Delusional Politics

by Hardeep Singh Puri

  The closest that political narrative can reach neutrality is if it were to present all possible political perspectives. Given the near unlimited number of probable views, it is unlikely and unrealistic to expect such all-encompassing political narrative. Even in the case that this comprehensive narrative is successfully and continuously constructed, the process of an individual absorbing such a rich narrative would favour certain aspects of the narrative over others. Ultimately, political narratives can reduce the bias they contain but they cannot escape it entirely. In fact, the very choice of words used and events covered by the narrative is in and of itself indicative of the subjective element or, for want of a better term, the ‘bias’.

  Recent trends indicate that an increasing number of media outlets blatantly surrender and do not even make an attempt to achieve impartiality. Instead, they cater to specific political views. Politics and political narratives in such situations serve to stimulate existing biases already held by people. This in turn, serves to bolster pre-conceived prejudices.

  Political economist William Davies describes this progression as the ‘transition from a society of facts to a society of data’. 11 Data, as opposed to facts, can be easily manipulated and inserted into political narratives as needed. The variability endowed by the vagaries of data ensures that the narrative is not entirely falsified, even if it is not entirely true.

  A prime example of this loose use of data is the claim made by the Vote Leave campaign and its supporters in the lead-up to Britain’s EU referendum. The campaign, which advocated Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, claimed that the UK sends the EU £350 million a week. Several sources, including the UK Statistics Authority, 12 have refuted this claim, calling it misleading. However, the figure of £350 million did not appear out of nowhere. The sum was based on the gross amount the UK contributed to the EU in 2015—£17.8 billion—calculated for its weekly amount. 13 The figure of course fails to take into account monetary flows from Brussels to the UK.

  The Vote Leave campaign’s claim was not backed with facts but with data. It was not necessarily true, but the claim contained enough empirical data to not be an outright lie. Despite straightforward evidence that disproved the allegation, the claim served its purpose, which was to spur Euroscepticism.

  This tendency of data-based political narratives to trump those that are fact-based is only one half of the trend observed in democracies. The more perplexing half is that this change—this devolution of accountability for telling the truth—is becoming the norm.

  We are in the dawn of a credibility crisis.

  Post-Truth Politics

  The ‘100-day mark’ of a presidency is a benchmark created by the American media to assess presidential achievements, which ultimately bears no significance other than the satisfying roundness of its number. For the Trump presidency, the New York Times was inspired to publish a piece titled ‘Fact-Checking President Trump Through His First 100 Days’. 14 The article traces Trump’s inaccuracies in his speeches, interviews and tweets, beginning with his inauguration on 20 January 2017, when he claimed his inaugural crowd to be in the tens of millions, a claim that was subsequently found to have been embellished by computer morphing. The article logged ‘at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days.’

  In his book Trump: The Art of the Deal, Trump terms boisterous bragging of this sort ‘truthful hyperbole’. 15 Trump dragged this into the Oval Office to serve no political or policy-related purpose. Of course, the President’s own popularity is sought to be enhanced. Such efforts do not appear to effectively factor in the negative impact of botched attempts. Misleading the public is not entirely new to the presidency. Post-truth politics has been in play for quite some time.

  We needn’t look too far back into history to recall when misleading the public was a consciously designed political instrument in pursuance of a political agenda in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Through a systematic misinformation campaign, the Bush administration created a contrived narrative based on Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda in order to justify the use of force and military action in Iraq. Post 9/11 era, Americans were particularly fearful of a potential terrorist threat and were easily swayed. The US invaded Iraq on 19 March 2003 and found no evidence of weapons of mass intervention resulting in one of the most catastrophic culminations of public misinformation in modern history.

  In such cases, the fear-mongering normally pays off. It did in this case as well. Despite the fact that the US troops had returned empty-handed, a substantial portion of Americans continued to believe that the US had discovered WMDs in Iraq. The terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 had left Americans ready and willing to accept narratives that would offer them some reassurance. And in this case, believing that the US military was striking back at the terrorist-conspirators did just this.

  This is a major element of post-truth politics, which prevents it from being classified as outright lying. As author Ralph Keyes argues, ‘Post-truthfulness exists in an ethical twilight zone. It allows us to dissemble without considering ourselves dishonest.’ 16 For many Americans, the Bush administration reinforced their preexisting biases, prejudices and conspiracies. The administration told the public what they wanted to hear, and truth took secondary importance.

  Similar tactics were employed on the other side of the Atlantic in the lead-up to the Brexit referendum. Vote Leave made use of the anti-immigrant sentiments that ravaged the nation (which I discuss in some detail in the chapter on the UK), claiming that if Britain remained in the EU, the Union’s migrants could force the British population to swell by 5.23 million by 2030, which would place ‘clearly unsustainable’ strains on British public goods and services.

  This prediction was formulated on the assumption that in the coming years Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, and—most worryingly for them—Turkey would join the EU, granting their citizens unfettered access to British resources. 17 Given Turkey’s turbulent descent into authoritarianism, the prospect of its EU membership is murky, to say the least. Absent pre-existing prejudices, Vote Leave’s assertions fall short of a convincing scare-tactic. But biases ran and continue to run high in the country, so once the claim was put forth, no amount of counter-claims could reverse the damage it had done.

  Support for Brexit or the invasion of Iraq did not, of course, extend entirely through their respective countries. Yet in both cases, there was a build-up of sentiment. In the case of Brexit, it fed on the toxicity of a contrived narrative on immigration perpetuated by the open borders of EU member states. And in the case of Iraq, it was nourished by the false story of its arsenal of WMDs and its links to terrorist organizations—the story itself emanated from small groups but was encouraged to fan out to the larger population. Once out, these sentiments created the conditions for ideological isolationism—which allows people to limit themselves to environments that complement and nurture their worldviews— that ensured the viability of post-truth politics.

  Polarized Consumption

  Before the turn of the century, television channels originally laid the foundation for pushing tailored content aimed at appeasing specific types of consumers. 18 Newspapers and online content have since followed suit, with the latter offering highly efficient options to filter media consumption to fit the consumer’s appetite. These three mediums, in addition to conversation with family, friends and peers, are the main sources of information on politics and government for the average person.

  A 2014 study found that amidst growing political polarization in the US, ‘there is little overlap in the news sources’ of liberals and conservatives. 19 Americans are being fed vastly different political narratives, which only works to further polarize consumers and create hostility towards the other end of the political spectrum. Their beliefs are influenced less by content and more by the source; the credibility of the content is determined by the content�
�s compatibility with the individual’s opinions and emotions.

  The mainstream media has largely been responsible for creating this polarization. Either implicitly through certain editorial calls, or explicitly by supporting a particular candidate during the electoral process, the mainstream media has largely failed in its duty to remain objective. The internet in turn empowered those whose voice had been drowned out, or entirely overlooked by the mainstream outlets. The notorious Breitbart News Network is an extreme but prime example of how the public’s loss of faith in mainstream media has been exploited for ideological gain.

  The near-universal use of social media in democracies has further enforced the ability to personalize media consumption. A study conducted as recently as August 2017 by the Pew Research Center reveals that two-thirds of Americans reportedly get their news from social media, including more than half of Americans over the age of 50. 20 The degree to which social media is tailored for individual users cannot be understated. Through complex algorithms that are certainly beyond my comprehension, social media discreetly locks us into tunnel vision.

  Within these ideological bubbles, there is a lack of faith in empirically verifiable data, and credibility is derived from emotional reactions. The anti-intellectualism and disdain for so-called expertise in evidence in the United States and United Kingdom of late is being witnessed on a smaller scale but with equal intensity in India. And the encouragement for this comes from both sides of the political spectrum, the right and the left.

  In fact, in India it has assumed a sui generis dynamic. For most of its existence for seventy years as an independent country, the ruling Congress party has exploited it’s so-called ‘secular’ and ‘pro-poor’ image to put together a rainbow coalition to access political power either on its own or in coalition with other like-minded parties.

  The following graph highlights the Indian National Congress’s (INC’s) electoral performance in India’s general election, using percentage of vote share as the metric, through the decades. It is evident from the numbers that apart from a few general elections, the INC’s portrayal of itself as the ‘secular’ party resonated with the Indian voter. Is this narrative based on political reality?

  Source: Election Commission of India, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/ElectionStatistics.aspx.

  The data clearly illustrates that 2014 was a tipping point. It became evident that the Congress and its allies had done little by way of social justice. Instead, they had used the secularism narrative to sow seeds of discontent in India’s social fabric for political purposes. The 31 per cent plus vote share for the BJP was a paradigmatic shift in India’s polity. It resulted in the party getting 282 seats in the Lok Sabha—ten more than the half-way mark. The NDA as an alliance won 336 seats, close to a two-third majority in a house with 545 seats.

  Source: Indian Express, 11 December 1984.

  Following the tragic assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984, the INC ran a diabolical campaign. The party openly fanned communal hatred against the minority Sikh community, to which I belong. In leading national dailies, hate-filled propaganda was published. The image on the preceding page was published on 11 December 1984, in the Indian Express, just two weeks prior to the country going to the polls. 21 This is just one example of how the Indian National Congress put fear in the minds of Indians against the Sikh community, purely for political mileage. The fine print of these advertisements illustrates how a concerted effort was made to portray the entire Sikh community as a national security threat—as one that wanted to secede from India, if not the destruction of India. A deliberate attempt was made to raise doubts over the patriotism of Sikhs—an ‘us versus them’ narrative was propagated, where on the one side were Indian citizens voting for the Congress (I), and on the other ‘anti-nationals’ who were baying for the breakdown of India.

  These attempts to communalize continue to remain a key electoral strategy for the Congress till date. More recently, in the run-up to the Karnataka assembly elections of 2018, the Congress-led government in the state accorded the separate religion status to the Lingayat community—a blatantly communal move just to garner a few votes.

  As discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters, the electoral loss of the INC in the 2014 general election, followed by repeated losses in state assembly elections, are clear signs that the tide has finally turned. The people of India no longer buy their pseudo-secularism, and as a result, the INC today faces an existential crisis. As the graph on the previous page shows, the INC, which started off with an over forty per cent vote share in 1952, in 2014 got less than twenty per cent of the votes. In comparison, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP (and its previous avatars) started from zero, and in 2014 achieved over thirty per cent.

  Is what is believed to be true determined by empirical evidence or by prejudices? And how is this shaped? First, there has been this long-encroaching dominance of social media over traditional news outlets. While both platforms are susceptible to political tampering, the former is also vulnerable to a plethora of other risks, including but not limited to cyber threats. Alternatively, media consumption has moved to a platform where polarization is more likely and less visible.

  Second, deepening political polarization—induced by conditions discussed in detail in following chapters—has set believability and compatibility with one’s beliefs as the source of credibility over evidence. As a result, the variance of political narratives has multiplied, and the era of post-truth politics has taken hold. In the US and UK, this was exposed through the success of Cambridge Analytica, a company credited with influencing the EU referendum and the US presidential elections.

  Cambridge Analytica was established in 2013 in order to participate in and influence politics in the US. The company’s owners and board members are the same breed of right-wingers and Tea Party supporters, including the infamous Steve Bannon. 22 The company’s intentions are made obvious from the company’s uniform choice of clients. They originally supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, as well as other conservatives in local elections. 23 After Conservative Cruz failed to secure the nomination, Cambridge Analytica went on to support the Trump campaign.

  In a nutshell, the company collects information on Americans, attempts to identify the issues they care about, and mobilizes the right while at the same time demobilizing the left. They do so through micro-targeting, which is the spreading of customized misinformation—information expected to strike an emotional chord with voters—through social media, advertisements, alternative media, and partisan websites. Cambridge Analytica further strategically ‘drowns’ other messages that do not work to their advantage by flooding their own content. 24

  An offshoot of Cambridge Analytica was reportedly also contracted by Vote Leave and other ‘leave’ campaigns in the lead-up to the EU referendum, 25 deploying the same methods to spread misleading information that would play to voters’ anti-immigrant and anti-EU sentiments.

  It is difficult to gauge the extent to which such behavioural profiling companies influenced the referendum and the presidential elections, but the influence itself is undisputable. The success with which people are swayed by false media and content is symptomatic of the current post-truth reality.

  And this brings us to the core of the issue. Would this kind of diabolical manipulation of public opinion, of people’s mood and calibration of behavioural response be at all conceivable in systems other than democracies? In a totalitarian system, one in which the press is completely absent, this would be unlikely. Cutting off internet services and other means of access to the outside world is more easily undertaken in systems where there is little or no accountability.

  Annexure 1

  Vote share in general elections: Bharatiya Janata Party/All India Bharatiya Jana Sangh/Jan Sangh/Janata Party and Indian National Congress

  1952

  BJS 0.02%

  INC 44.99%

  1957

  BJS 5
.97%

  INC 47.78%

  1962

  JS 6.44%

  INC 44.72%

  1967

  BJS 9.31%

  INC 40.78%

  1971

  BJS 7.35%

  INC 43.68%

  1977

  Janata Party 41.32%

  INC 34.52%

  1980

  Janata Party 18.97%

  INC (I) 42.69%

  1984

  BJP 7.74%

  INC 49.10%

  1985

  BJP 1.83%

  INC 32.14%

  1989

  BJP 11.36%

  INC 39.53%

  1991

  BJP 20.11%

  INC 36.26%

  1992

  BJP 16.51%

  INC 49.27%

  1996

  BJP 20.29%

  INC 28.80%

  1998

  BJP 25.59%

  INC 25.82%

  1999

  BJP 23.75%

  INC 28.30%

  2004

  BJP 22.16%

  INC 26.53%

  2009

  BJP 18.80%

  INC 28.55%

  2014

  BJP 31.34%

  INC 19.52%

  Source: Election Commission of India, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/ElectionStatistics.aspx.

  CHAPTER 2

  Brexit

  ‘I have also always believed that we have to confront big decisions—not duck them . . . And why I made the pledge to renegotiate Britain’s position in the European Union . . .’