Susanne Wolf
"That politicians lie or straighten the truth is nothing new, but it has never happened to this extent."
The brazenest politician lies
"I will always tell you the truth," Donald Trump at an event in Charlotte, South Carolina, August 2016
"There were no major terrorist attacks on American soil before President Obama." Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's legal adviser, was Mayor of New York during the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"The thousands of uniformed soldiers deployed in the Crimea are not Russian soldiers," Vladimir Putin in March 2014.
"The Iraqi regime still owns and hides some of the deadliest weapons ever devised." George W. Bush's speech to justify the invasion of Iraq (March 2003)
"If the EU leaves the EU, there will be £ 350m more every week for the state health insurance fund." Proponents of Brexit before the referendum in June 2016
"Humans are irrelevant to global warming." Heinz-Christian Strache in an interview with Standard, December 2018
January 2019: Heinz Christian Strache sued Rudolf Fußi, who deals with contacts to extreme right-wing identities in a Twitter post by Strache. While Strache still claims in the lawsuit that the photo showing him with identities is a fake, he later withdraws this allegation.
"The collected lies of Heinz-Christian Strache" is a list of the provable untruths of the Vice Chancellor since August 2015 on the website medium.com. 165 lies have already been documented, including the migration pact or riots that did not take place on demos. Party colleague Herbert Kickl also knows how to distort the truth. In the course of the BAT scandal, the interior minister said that "the house searches were always adhered to by the rule of law and the police unit was absolutely correct." Rather, the truth is that the house searches were illegal.
Withdrawal is voluntary
It is nothing new for politicians to lie or bend the truth, but it has never happened to this extent. And a politician has never resigned after a lie in the course of the Second Republic. "In constitutional law, there is no obligation for politicians to withdraw from a proven lie," explains constitutional lawyer Bernd Wieser, Board of Directors of Institute for Public Law and Political Science at the University of Graz. "A possible resignation is based solely on voluntary action." According to Wieser, there are enough examples of announced resignations that have never taken place in Austria's history, above all Bruno Kreisky.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz does not take the truth very precisely either: In connection with the e-cards, he speaks of "incredible abuse" in health insurance and enforces that in future there will only be e-cards with photos. Instead of savings, however, this leads to a loss of 18 million euros according to calculations by the main association of social insurance institutions. The damage claimed by Kurz of 200 million euros does not even amount to 15.000 euros.
The Chancellor also stands out with silence and falsehood on other issues. Including the claim that the Austrians would not have to fear a loss in benefits when it comes to securing minimum income. The fact is, however, that large families in particular are affected by the reduction in the minimum pension.
Fake news and Disinformation
Right-wing populist politicians like Heinz Christian Strache or Donald Trump like to turn the tables and describe journalists as liars. In February 2019, Strache will post a photo of ORF presenter Armin Wolf with the text “There is a place where lies become news. That's ORF. ”US President Trump is at war with liberal media and, with Fox News, conveniently has a medium at his side that publishes news in his spirit.
Fake News - US President Donald Trump has coined this term like no other. He knows how to distract from his own untruths with allegations against critical media. And there are many of them, as the Washington Post pointed out on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the President of the United States in December 2018: According to the newspaper, 7.546 Trump statements had been wrong or at least misleading by then.
It gets even more complicated if it is not politicians themselves, but sympathizers who spread false reports about services such as whatsapp or facebook. In the final phase of the 2016 US election campaign, for example, the 20 most successful false reports were shared, liked and commented on more often than the 20 most successful reports from reputable media. Numerous media reported on the suspicion that influential Brazilian companies had spread false positives in Whatsapp in favor of the right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who was later elected.
Politician lies with tradition
In a speech on the occasion of Nelson Mandela's 100th birthday in July 2018, former US President Barack Obama addressed today's politicians' understanding of the truth: “Politicians used to lie every now and then. Back then, they were at least ashamed of being caught, ”said Obama. "Now they just keep lying."
For the author and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli lie, pretense and hypocrisy were legitimate means in the political struggle, the strong state decided against the weak what was and was not a lie. In her essay "Truth and Politics", Hannah Arendt writes that politics cannot determine what is true. "The job of a politician is not to describe reality, but to change it." Finding out the truth is the task of philosophers, scientists, judges and journalists.
And in fact, flickering among statesmen has a tradition: Already in the Middle Ages, the truth was often embezzled in the form of forged documents. For example, a forgery commissioned by Duke Rudolf IV in the 14th century created the basis for the rise of the Habsburgs: in the Privilegium maius deed, the Habsburgs claimed to have had rights that had existed for centuries. Dictatorships such as those under National Socialism or Communism based their entire justification on lies. However, it was only with the internet and the rise of social media that political lies became widespread. In English there is the term post-truth politics. Example: For FPÖ (and increasingly also ÖVP) voters it is true that crime has increased since the great refugee movement in 2015 - even if statistics paint a different picture. Politicians take advantage of this to play on the keyboard of fear.
Or: Although 99 percent of the studies show that climate change was caused by humans, there are always doubts about it. This always happens when facts threaten your own worldview. So if it were uncomfortable to deal with facts, many would rather take refuge in theories that help to suppress them. In this sense, it is not surprising that politicians who lie still get approval from their supporters. The fact that Trumps or Strache's falsehoods are exposed regularly does not harm their popularity - on the contrary.
Interview with political scientist Kathrin Stainer-Hämmerle
Why is it okay for politicians to lie?
Kathrin Stainer-Hämmerle: You have to start with freedom of expression, which of course applies to all people. This means that politicians can do everything that other citizens are allowed to do as long as it is not criminally relevant.
And why do parties protect lying members?
Stainer-Hämmerle: Parties are pragmatic, they do what suits their concept and wins votes.
Where's the moral?
Stainer-Hämmerle: Of course, politicians should have a certain moral and ethical understanding, unfortunately this is not always the case.
What role do voters play?
Stainer-Hämmerle: Supporters of politicians often fall for election promises that, with a little critical questioning, would be recognizable as non-redeemable. Here voters should take on more responsibility, be more critical and also put more pressure on inappropriate behavior.
How could you train voters to do this?
Stainer-Hämmerle: That would actually be the task of political education, but of course basic education is also a prerequisite for critical questions.
Photo / Video: Shutterstock.
