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Dangerously Empowered Liars: Trump, Musk, Poilievre, Bannon and Netanyahu

Writer's picture: Fred GuerinFred Guerin


Most information, video clips and data on the internet is junk, fiction, delusion and lies—that is the legacy of modern techno-capitalism first realized through television and advertising, then dramatically intensified by the internet and social media. And, of course, the propagation of lies, cheap answers and fiction will be exponentially multiplied by way of AI. Why are lies, fictional accounts, and doctored quotes so ubiquitous?


Because superficial information and fabrication are cheap. The truth is costly and time-consuming, and facts are not always obvious or unquestioned. They are fragile and easy to manipulate unless they are continuously verified. If you want to understand how an economic crash came about, the origins of the current war or genocide happening somewhere in the world, what causes the Covid virus to mutate, or how a new technology came about, you need to invest time reading, researching, interpreting, experimenting, cross-checking, affirming and reaffirming. It requires patience, care for details, perseverance, and dedication.


By contrast lies, myths, and fiction are quick and easy. The old expression that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" is something we should keep in mind every time we go on the internet. Secondly, fabrications and lies are simple because what is simple or ingenuous sells. The real ‘art of the Trump deal’ is realized through subterfuge and dissimulation. By contrast, the truth tends to be complex and nuanced because reality is always more knotty and varied than supposed from a first inspection. Hannah Arendt very well explains this phenomenon when she talks about the fragility of fact and truth:


“It is this fragility that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting. It never comes into a conflict with reason, because things could indeed have been as the liar maintains they were. Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared.”


The real problem is the creation of an internet AI culture where most people would rather hear a simple or comforting story that reinforces their political perspectives, biases or prejudices rather than accept a truth that is painful, unattractive or disconfirms what they believe.


Convenient or consoling fictions, lying promises, fact-free opinions are the tools of autocratic fraudsters like Trump, Elon Musk, Netanyahu, Steve Bannon, and Poilievre. They thrive and become ever more popular by proliferating a vast web of fabrications, doctored truths, half-baked ideas, and rank prejudices that serve their nefarious purposes. These lies and prejudices then go ‘viral’ on the internet and social media where they are addictively consumed by people whose brain chemistry has been infected by the algorithmic dopamine reward system.


As human beings, these men are as cheap and worthless as the fictions they spread. The problem is that when they are empowered they are also very dangerous because they can use lies and fictions to negatively affect people’s everyday lives. They can begin wars, impoverish individuals and nations, destroy international relations, undermine human rights and international criminal law, and cultivate a world where intolerance, narcissism and xenophobia are normalized.


These organized liars and the propaganda they use to rewrite history, aggrandize themselves or replace a part of the truth with a falsehood inevitably dissolve the factual fabric of reality. Eventually, the difference between truth and falsehood can no longer be determined in any sort of objective way precisely because what is true and what is a fact is determined not by observation, reflection, experiment and ongoing research but by powerful interests and the weight of infinite repetition.

When people come to believe that everything is a lie anyway, they no longer care for truth and no longer object to being deceived—and that is what in the end is so pernicious about a world created by people like Donald Trump, Pierre Poilievre, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon and Benjamin Netanyahu.


The carnage they create will tear apart all social fabric to a point where it may simply be impossible to assume that humanity can bounce back.

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