Politics, Lies, and Moral Exoticism. Re‑Reading Hannah Arendt on the Crises of the Republic

What is it about?

The problem of truth and lies in politics, both domestic and international, continues to agitate the public at large. The gravity of the issue may be realized by a re-rereading of Hannah Arendt’s essay on lies in politics, occasioned in 1971 by the publication of The Pentagon Papers, from a contemporary perspective. In this paper, I explain the origin of Arendt’s influential paper through reference to the infamous Tonkin Gulf incidents and Robert McNamara’s decision to document the history of American intervention in Vietnam, an event which deeply affected not only American politics, society, and culture, but also the international politics as a whole. An analysis of subsequent developments suggests that despite the concerted efforts of the media and intellectuals, the painstakingly documented and publicized history did not bring the expected result of preventing America’s politics from committing similar mistakes. The re-reading of Arendt’s paper from a contemporary perspective suggests also that democratic systems increasingly gravitate away from the ideal of knowledge-based and common-good-seeking governments, and gradually relapse into the political-aesthetic regimes of crowd management by means of images and emotions.

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