Why they glory in egregious lies

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies – and do it so shamelessly

Politicians have, of course, always dissembled, but the traditional political lie was designed to cover up an unpalatable fact. 

No one wanted to be caught lying. 

If accused, they had to explain (“I didn’t inhale”, “I am not a crook”, “not … with that woman”, the dossier wasn’t “sexed-up”) and they might then fall from grace, face a public inquiry, or indulge in that staple of political redemption exercises, the televised apology.

Populist lying, by contrast, is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. 

In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. 

The lies are signals that these politicians are not bound by the usual norms of the liberal democratic elite. 

Liberals have virtue signalling – populists have outrage signalling. 

This is the politics of appealing to the gut over the brain.

. . . .

Populists have been quick to turn the value placed on authenticity to their advantage. 

Not by striving to be truthful, but by demonstrating that they are authentic (or instinctively connected to the experience of “the people”, who are authentic) to the point of not caring about being shown to be liars – as long as the lies are told “in the interest of the people”. 

They tend to either sweep away the evidence that they lied with great nonchalance (well, I might have said that, but so what?), or flaunt the lie to show their chutzpah, their willingness to game the system – and to highlight the supposed hypocrisy or stupidity of whoever is being deceived.

The populist authenticity is not so much about being as good as you claim to be, but about being as shamelessly bad as people might imagine you could be. 

Shamelessness is populism’s debased form of authenticity.