Donald Trump has made more than 13,000 false or misleading claims thus far during his presidency. Yet his public approval ratings have stubbornly hovered somewhere between 35 per cent and 45 per cent. Even though Trump supporters are sensitive to corrections of his false claims, those corrections have no effect on supporters’ feelings or voting intentions.
Why do supporters of Trump seemingly not care that they are being lied to?
The answer may be that they consider Trump to be authentic rather than honest. When people feel disenfranchised or they consider the political system to suffer from a crisis of legitimacy, they accept lies and appeals to prejudice because those flagrant violations of “establishment” norms signal that a politician is championing the “people’s” cause.
Populist demagogues do not lie by mistake, they lie by design.
No amount of fact-checking will reign in the appeal of populists. To defang the attraction of lying demagogues we need to understand and manage the factors that create a fertile ground for populism.
The essence of populism is that it views the world as a binary conflict between “the people” and its enemies. Those enemies are the “elites” or other outgroups such as immigrants (or both). This simplistic view of the world can only find traction when people feel insecure. One driver of such insecurity is income and wealth inequality, which has been increasing dramatically around the globe. All but one OECD country have seen inequality rise since the 1980s. In 2015, the income of 25 hedge fund managers in the US exceeded that of all kindergarten teachers in the country. It is easy to pit the “people” against the “elite” under such circumstances.
How can we protect the notion of truth itself when lies are so pervasive?
But right-wing populism requires one more ingredient: the real elite must convince the public that they are not the elite, so public anger is directed away from the beneficiaries of inequality to some other constructed “elite”. This requires a concerted media operation that labels academics, judges, professionals, civil servants, and supporters of diversity and tolerance as “elitist” so they can become the target of public ire and populist demagoguery.
Grassroots opposition
The “Tea Party” in the US was not a spontaneous eruption of grassroots opposition to Barack Obama but the result of long-standing efforts by libertarian think tanks and political operatives. In the UK, support for the far-right Ukip party has been shown to be the consequence of media coverage rather than its cause. Periods of stagnant support for Ukip were followed by increases in support only when the media devoted attention to the party: in the absence of attention, Ukip languished in obscurity.
Once there is fertile ground, lying demagogues can turn the public against convenient scapegoats – from immigrants to judges. Ultimately, this process can turn the public against democracy itself. When the government of Boris Johnson unlawfully suspended the UK parliament last month, the public outcry was muted. Some polls suggested that more than half the public thought that it should be Johnson, not the courts, who should have the final say on shutting down parliament. Vesting that power in the executive is the death knell of parliamentary democracy.
How can we combat populism and contain the threat to democracy? How can we protect the notion of truth itself when lies are so pervasive?
Ultimately, the solution must be political, and it has to address the underlying sense of insecurity of segments of the public.
Research has shown us how this might be achieved.
Fear of ‘other’
When people express concern about immigrants, we can be confident that their fear of the “other”, and hostility towards immigrants, can be overcome by interaction. Generally, the more people were surrounded by European Union citizens, the less they were inclined to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum.
We also know the important role of media culture. One of the reasons that Ireland has largely escaped the menace of populism is because of its prevailing norms of journalism. The Irish media acts as a gatekeeper against populism by relying on traditional characteristics such as strong professionalisation, neutrality and information-orientation.
Finally, we know how to protect the democratic process from demagoguery. Ireland conducted two referendums recently on highly emotive topics – same-sex marriage and abortion – without unduly polarising the country and without being overshadowed by populist outrage. This success was partly due to two citizens’ assemblies. The assemblies comprised 99 randomly chosen citizens who met for a year to discuss the issues, guided by experts and submissions from the public, and moderated by a Supreme Court judge. The results of their deliberations were made public and guided voters. Although the proceedings are available on YouTube, toxic media and demagogues found no entry into the meetings of the assembly. Deliberative forms of democracy may therefore form another bulwark against populism.
We have the tools and the knowledge to overcome populism, and to restore some semblance of truth and honesty to political discourse. The problem is that to apply those tools, we need to have overcome populist politics.
Stephan Lewandowsky is a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol and a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences