Thoughts about authoritarianism as a label; About lies in a democracy

Authoritarianism

These days, I often write to editors, journalists and opinionators in the mainstream media and near-MSM complaining that they keep incorrectly calling America's radical right wealth and power (W&P) movement "conservative" and it's elites "conservatives". In fact, they are radical right and authoritarian. The main subspecies of American authoritarianism are corrupt autocrats with DJT as the current leader, corrupt brass knuckles capitalist plutocrats and/or corrupt, bigoted Christian nationalist theocrats. To be clear, all three are deeply corrupt. That is a state of affairs normalized and made popular by our deeply corrupt supreme court and its pro-corruption decisions like Citizens United in Jan. of 2010.

Despite my constant corrections, the elite MSM cognoscenti still usually, maybe ~97% of the time (?), refer to the various flavors of American authoritarianism and its elites as conservative or occasionally strongly conservative. On a rare occasion, the term autocratic pops up in connection with DJT, but that is about it. I see that kid gloves treatment as a major MSM failure. In my opinion, the failure amounts to a betrayal of the public trust, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.

But, is the MSM label warranted or justified? The only significant pushback I recall having ever gotten is that the MSM needs to stay neutral. Presumably that assertion comes from a sentiment of not wanting to inflame the situation. I guess it is possible that calling American authoritarians, and their kleptocratic authoritarianism, authoritarian, autocratic, plutocratic and Christian theocratic might inflame some who object to an authoritarian label and sincerely believe they are not authoritarian. 

But so what? An authoritarian label, e.g., kleptocratic dictator or corrupt Christian Sharia theocrat, is defensible. It is arguably factually true, not mere opinion. Power flows from (i) the people, and (ii) government defenses of democracy and protections of the people, to powerful authoritarians. From what I can tell, the American authoritarian W&P movement cannot be appeased, compromised with or shamed by blatant lies, slanders or crackpot conspiracy theories.* The whole damned thing has been normalized and sanctified** on the political right. The rest of us can just go pound sand if we don't like it. Our complaints mean nothing to the authoritarians, which is a key hallmark of authoritarianism, which by definition does not compromise unless forced to.

* Steve Bannon's rhetorical tactic for authoritarianism sums it up nicely: Flood the zone with shit! That is exactly what the radical right authoritarian W&P movement does.

** Sanctified by one, two or all three of the unholy, infallible ideologies, (i) love of a dictator and dictatorship, (ii) love of unfettered (unregulated, untaxed, freely polluting) brass knuckles capitalism, and/or (iii) unfettered, Christian theocracy and its bigoted (hate of the LGBQT community, hate of the establishment clause, etc.) Christian Sharia law.

Q: Is conservative or occasionally strongly conservative better than authoritarian or some form of it, e.g., kleptocratic plutocrat or corrupt dictator?

Science: Regarding lying in a democracy

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. .... And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please. -- Hannah Arendt, one of the foremost analysts of 20th century totalitarianism 

Arendt makes a pretty good point. Fomenting distrust in just about everything is a key goal of authoritarian dark free speech (propaganda, lies, slanders, crackpottery, etc.) I find myself believing a lot less these days. From the radical right, I believe essentially nothing at all unless I independently know or believe there is some truth in it.

A recent research paper that Nature published considers lying, disinformation and the need for facts and truth in a democracy:

Liars know they are lying: 

differentiating disinformation from disagreement

Abstract 

Mis- and disinformation pose substantial societal challenges, and have thus become the focus of a substantive field of research. However, the field of misinformation research has recently come under scrutiny on two fronts. First, a political response has emerged, claiming that misinformation research aims to censor conservative voices. Second, some scholars have questioned the utility of misinformation research altogether, arguing that misinformation is not sufficiently identifiable or widespread to warrant much concern or action. Here, we rebut these claims. We contend that the spread of misinformation—and in particular willful disinformation—is demonstrably harmful to public health, evidence-informed policymaking, and democratic processes. We also show that disinformation and outright lies can often be identified and differ from good-faith political contestation. We conclude by showing how misinformation and disinformation can be at least partially mitigated using a variety of empirically validated, rights-preserving methods that do not involve censorship.

Introduction: One of the normative goods on which democracy relies is accountable representation through fair elections (Tenove, 2020). This good is at risk when public perception of the integrity of elections is significantly distorted by false or misleading information (H. Farrell and Schneier, 2018). .... Misleading or false information has always been part and parcel of political debate (Lewandowsky et al., 2017), and the public arguably accepts a certain amount of dishonesty from politicians (e.g., McGraw, 1998; Swire-Thompson et al., 2020). However, Trump’s big lie differs from conventional, often accidentally disseminated, misinformation by being a deliberate attempt to disinform the public.

An analysis of mis- and disinformation cannot be complete without also considering the role of the audience, in particular when people share information with others, where the distinction between mis- and disinformation becomes more fluid. In most instances, when people share information, they do so based on the justifiable default expectation that it is true (Grice, 1975). However, occasionally people also share information that they know to be false, a phenomenon known as “participatory propaganda” (e.g., Lewandowsky, 2022; Wanless and Berk, 2019). One factor that may underlie participatory propaganda is the social utility that persons can derive from beliefs, even if they are false, which may stimulate them into rationalizing belief in falsehoods (Williams, 2022). 

The circular and mutually reinforcing relationship between political actors and the public was a particularly pernicious aspect of the rhetoric associated with Trump’s big lie (for a detailed analysis, see Starbird et al., 2023). During the joint session of Congress to certify the election on 6 January 2021, politicians speaking in support of Donald Trump and his unsubstantiated claims about election irregularities appealed not to evidence or facts but to public opinion. For example, Senator Ted Cruz cited a poll result that 39% of the public believed the election had been “rigged”. Similarly, Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is now Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, argued against certification of the election by arguing that “80 million of our fellow citizens, Republicans and Democrats, have doubts about this election; and 60 million people, 60 million Americans think it was stolen” (Salek, 2023).

Public opinion has shifted remarkably little since the election. In August 2023, nearly 70% of Republican voters continued to question the legitimacy of President Biden’s electoral win in 2020.

This nature paper really resonates with me. The authors are spot on to attack liars and those who defend lies with bad faith. Honest mistakes made in good will are one thing morally, but lies coupled with ill-will are much worse.

Lying implicates a core moral value on which democracies rely, i.e., respect for facts, true truths, and sound reasoning in good will, even when they are inconvenient. Public opinion without facts and truths does not and cannot replace facts and true truths. Moral philosopher Sisella Bok makes this point in her book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. I argued this point in 2020.[1]

Footnote:

1. A commentator commented about this paper:

The identifiability of willful disinformation For decades, the hallmark of Western news coverage about politicians’ false or misleading claims was an array of circumlocutions that carefully avoided the charge of lying—that is, knowingly telling an untruth with intent to deceive (Lackey, 2013)—and instead used adverbs such as “falsely”, “wrongly”, “bogus”, or “baseless” when describing a politician’s speech. Other choice phrases referred to “unverified claims” or “repeatedly debunked claims”. This changed in late 2016, when the New York Times first used the word “lie” to characterize an utterance by Donald Trump (Borchers, 2016). The paper again referred to Donald Trump’s lies within days of the inauguration in January 2017 (Barry, 2017) and it has grown into a routine part of its coverage from then on. Many other mainstream news organizations soon followed suit and it has now become widely accepted practice to refer to Trump’s lies as lies.

Given that lying involves the intentional uttering of false statements, what tools are at our disposal to infer a person’s intention when they utter falsehoods? How can we know a person is lying rather than being confused? How can we infer intentionality? 

Anecdotally, defenders of Donald Trump’s lies have raised precisely that objection to the use of the word “lie” in connection with his falsehoods. This objection runs afoul of centuries of legal scholarship and Western jurisprudence. Brown (2022) argues that inferring intentionality from the evidence is “ordinary and ubiquitous and pervades every area of the law” (p. 2). Inferring intentionality is the difference between manslaughter and murder and is at the heart of the concept of perjury—namely, willfully or knowingly making a false material declaration (Douglis, 2018).

I believe this summation describes the Misinformation Age: ‘Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities’ -- Voltaire, 1765