Why do politicians feel compelled to lie?

It is no longer simply a question of manipulating public opinion by substituting such and such information, it is necessary to influence the will of the people by the use of much more radical methods.One of the most famous examples dates from the Renaissance and rests in one of the feats of arms of Caesar Borgia 1475-1507, son of a pope and aspiring tyrant.Machiavelli tells us about this event in chapter VII of the Prince.

By Luca CortinovisPhD student, University of Lille Paris, Aug 1 (The Conversation) What relationship do politicians have with the truth? The question is vast, but we can begin to answer by returning to the ''Taha Bouhafs affair '' which agitated the last campaign for the legislative elections.

On May 10, 2022, the ''journalist-activist'', announced on Twitter that he was withdrawing from the race for deputy in the 14th district of the Rhône. To explain his withdrawal, he then accused a system made to ''grind'', prohibiting him ''to exist politically''.

It is true that the many controversies surrounding Taha Bouhafs had delighted his detractors: accusations of communitarianism, anti-Semitism, ''exuberance'' - when we saw him waving a Marine Le Pen mask at the end of a pike in a demonstration in 2016 – nothing was missing to serve the opposing propaganda.

From May 11, the paradigm changes. We learn in the press that an investigation had been opened a few days earlier by the follow-up committee against gender-based and sexual violence of LFI against the ex-candidate, implicated by a woman accusing him of sexual violence. The day before his withdrawal, Taha Bouhafs was made aware of this accusation. Was he divested because of this complaint? Did he withdraw, as he says in his press release, because of the prevailing racism, or to cover up the affair? On July 5, the young activist published his truth on Twitter : on May 9, he was pushed – through the rebellious deputy of France Clémentine Autain – to withdraw, urging him to justify this by the incessant attacks of which he has been the subject since the announcement of his candidacy.

He asks for an adversarial procedure to defend himself from the accusation of sexual violence; it is refused, because in this case we would have to expose it to the media, which is not in its ''interest''. In short, according to him, he was encouraged to hide the truth because it would be bad for everyone.

If Clémentine Autain denies the same day on Twitter – not really responding to the points raised by Taha Bouhafs but criticizing the relationship of the system to women's speech – the damage is done. The carpet is raised, the scandal appears: regardless of the actual truth, a political formation wanted to manipulate the facts so as not to expose itself, thus responding to the eternal political requirement to appear rather than to be. On May 8, Clémentine Autain confirms half-word, surprised that it would have been necessary to simply tell the truth to the French.

With a clear head, when we come out of the mysteries of political life, it seems easy to criticize and be scandalized by the political maneuvers that punctuate the news. A minister starting to make videos on TikTok , MPs refusing to shake hands with certain ''infrequent'' colleagues or even a president accepting a ''anecdote contest'' with two famous youtubers, these are just recent examples of the immutability of this political necessity: to please, or at least to consolidate its base.

Clémentine Autain, with this short sentence, only states a banal reality for an actor in public affairs. Is all truth worth telling? Not sure. The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote that ''telling the truth is useful to those to whom it is told, but disadvantageous to those who tell it, because they make themselves hated'', a fortiori when one begins to climb the steps of power..

A claimant to responsibilities must therefore work to use the truth only sparingly, under penalty of serving himself. Thus, Clémentine Autain shocks by making the mistake of saying out loud what the public knows tacitly: she is being sold ideas, a direction, but also an image and a story. The politician says what he must say to obtain and retain power. He can sincerely wrap himself in a virtuous vision of his action, but the moment will inevitably come when the superior interests of public affairs will impose on him the use of political illusion in order to eclipse a harmful effective truth.

If the politician feels obliged to act in this way, it is because he is aware of the emotionality and affectivity of the governed. It is absolutely necessary to speak to his instincts, respond to his desires, probe his expectations . In this sense, the control of the message that one transmits is essential if one wishes to be able to shape the framework in which the voters/subjects will engage.

The philosopher and sociologist Pierre Ansart thus states that the management of political passions by the control of words and speeches: In our case, the choice on the part of La France insoumise to justify the withdrawal of Taha Bouhafs by the wave of racism and media relentlessness with which he is confronted, rather than stating openly that the accusation of sexual violence against him is the main cause of this decision, is symptomatic of this desire to control the political message. It is indeed much more “positive” for the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon to say that only discriminations are at the origin of this failure; thus, we show at its base that the engines of political action for which it began to support the movement, namely anti-racism and the fight against Islamophobia, are not futile or successful struggles.

The politician gives himself the obligation to appear to please those he is led to dominate. In the reality of public affairs, many consider that it is feelings, even more than ideas, that animate the civil body, set it in motion. In this sense, it is much easier to manipulate public opinion by creating a political illusion than to impose a vision which, even if it is fair and is in the common interest, could be a constraint in the mind of the governed.

Each era has its own mores and its own political climate. Ours has, in power games, only a symbolic violence: “Words are weapons”. It is no longer acceptable these days – except among certain radicalized groups on the extreme right or among the anti-fascist movement – ​​that political confrontations take the form of armed struggle, beatings or intimidation.

Generally, any news item about an attack on an activist leads to almost unanimous condemnation from the political scene – although this should be put into perspective depending on the partisan nature of the activists attacked. Politicians fight each other only through an endless logorrheic war, the winner being the one who manages to capture the most frequent media attention. Today, the acme of political immorality is reached when an elected official claiming unfailing probity finds himself embroiled in a corruption scandal.

At the time of Machiavelli, the reality of everyday life was very different and cynicism took oh so much more tortuous paths. It is no longer simply a question of manipulating public opinion by substituting such and such information, it is necessary to influence the will of the people by the use of much more radical methods.

One of the most famous examples dates from the Renaissance and rests in one of the feats of arms of Caesar Borgia (1475-1507), son of a pope and aspiring tyrant.

Machiavelli tells us about this event in chapter VII of the Prince. Wishing to pacify the territories of Romagna that he had newly acquired, Borgia placed as plenipotentiary one of his right arms, Rimirro de Orco, before leaving for other conquests. Knowing the sadistic and ruthless nature of his lieutenant, he enjoined him to use all possible means to subjugate this reputedly indomitable population. Rimirro did not need to be asked and administered the region “efficiently”, using unrestrained violence and in fact creating many enemies tired of suffering his cruelties.

It was in this configuration that his master returned a few months later. This is what followed: ''And since [Caesar Borgia] knew that the past rigors had engendered some hatred towards [Rimirro], in order to purge the minds of these people and win them over completely he wanted to show that, if any cruelty had ensued, it was not born of him, but of the cruel nature of his minister. And taking advantage of this, one morning, at Cesena, he had him put in two pieces on the square, with a block of wood and a bloody knife beside him: the ferocity of this spectacle made these people remain at the same time satisfied. and amazed”. In doing so, Borgia used the monster he had created to his advantage. Although he was the real cause of his people's suffering, they finally saw in him only the benefactor who freed them from the iron fist of the minister. The symbolic assassination allowed his political action to be exercised with an efficiency that he could have had only with great difficulty otherwise; it is not for nothing that at the time of his fall a few years later, and this despite his imprisonment, the fortresses of Romagna remained faithful to him to the very limit.

There remains an increasingly significant will in recent years, the aspiration of citizens to a political life that is more accessible, or in any case less opaque. It is with this in mind, for example, that the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life was created in December 2013 , an administrative body responsible for controlling the assets and possible conflicts of interest or fraud of public officials. In this way, François Hollande responded to a legitimate aspiration of the public, marked in particular that year by the ravages of the Cahuzac affair.

More recently, at the start of the pandemic in 2020, another scandal surrounded government announcements regarding the supposed uselessness of masks in preventing the spread of the virus. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to tell the French people that there just weren't enough to deal with the crisis, instead of asserting through the voice of the government spokesperson that they were not not necessary to protect themselves? Everyone knows, however, that it is easy to forgive those who honestly reveal their shortcomings; much more than to the one who finds himself in front of the misdeeds accomplished. Machiavelli in his Discourses, recalled this Ciceronian axiom: ''People, although ignorant, are capable of appreciating the truth, and they easily go there when it is presented to them by a man whom they consider worthy of faith''. Trust is earned. (The Conversation) RUP