Political Lies: Altering Facts and Rewriting History

02-09-2015

By Richard A. Barrett

“Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute. In other words, factual truth informs political thought just as rational truth informs philosophical speculation.”

—Hannah Arendt, Truth and Politics

Arendt tells us that factual truth is at once crucial for political life and more vulnerable to manipulation than we typically consider it. A reminder of the fragility of facts is timely in light of Russian attempts to alter both recent and historical fact, as well as China's formidable ability to control its people's access to information on the Internet.

Arendt recounts Clemenceau's response when he was asked what historians will say on the issue of guilt for the outbreak of World War One: “This I don't know. But I know for certain that they will not say Belgium invaded Germany.” Yet Arendt was aware of facts—at least as certain—that world powers went to considerable lengths to alter. Her personal library at Bard College houses her copy of William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which recounts Hitler's shocking attempt to cast the German invasion of Poland as a defensive action.

[caption id="attachment_15364" align="alignleft" width="301"] Shown from left to right in this 1939 photograph are: Franz Josef Huber, Arthur Nebe, and the three men responsible for planning of most of Operation Himmler: Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller. (Source: Wikipedia)[/caption]

In “Operation Himmler,” the Gestapo-S.S. staged an attack on a German radio station near the Polish border. Germans wearing Polish Army uniforms attacked the station, broadcast a short “Polish” speech, and left behind condemned criminals who had been dressed in Polish uniforms and killed to appear as causalties of the invasion. The New York Times and other newspapers reported this Polish “attack” on Germany, and Hitler used it in his speech to the Reichstag, justifying aggression against Poland.

Arendt states that the “chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed; it is always in danger of being maneuvered out of the world not only for a time but, potentially, forever.” One such instance she saw was Trotsky's role in Soviet history.  He was a founder of the Soviet state, the first commander of the Red Army, playing a major role in the Russian Civil War, and he was a long-standing member of the Politburo.  Despite all this, after he lost a power struggle with Stalin, not only was Trotsky removed from power and expelled from the Communist Party, but, as Arendt points out, he was also erased from Soviet history: ceasing to appear—at all—in Russian history books.

Rewriting of history is not the exclusive work of totalitarian regimes. We must remember that the United States has also tried to take advantage of the vulnerability of factual truth. In 1846, President Polk claimed that Mexico invaded U.S. territory and “shed American blood upon American soil.” Abraham Lincoln, a relatively unknown representative in his only term in the U.S. House, disputed this fact at length in a speech on the House floor, comparing the president to a lawyer “struggling for his client's neck in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some point arising in the case, which he dared not admit, and yet could not deny.” And attempts to rewrite history for political ends are not merely a product of the last couple of centuries. The Donation of Constantine, now recognized as a forgery, was widely used in Medieval times to support papal claims of political authority. As far back as ancient Egypt, the pharaohs were careful to make records only of their military 'victories,' thus leaving historians to infer their defeats from reading about a series of victories that started at the outskirts of Egypt and moved successively closer to the ruler's capital.

[caption id="attachment_15366" align="aligncenter" width="551"] Truth and lies (Source: Quintessential Ruminations)[/caption]

We might be tempted to think that facts are safer in a world with modern technology; after all, cameras now reside in nearly everyone's pocket. However, Arendt explains that “modern political lies deal efficiently with things that are not secrets at all but are known to practically everybody,” that it is possible to engage in “rewriting contemporary history under the eyes of those who witnessed it.” Rather than putting an end to the political lie, modern techniques and mass media can increase the success of those attempting to rewrite history because their lies, which act as a substitute for reality, are “much more in the public eye than the original ever was.”

A recent example of such an attempt comes from the Malaysia Airlines Flight (MH17) shot down over eastern Ukraine. While a preliminary investigation implicated pro-Russian forces, a Russian government funded media organization suggested that the plane had been shot down by Ukraine in a failed attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin. A poll conducted a week after the event found that 80 percent of Russians believed the crash was indeed caused by the Ukrainian military, and only three percent blamed pro-Russian forces. Just before Putin was to attend a G20 summit in Austrailia, Russian state television broadcast a purportedly leaked, spy-satellite image of a Ukrainian fighter jet firing a missle at a passenger plane over Donetsk, though the photo was later revealed to be a poorly doctored image from Google Earth.

Less than a month later in an annual address to Russian Parliament, Putin claimed Crimea, recently annexed by Russia against the wishes of Ukraine, holds the status of a Russian Holy Land, comparing it to the sacredness the Temple Mount in Jerusalem holds for Muslims and Jews. Putin bases his claim on a legend that Grand Prince Vladmir was baptised in Crimea during the 10th century. However, this legend is not supported by historical evidence, which instead indicates Vladmir was baptized before he captured Crimea. Moreover, the Grand Prince's capital was Kiev—presently Ukraine's capital—so it is doubtful how much such a claim would support the notion that Crimea is more Russian than Ukrainian, even if it were true.

[caption id="attachment_15368" align="alignright" width="301"] The front page of the New York Times, July 1, 1971, announcing the Supreme Court's decision on the Pentagon Papers. (Source: Journalism Professor)[/caption]

Such attempts by states to alter history are not the only danger of political lies. Arendt warns that “self-deception is the danger par excellence; the self-deceived deceiver loses all contact with not only his audience, but also the real world, which still will catch up with him, because he can remove his mind from it but not his body” (Lying in Politics). In her commentary on the Pentagon Papers, Arendt details how little the Administration managed to deceive others about the reality of the Vietnam War but nevertheless managed to deceive itself into believing and basing policy on information it knew was not true. In the end, the free press, which Arendt refers to as the “fourth branch of government,” performed its crucial check on government—not by alerting the public to facts hidden from it, most of which were already known but—by forcing the executive to confront those facts, facts it had previously been so successful in deceiving itself about.

Thus Arendt informs us, “Even if we admit that every generation has the right to write its own history, we admit no more than that it has the right to rearrange the facts in accordance with its own perspective; we don't admit the right to touch the factual matter itself.”

(Featured Image: Earliest Cave Drawings - This undated handout photo shows a stencil of a hand in a cave; Source: Post-Gazette)