A timely, intelligent dive into the new culture of political deceit in Australia and the world.
From Crikey and Hardie Grant Books comes The Critical Take, a new series that brings an unflinching and truly independent eye to the issues of the day in Australia and beyond. We're starting things off with a bang: Lies and Falsehoods: The Morrison Governmentand the new culture of deceit by Bernard Keane combines Crikey's eye-opening dossier of Scott Morrison's documented lies with Keane's insightful take on why deceivers dominate in the new era of politics.
All politicians lie. They twist the truth, omit important facts, exaggerate and spin. But blatant lying has now become a standard part of political discourse, led by Donald Trump and carried on by Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison. Combine this with a shocking all-out assault on the truth in public debate along with the biggest communications revolution since the printing press, and you have a disaster in real time: a sea of fake news, hyper-partisanship and polarisation.
No society or democracy can function without trust, and the consequences of this profound shift are clear. What isn't yet clear is what the remedy might be. But a first step is in understanding both the liars and the environments in which they lie.
Lies and Falsehoods does exactly that, in meticulous detail, in a highly readable and incisive account of how we found ourselves in this fractured post-truth world, and how we might get out.
