real’ mathematicians smile wryly at this!
I don’t have the Maths skills to appreciate econometrics but have enjoyed talks by one of our leading Econometrists, David Hendry. In one talk he referred to the present Government as ‘one of the most stupid in memory’ so he’s on the right track!
he’s a very humble man-here he is taking part in a series of talks with martin Wolf and Paul Krugman-I’d skip the Wolf and Krugman bits and listen to him!
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVU0LpZrLlk
The maths of economics and maths are not quite unrelated, but might as well be
The maths of economics is very largely unrelated to the real world
Much of it also includes startling assumptions – including that very small numbers behave like zero, which is absurd
I think it was the use of the Greek delta etc that got the passenger so angry & concerned – but, really, should we all be in a constant state of subjugation to stupidity ?
Like Richard I never found Trigonometry much fun at all although I reminded myself that Sherlock used it to crack one of his most difficult cases.
@ PSR
‘Words fail me as to what to call this phenomenon.’
Post-Democracy?
It takes one to know one.
Jonathan Freedland has been playing fast and loose with the anti-semitism agenda for a long time, and increasingly so.
But I get your point. Truth has to be fought for.
Keep up the good work!
I have quibbles (or more) with Jonathan on many issues
Anti-semitism is not one of them
Freedland (like me) is from a Jewish background, so I suspect, in his case (I haven’t read him recently) would have joined in the bashing of Corbyn with the taint of anti-Semitism-mistakenly in my view.
I gave up reading Freedland some years ago as he doesn’t get the need for a new economic discourse and would doubt his general understanding of the roots of our economic problems.
He did join the Corbyn bashing
His comprehension of economics is limited
The reason there is “the anti-semitism agenda” is that theres’s an awful lot of anti-semitism out there. I’m not pro-Zionism or, particularly, pro-Israel, but you’d be silly not to see that there is something really dark & nasty hiding behind some (not all) peoples’ hostility to Israel. That is a real problem for Jeremy who, a decent person himself, probably struggles to detect indecency in those around him.
Unfortunately, in fact bizarrely, belief in ZOG isn’t that uncommon in 2016. Its not just Tyson Fury although he did articulate (not that one should ever use Tyson Fury & articulate in the same sentence) what a lot of dumb-ass, ignorant & angry people are thinking.
I do come across that anti-semitism amongst people who should appear to know better
I always find it quite shocking
Certainly there is anti-semitism out there-I should know it, I grew up and had to survive the ‘jokes’ as a school kid (from Crucifying Jesus to variations on the ‘fork in the sugar bowl’). Becoming a Quaker Christian obliged me to come to terms with the history of anti-semitism, not light reading!
However, I still felt that Livingstone and Shah were not being anti-Semitic. The garbage coming out of the mouths of Tyson Fury/Mel Gibson is some sort of simplistic projection as racism always is and always follows the same theme:
‘The Jews’ control the media.
‘The Jews’ control the banks.
‘The Jews’ are intent on world domination
‘The Jews’ are the Illuminati
As soon as anyone talks about ‘the’ X’s (name your religious/racial group) you know the argument is a projection of some internal issue and not based on reality. I grew up in a Jewish community that was largely Labour voting and working class, the notion that they were intent on becoming financiers and world dominators was and is absurd.
Nietzsche called anti-semitism ‘scabies of the heart.'(He should know, his sister married an arch anti-semite). Somehow it’s etched into our culture.
As Richard says, it can be quite shocking amongst so-called ‘educated people.’
I get so annoyed with the “Rothschild’s really control the Bank of England” argument, for example
Where we are up to with Mr Simon Stevens ( former global health president of United Health Care) plan.
Sustainability and Transformation, STP’s. 44 regions or ‘Footprints’.
Confused, well yes actually.
He’s busy closing down A&E departments I understand, in order to fulfil his promise to Osborne that he will balance the books with just an extra £8bn contribution during this administration. He must be either delusional or mightily corrupt.
Simon Stevens-isn’t he the present ‘CEO’ of the NHS (sort of an oxymoron) who came from the private heakth care insurer in the US that is bailing out of the Medicare contract?
Richard
Sadly I agree with you.
I’m sure the latter part of Freedland’s quote is from Mark Twain, gut getting pants on rather than lacing boots.
I think it has always been present; of course the Nazis were good at it probably Stalin and co even better. The US AD men have a lot to do with it; warping public perception to your agenda is increasingly common. I liked Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik Conway’s book “Merchants of Doubt” as I couldn’t understand why many people would discount such amazingly obvious evidence on climate change (OK I am a Physics professor so look at things possibly more deeply than the scientifically illiterate or innumerate). I saw Regan blindingly spinning the truth it in the US and Thatcher in the UK. It has gotten dramatically worse recently. The George Orwell 1984 analogy is apt.
Regarding the NHS I do have some insight as my wife is Dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care (it is a new specialism so it is not a College yet, but she is the leading Intensive Care Doctor in the country) and is spending an inordinate time in London at the moment because of the Junior Doctor’s dispute. She is fearful for the NHS. She thinks Jeremy Hunt is too valuable as an EU ally to Cameron and that there will be little sense till after the referendum
Sean
Much admiration for what your wife is doing and thanks for being here
Your concern about the ad men is appropriate for two reasons. First they have only one product to sell, which is dissatisfaction with what you have, and they do so with certainty. But there is no certainty and very often we have good reason to be satisfied with what we do have. The premises of their massively powerful industry, which has been the engine of much unnecessary economic growth and environmental destruction, are wrong and yet we build a society based upon them
I explore the issue in The Courageous State
Richard
I think the Ad industry would count as what David Graeber calls ‘Bullshit Jobs’.
Have a read of this, which expands on the theme: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/05/doesnt-pay-banker-160503094733474.html
‘Post-democracy’ – yes I get that.
But what is so amazing and worth noting is that democracy in the form of voting and its architecture (Parliament, representation etc.,) is STILL being used even if it is to tell lies, so democracy is not exactly ‘post’ if you see what I mean? Democracy is still in there. It is still in use.
‘Vulture culture’ – yes, that too. I get it but it is not really the descriptor
I would settle for.
I think that we are entering an ‘Age of Unreason’ – not really very original but it sums up for me the lying and the wilful ignorance that far too many people display.
We may also have to consider that we are in some sort of ‘Pre’ stage in our history as well.
I now a lot of commentators have been saying people who are talking of war if there is BREXIT are scaremongering but I really do believe that the world will become increasingly unstable if BREXIT does happen. The portents of that are all around us.
I would go as far mas to say that we are sleep walking towards a ‘Pre-martial’ state of affairs in Europe – if not the rest of the world.
That is my view anyway, such that it is.
PSR, it’s only just over a month since Richard posted this at my request, which entirely vindicates your reading of things.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/04/07/the-hollowing-out-of-democracy/
As regards your fears about the march to war and bloodshed, it seems to me that we need to expand our horizons and look globally at the malign activities of the proponents of “post democracy”, “vulture culture” or call it what you will, and we only have to look as far as Brazil to see how a cinaituruonal coup has removed a popular elected President, replacing her with a Washington Consensus apparatchik, who, 24 hours in power, has already sought to tear up the gains of 12 years of electorally mandated progress, replacing it with neo-liberal dogma.
See:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=840903962719674&id=479681268841947&refid=18&ref=bookmarks
and
https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGZ2cOLXByq8&h=OAQEvN0em&s=1
Brazil is chilling
Apparently Temer has about 3% support according to polls!
Goodness me. Brazil is very worrying indeed.
North American capitalist hegemony seems rife.
It is very difficult to see what the American government will do if we stay Europe.
I think that they will be back with TTIP at some stage leaning on the EU or individual states. And they would still do the same if the EU fragmented after we left.
It does seem like a bit of a Hobson’s choice to be honest. If only we had capable and moral politicians to build up a Europe based on ‘sharing capitalism’ rather than USA driven ‘winner takes all’ capitalism then I would have even more faith in staying in Europe.
I will vote to stay in, but I will be making a big wish with my fingers crossed behind my back that the EU rejects American influence on how we do business.
‘I will vote to stay in, but I will be making a big wish with my fingers crossed behind my back that the EU rejects American influence on how we do business.’
keep them crossed, the signs are not good. Look how the Troika got Syriza to cower and there are forebodings that Podemos might go they way of compromise.
I’m for OUT and build anew-the present structure needs clearing away.
It is very hard to see how Cameron and the rest of the Tory party are in any way being truthful about their approach to tax avoidance when these sorts of stories keep emerging about their major donors.
I like the phrase “Rowland’s game of offshore cat and mouse” – a very big mousetrap is now required in my view!
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/05/13/exposed-4m-tory-donor-mind-blowing-offshore-tax-affairs/
Consider that TTIP is considerably less likely to be signed if we remain to stay in as it will need to be ratified by individual nations as I understand it. I cannot see either the French or Germans being happy with contracting out corporate law to the corporations themselves, whilst all the time excluding the state. And most corporations are vulnerable to boycotts and their offices to ‘direct action’ which our friends in mainland Europe are greatly more fond of than their offshore cousins.
If, however, we are out of the EU and the Tories are still in power (this last is I reckon, politically more likely if we are out than if we vote to remain) I can see them telling a few ‘post truths’ to make sure the UK does sign TTIP.
1984 is completely apposite but our current Tory regime somehow succeeds in being more seemingly high-minded. Obviously that bit of the syllabus at Eton has improved since Orwell’s day.
Simon
If we divide we can be conquered; the Americans or even the Chinese can pick us all off one by one.
The EU is a real union, undivided?