The State of the Art in Lying

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Monday July 26, 2004 23:08 by David C.

As Israel seeks to consolidate its theft of the West bank, Gaza and Golan, it is increasingly using lies and lying in a radically new and innovative way. This new lying technique appears to have been developed in Israel in the early 1990's but has been perfected and used to its greatest effect by the American republican party over the past 5 years - particularly regarding its recent invasion of Iraq .

In the past lying was a pretty straightforward affair - you said something that wasn't true ('the lie') and you hoped that people who heard the lie would believe it. That was it. Using this simple formula, lies were used throughout human history to advance all kinds of agendas, from the personal interests of individuals to the national policies of states. The success of these lies, however, was mixed at best and was very often temporary. The inconvenient fact that truth was, well, true, meant that each lie was under persistent pressure from facts, from reality and from the human tendency to value truth higher than falsehood. This fundamental problem with lying was succinctly described by Abraham Lincoln when he said that "you can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time". The relentless pressure of truth upon lies seemed insurmountable and lying seemed to be forever relegated to the margins of communications techniques.

In the early 1990's communications specialists in Israel were searching for a new way of maintaining a bare thread of justification for Israel's ongoing colonization of stolen land in West bank, Gaza and Golan. The earlier lies on which Israel had been founded ("A land without a people..." etc) were becoming ridiculous and obvious, and the day-to-day lies by which Israel maintained its occupation were being rapidly eroded by new fact-revealing technologies such as video cameras and satellite news feeds.

In a creative leap of imagination these Israeli communication specialists hit upon a breathtakingly simple yet immensely effective alteration to the traditional lying formula. Instead of creating lies that were intended to be believed by everyone, the Israelis began creating lies that were NOT EXPECTED TO BE BELIEVED by most of those who heard them. Instead of trying to "fool all of the people all of the time" the goal was deliberately changed to fooling "some of the people all of the time". This seemingly simple conceptual leap was to have far-reaching consequences.

The obvious question about this new lying technique concerns its effectiveness - how can a lie that is not believed by most of those who hear it possibly be effective? Wouldn't it be quickly exposed? Wouldn't it be unsustainable as the truth spread? The answer lies in the characteristics of the modern media environment. The Israelis recognized that the exponentially rising quantities of information that were now available to people in the developed world meant that people were now actively choosing the facts to which they exposed themselves. People 'cherry picked' their information. At the same time falling education standards and the rise of visual media meant that the general level of ignorance present in the populations of developed countries was rising quickly. The Israelis brilliantly recognized that the combination of these two trends - 'cherry picked' information and rising ignorance - meant that entire sectors of society were becoming impervious to truth 'leaking' in from other sectors. Lies could now be developed and marketed directly to specific groups without worrying about the truth because that truth would not compromise the lie within the target group. Through ignorance and cherry-picked information people were, in effect, self-inoculating themselves against truth.

An excellent example of this new lying technique in action can be seen in Israel's public statements regarding the wall that it is building to illegally annex Palestinian land. People who are concerned about terrorism are told that the wall is for security purposes, despite the fact that it encloses hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on its Israeli side and that it prevents a peace agreement. People who are concerned about a genuine peace process are told that the wall is 'temporary' despite its 10ft-deep concrete foundations. People who are concerned by the almost unanimous UN court ruling and General Assembly vote against Israel and the wall are told that the ruling and resolution 'ignore terrorism', despite support for a wall along the Green line.

The new lying technique is successfully being used to obscure the obvious solution to ALL Israeli security problems - withdrawal to the 1967 green line and payment of $110 billion in compensation to the Palestinians for 1948 - and continues to show promise in extending for many centuries Israel's doomed, despicable attempt to claw a few acres of parched land here and there in exchange for its children's lives.