I recently discussed a topic in my Philosophy Cafe that you folks would probably get something out of. It was a set of thoughts and musings about Honest Discourse, fake news, propaganda, and democracy. Here you folks go -- my Phil Cafe discussion seed:
Musings on Fake News and honesty in a democracy
One of the better approaches I have seen to the morality of honesty, is a Libertarian argument. It goes:
· we require knowledge to make effective decisions.
· and every lie told, degrades the quality of information available to us
· therefore lying is a form of theft from everyone, and causes everyone else’s situation to worsen.
There is a similar form of argument relative to the policy choices of a democracy, and fake news:
· democracies must make choices about policy direction
· those choices will be effective only if there is a reasonably working Free Market of Ideas, plus valid data to evaluate and inform those Ideas
· Fake news – propaganda – sabotages that free market of ideas, and poisons the data supply
· Propagandists are therefore anti-democracy, by weakening effectiveness, also anti-the welfare of the nation they operate within (anti-patriots).
*What do you folks think of these two arguments, and how important/relevant do you consider them to our current political discourse?
However, “rhetoric” (the art of persuasion, whether dishonest or not) was a skill taught in the ancient democracies, and there was nothing like a free press to provide them real rather than fake news. So our ancient democracies were formed in an environment with dishonesty, and likely fake news as features. Also, the idea of dishonesty in political speech, and the spreading of fake news, was considered a major public good by one of our major political theorists, Machiavelli. And our current democracy has had political calumny, and propagandizing newspapers, plus a yellow press, as central features of its politics from the beginning.
*So – is democracy robust enough to survive fake news, and intrinsic dishonesty by politicians and their supporters? Does history show it is? Or, because ancient democracies fell, and modern ones appear to be easily subverted, does it show they are instead fragile/unstable?
I tend to trace the current situation to the Soviet Union, whose Communist party adopted the principle that “everything is politics”. IE, power is the end all and be all of any moral thinking, and if one is in the right (Communism was a moral movement, to break the eternal monopoly of power of the robber baron oligarchs), then one SHOULD do everything possible to get and keep power, to prevent the evil “others” from displacing one’s morally just movement from implementing good policies. In the area of honesty and news, this leads to what I call “Pravda truth” after the Soviet party newspaper, Pravda. It very absurdly could change policy daily about what was “true” in a given subject, based on the party-identified political advantages of the day.
Politicians have long recognized that the unrestricted pursuit of “Pravda Truth” in politics can lead to national catastrophe. This lead to a guideline in US politics “politics ends at the nation’s borders” or “at the edge of the sea”. The idea was that political lies to gain power that don’t affect foreign relations are OK, but that once one gets involved with other countries, the harm to the nation from “Pravda Truth” is severe enough that politicians should forego any short term advantage Pravda Truth offers. I consider the unrestricted application of Pravda Truth to our politics to have been initiated by Newt Gingrich, and subsequently to have been adopted by much of the Republican party. Its spread, primarily to Republicans since then, but increasingly across the entire political spectrum, strikes me as a new event – WORSE than what the US politics looked like relative to truth in the past.
*Is my tracing of this extreme approach to truth to the Soviets appropriate?
*Do you folks agree that Newt Gingrich was a key negative actor, and that the spread across the Rep party today, and beyond in the future, is a reasonable description of what is happening?
*Is the current US truth environment really a major change of mode?
*If it is new, is the history I noted no longer relevant?
One further point -- Fake News/propaganda for it to serve a political movement, faces a major challenge. A political movement benefits form its own Free Market of ideas, where it can find better policies, tactics, and rationales. But such a dialog cannot take place in a propaganda Fake News forum. The policy that is being propagandized for, cannot be debated or tweaked in a propaganda forum. It seem to me that such movements therefore must either operate secret discussion fora, which creates an extreme risk of leaks that could sabotage the propaganda, or must do without any self-examination and revision whatsoever.
* Is the problem of difficulty of tuning/revision of a political message actually a problem for Fake News movements?
*Can two levels of fora work?
*What happens to propaganda movements that cannot operate two levels of discussion outlets, the public and the secret?
Here is one possible answer to my last question: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/most-dictators-self-destruct-why?utm_source=pocket-newtab. It notes that propaganda movements that believe their own propaganda (don't operate an effective "realism" fora) make gross mistakes, that lead to their falling. Of course, there was almost 2000 years between the Roman Republic and the American Revolution, so history adds the caveat that they may fall, but then get replaced with another propaganda movement ...
No comments:
Post a Comment