It is not at all rare for the pot to call the kettle black. Take Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda supremo, as an example. He had written that the essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence but on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness.
“The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
Quite ‘nice’ of him who, during his career, must have said more than a lie or two! But was he right or wrong in his assessment of his arch-enemies?
The Tablet, the British influential Catholic weekly periodical, in its editorial of April 2 states that “it seems he (Goebbels) was not wrong”. That is a very strong comment and does not augur well for British politics. The situation would be much worse if the comment is also applicable to the state of political debate in other countries.
The Tablet comments on the current electoral campaign in Great Britain. It believes that the Conservatives and Labour, up to now the two major parties, have each launched their pre-election barrage with interpretations of their main opponent’s policies which “are so highly coloured as to verge on the ridiculous”. It then gives two examples. Labour insist that the Tories “only care for the rich”, while the Conservatives warn that a Labour government would be chaotic. The paper goes on to explain why, in its opinion, both salvoes are enormously misleading.
Such slogans may go down well with the core of the party faithful whom the Catholic periodical describes as those “whose political loyalties are tribal and therefore set in stone”. But they are of doubtful inducement to the undecided voters in whose hands the outcome of the election will eventually lie. Such voters, The Tablet opines, could be excused for concluding that the parties are only interested in gaining or holding on to power.
This belief that politicians are only interested in personal power and that political parties are only interested in their own aggrandisement explains the current public mood of cynicism about politicians’ motives in general. The American writer, Jarod Kintz, encapsulates this cynical popular disposition in his statement: “I once saw a snake having sex with a vulture, and I thought it’s just business as usual in Washington DC.”
A politician insatiably and unscrupulously thirsty for power is far worse than a politician who gets his hands greased with euros or dollars
Such bickering as that criticised by The Tablet at the beginning of this piece will boomerang against the parties themselves; both parties mind you. The Tablet’s conclusion is also reached by many commentators in many countries, ours not excluded. The Italians are quite right in saying that ‘Tutto il mondo è paese!’ (It’s the same the world over).
It is a pity that a society endowed with massive communication technologies that should make true communication so easy is instead hell bent on spin rather than on dialogue or better, on the dissemination of intelligent information. This is unfortunately a time when spin has been elevated to a science and an industry.
American journalist and commentator Howard Kurtz says that “we are awash in spin: political spin, corporate spin, media spin” . His ‘we’ refers to the United States, whose capital Kurtz describes as “the spin capital of the western world”.
Kurtz also marks a development in the meaning of spin. In his 1998 book, Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine, spin is described by presidential press secretary Mike Curry as the art of telling the truth slowly.
But today, a full 15 years later, Kurtz describes spin as something which “sometimes means not telling the truth at all, or shading the truth, or saying the issue is actually what some other politician did in some other place”.
Spin is the antithesis of communication. It is based on the belief that you can fool all the people all the time if the foolery is well and nicely packaged. But spin is just a symptom of a greater malady. It is the fig-leaf which attempts to cover a malaise. The problem lies not with spinning but with the denuding of politics from a grand vision of society and its reduction, in the hands of cynical utilitarian politicians, to the grasp of personal power. In my opinion this has become the worst form of corruption.
A politician insatiably and unscrupulously thirsty for power is far worse than a politician who gets his hands greased with euros or dollars. These types of politicians try to stay longer in power by greasing the hands of many others through the bestowing of conveniently made up jobs and other juicy plums. The bestowing and reception of privileges not deserved is the corrupt system on which they thrive. These politicians then cynically keep the recipients of their largesse on a short leash knowing full well that their spinning has a self-destruct button on a relatively short fuse.
The examples quoted by The Tablet at the beginning of this piece show an attempt to lengthen the short fuse by demonising, totally misrepresenting, belittling, mocking and bullying the opponent. Such strategies are not born and bred by courage but by lack of self-confidence and fear, the fear of losing power. Fear is both the motor and the Achilles heel of power-hungry and self-serving politicians. Aung San Suu Kyi, in her book Freedom from Fear, hits the nail on its head when she writes: “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it.”
The Tablet’s editorial notes that a healthy democracy can only thrive if politics are not being devalued by the examples it mentions which imply the systematic misrepresentation and belittling of the adversary. Its concluding sentence warns that:
“The one depressing truth to emerge from the election campaign so far is that if politicians go on like this, democracy itself could become the casualty.”
Such a warning is not totally inapplicable to the Maltese political scenario.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt