Apart from the racism and silly hairstyles there isn't much to link Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Adolf Hitler apart from all three were compulsive liars only Hitler admitted to it.
In Mein Kampf he explained that a leader could get away with a lie if it was: 'so colossal and repeated frequently that enough people will sooner or later believe it as no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously'.
It was a revealed by his ex-wife that Donald Trump kept a book of Hiter Speeches by his bed and it seems to have had an effect because he seems compelled to tell a lie every time he opens his mouth.
Boris Johnson recently repeated his much mocked and discredited £350 million a week for the NHS after Brexit and was quickly slapped down for a second time and is another one who has a strange compulsion to lie.
Leaders have always spun facts and been economical with the truth or even presented the facts in such a way to reduce negativity but there seems to be a tsunami of bold, outright lies with little or no attempt to reframe, reposition, or modify the perception of an issue.
Not that spin was a particular attractive trait, it still led to wars and deaths and leaders got off scott free but now it seems leaders can't even be bothered to lie to us, they just flat out lie giving even a half-decent journalist the chance to destroy their lies immediately, but by then they have moved on, the useful idiots have spread the word and they are on to the next lie.
A particular favourite trick of David Cameron's was the idea that a massive distraction, known as throwing a dead cat on a table, would divert public attention from some ongoing political disaster.
I don't think that the current crop of leaders pathological dishonesty is a new thing but we seem to be in a new time when they don't even bother trying to spin their lies anymore, just make them bigger and repeat them in a way that would make a certain Austrian with a toothbrush moustache very proud.
4 comments:
It's the flat out lies now and the volume of them. It seems almost weekly some politician is being exposed as lying about something after denying it.
They lied but they tried to disguise or spin their lies, now they are not even doing that.
The US Press you mean, the left get it all the time in the press here but as we know, US journalism isn't great.
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