It is funny, weird, befuddling, & confounding to watch your fellow Human Beings embrace lies with gusto. They actually go out of their way to embrace, believe in, and live with, obvious, toxic, counter-productive, and body and soul-killing bullshit. A few recent examples see Putin, Trump, Anti-Vaxx, Anti-Immigrant B.S.
And fuck, that B.S. is toxic to not only them but the other Human Beings around them. The lies are literally killing people, and destroying the institutions we have created to live together in harmony.
From the writer Ruth Ben-Ghiat author of "Strongman: From Mussolini to the Present."
"Often, people just want to believe the liar. Personality cults increase the leader’s credibility, since they present him as possessed of special powers or ruling with a divine mandate, making him seem infallible (the slogan “Mussolini is always right” says it all). Strongmen also know how to be persuasive, especially if they previously worked as journalists (Mussolini and the Congo’s Mobutu Sese Seko), in television (Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Trump) or were professional dissemblers (Putin was a KGB case officer). These practiced liars work hard to seem authentic --- just look at Narendra Modi’s Instagram performances.
Moreover, once people bond with the leader, they may be inclined to dismiss any evidence that conflicts with his claims, or overlook contradictions in his messages. They believe him because they believe in him. Or, in an interesting twist, they know he is lying, but they decide that they don’t care: better him than his enemy (who, as they have been taught to believe, lies even more). And some people actually approve of all the lying, seeing it as rule-breaking by a rogue they adore.
Hannah Arendt observed that Nazism and Communism made people less able over time to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood. Today's illiberal leaders encourage a similar atrophying of critical skills, as do the social media platforms that so many use as a primary information source. Investing in media literacy is essential, but so is education about the damages of authoritarian models of power that turn leaders into infallible god-like figures--and lying into official state policy." - Ruth Ben-Ghiat
