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A short thread on the relationship between social media, hypocrisy and political extremism. It’s been bugging me for years. 1/9
Everyone is a a hypocrite at some level, since it’s impossible to act the same in private and public. However, digital technology has (re)created the widespread belief that hypocrisy is now a defining feature of people in power. 2/9
Why? Because everyone shares everything they do & it’s all saved. It can be dragged out to reveal the gulf between your acts & words. A secret recording or a statement from 10 years ago - which you’ve forgotten or outgrown - can be re-posted and used as proof of bad faith 3/9
Anyone who says anything remotely right-on is liable to have something contradictory they said 7 yrs ago in a private FB group thrown in their face. Anecdotally almost every conversation I have with a-political friends ends up in the same place: ‘they’re all hypocrites’ 4/9
Why is this a problem? Sorry to bring Arendt into this (again). In The Origins she explicitly wrote about how dangerous hypocrisy (and the belief it is ubiquitous) can be. In the 1920s & 30s there was a belief that the bourgeoisie paraded virtues which it didn’t follow 5/9
This meant it was easy to “accept patently absurd propositions than the old truths which had become pious banalities”. She wrote that the mob believed the truth was simply whatever respectable society had ‘hypocritically passed over or covered up’. 6/9
And ppl didn’t mind being deceived because everyone was a hypocrite anyway. "Instead of deserting the leaders who had lied...they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lite & would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness" 7/9
In other words, if you believe everyone is a hypocrite you'll believe the worst about everything and succumb to any 'absurd proposition' that isn't the 'old truth'. 8/9
Anyway, I guess I’m saying that it’s very easy to think everyone is a hypocrite these days, and it's partly a function of how the internet never forgets. But it’s a risky and often lazy default. Don’t let it make you think that absurdities are real! /End
