Populists find rich pickings among fans who don’t care about truth
Doors to totalitarian rule, as author Hannah Arendt suggests, are opened by people who are indifferent to facts
One of the most dangerous shifts in recent years is the impunity with which political leaders are able to divorce words from reality. From Donald Trump to Boris Johnson, Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema, there is a cavalier sense of verbal immunity. They seem to feel little requirement to base their statements on truth or evidence, but consider themselves free to utter any fib or slur that serves their immediate purpose.
Politicians have always lied. But in democracies they mostly tried to skate round the truth, whereas dictators didn’t have to bother with such niceties. Nowadays some of the most powerful leaders in the Western world barely trouble to make such distinctions either. The reason they can get away with wild untruths is that their supporters mostly don’t seem to care — just so long as their prejudices are pandered to or reconfirmed...
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