Presented to the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference, Auckland, December 2008.
Abstract
Hannah Arendt's "Lying in Politics" is a pithy essay which not only documents the extent of public deception and personal self-deception by the U.S. administration during their military intervention in Indochina, but also acts as a commentary on her argument for liberty and freedom ensured through constitutional protections and the human motivation to protect those principles.
Forty years later somewhat similar circumstances have arisen. Based on false assertions of the presence of weapons of mass destruction and collaboration with Al-Qaeda (along with other justifications), the world's greatest superpower finds itself embroiled in a war that appears to have no conclusion, suffers a lack of support on the domestic front, and is under profound international criticism.
In addition to revisiting the replication of deception by political administrations to their population contrary to known reality, there are also the issue of significant changes to the acquisition of popular knowledge of popular knowledge that deviates from the official line. The internationalisation of media and the establishment of mass communication systems have profoundly altered the human condition of consciousness generation, but also has different effects in matters of civil disobedience.
Presentation
