About the liar who doesn’t know he’s lying
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, February 22, 2023
“Stalin and his subjects are always lying, at every moment, under every circumstance, and by dint of lying they no longer even realise that they are lying. And when everyone lies, no one lies”. I would like to reflect on this sentence by Boris Souvarine from his book on Stalin, because it concerns us closely. There have always been lies from governments and their media and collaborators, but the remark that Souvarine adds to his diagnosis seems to me to be decisive: the lie may reach such an extreme degree that liars no longer even realise that they are lying and, while everyone lies, no one lies anymore.
This is what we have lived with — and still we are living with — for the last three years, and this is what makes the present situation in Italy not only serious and oppressive, but such that it is possible for it to get out of control and end up in an unprecedented disaster. Indeed, nothing is more dangerous than a liar who doesn’t know he’s lying, because his actions lose any contact with reality. Truth and falsehood, good faith and bad faith get confused in his mind until they become indiscernible. Thus in the years of COVID, ministers, doctors and experts who were lying, have ended up believing their lies to such an extent that, losing any conscience of the truth, they could trample on the most basic principles of humanity without any scruple. A society which loses any conscience of the borderline that separates the true from the false literally becomes capable of anything, even to destroy itself. This is what is happening for the war in Ukraine, regarding which only false news is spread. The risk here is that governments which lie without realising they’re lying can unleash an atomic war that they thought they did not want, but that their own lies now oblige them to believe they do want.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, February 22, 2023
“Stalin and his subjects are always lying, at every moment, under every circumstance, and by dint of lying they no longer even realise that they are lying. And when everyone lies, no one lies”. I would like to reflect on this sentence by Boris Souvarine from his book on Stalin, because it concerns us closely. There have always been lies from governments and their media and collaborators, but the remark that Souvarine adds to his diagnosis seems to me to be decisive: the lie may reach such an extreme degree that liars no longer even realise that they are lying and, while everyone lies, no one lies anymore.
This is what we have lived with — and still we are living with — for the last three years, and this is what makes the present situation in Italy not only serious and oppressive, but such that it is possible for it to get out of control and end up in an unprecedented disaster. Indeed, nothing is more dangerous than a liar who doesn’t know he’s lying, because his actions lose any contact with reality. Truth and falsehood, good faith and bad faith get confused in his mind until they become indiscernible. Thus in the years of COVID, ministers, doctors and experts who were lying, have ended up believing their lies to such an extent that, losing any conscience of the truth, they could trample on the most basic principles of humanity without any scruple. A society which loses any conscience of the borderline that separates the true from the false literally becomes capable of anything, even to destroy itself. This is what is happening for the war in Ukraine, regarding which only false news is spread. The risk here is that governments which lie without realising they’re lying can unleash an atomic war that they thought they did not want, but that their own lies now oblige them to believe they do want.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Frances MacDonald, Truth Lies at the Bottom of the Well, ca. 1912 – ca. 1915. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
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