En tu idioma / In your own language

Eduardo del Buey
Foto:
La Jornada Maya

Martes 21 de febrero, 2017


Words matter. The truth matters.

In today’s world of “alternative facts”, leaders are discovering that they can lie and yet will be believed by a strong enough core of key followers that will elect them.

Recently, former chess Grand Master and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov tweeted “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth”.

It underscores the nature of today’s politics: people are fed up with the status quo, and appear vulnerable to leaders who tell them what they want to hear, regardless of whether proposals are realistic or achievable, or based on reality.


Yet, as US Senator John McCain told the recent Munich Security Conference, “They (diplomats from the Cold War) would be alarmed by an increasing turn away from universal values and toward old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism. They would be alarmed by the hardening resentment we see toward immigrants, and refugees, and minority groups, especially Muslims,” McCain said. “They would be alarmed by the growing inability, and even unwillingness, to separate truth from lies. They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent.”

My question to McCain is: why isn’t Congress taking action against “alternative facts” and challenging the President to tell the truth? Why aren’t Republicans speaking out against lies and deceit on the part of Trump and his team?

The Trump White House’s belief in “alternative facts” underscores its intention to separate “truth from lies” to achieve its goals.

President Trump is using “alternative facts” to cover the fact that he has no knowledge of the intricacies of government, that others before him may have succeeded, and that he is too thin skinned to admit it or to acknowledge when he has erred.

As well, he uses “alternative facts” to sow fear and loathing among his followers. On February 18th, during a rally in Florida, he spoke about a Muslim terrorist attack in Sweden the night before to justify his ban on immigration of Muslims from certain countries (that had been rejected by a court in Washington state). Previously, his Counsellor Kellyanne Conway referred to the “Bowling Green Massacre” in Kentucky.

The only problem – these terrorist attacks never took place! More lies aimed at creating hatred against Muslims.

When his weaknesses have been exposed, Trump starts a “fire” somewhere else as a distraction. Blame the media enough times, and people will begin to doubt.

In the United States, we are witnessing government by the seat of its pants.

Trump’s consistent fast and loose playing with the truth has led New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow to say on February 15th that “This is an office culture issue. If the boss — in this case Trump — is a pathological liar who forces underlings to repeat and bolster his lies, what signal does that send to everyone else who works in that environment? That lying is not only accepted but also valued, that lying is simply a rhetorical device, a propaganda tool that is inexcusable only when not exercised with skill”.

Lying in the hope that people will shift the blame, be distracted or be manipulated and believe the lies is reminiscent of past and current attempts to subjugate populations to autocratic forms of government.

The fact that Trump labelled the media “the enemy of the American people” in a tweet after his press conference of February 15th harkens back to the NAZI concept of Lügenpresse -- the lying press that Hitler accused of opposing the will of the people. Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders have used similar language and tactics in pursuing their authoritarian objectives.

As Senator McCain told the [i]Washington Post[/i] afterwards, “We have to learn the lessons of history”.

Can the US survive as a democracy if its very institutions that make it a democracy – a free and vibrant media, and a free and independent judiciary, are continuously vilified and delegitimized by its President?

It can if each component of the political spectrum plays its role. If the Congress acts as a real check on the Executive, if the Judiciary remains independent and rules according to the law and not ideology, and if the media challenges his lies and provides the truth.

Delegitimizing the foundations of democracy is dangerous.

So is lying.

So is silence.

[i]Mérida, Yucatán[/i]
[b][email protected][/b]