Politicians in a democracy are always keen
to get your vote, and they seem to have very few scruples about how they
achieve this. Most of them do not actually go around handing out money in
return for votes (although this is not unknown), but they are always very keen
to be seen to be in agreement with the
general mood of the electorate.
However, this often leads them into a
different form of dishonesty.
Recent polling in the United Kingdom has
produced some interesting insights into what the electorate believes to be the
state of affairs in several key areas. For example, when asked what proportion
of the UK population is Muslim, the consensus view is that it is 24%. When
asked what proportion are immigrants, the answer is 31%. Out of every £100 of
public funds spent on welfare, the electorate believes that £24 is claimed
fraudulently.
However, these figures are way off course
in terms of what is actually the case. The UK Muslim population is 5% of the
total, 13% of people in this country are relatively recent immigrants, and only
£0.70 out of every £100 spent on welfare goes to fraudulent claimers. The
situation in these, and many other areas, is nothing like as dire as people
like to imagine – this is, of course, assuming that it is a bad thing that a high
proportion of the population are Muslims, which is a highly contentious point
in itself but many non-Muslims are deeply worried about this.
So what does the average politician do if
he or she wants to garner as many votes as possible? It is hardly in their
interest to start telling people that they are wrong in terms of their
assessment of the state of the nation – that is not a vote-winning strategy!
Instead they will go along with people’s biased views even when they know how
off-beam they are.
Thus our political leaders act in a highly
dishonest way and make speeches that agree with the prejudices of the electorate.
The false facts thus gain a new sort of truth – if everyone believes the
exaggerated figures, and governments take actions that are based on them, they
have suddenly turned into reality. Forget the real facts – prejudice wins
votes! The Nazis in Germany came to power using just this sort of twisted
thinking – if everyone believed that the Jews were the enemies of the German
people then it had to be true. Unfortunately, the same is happening with
today’s “enemies”, be they Muslims, immigrants or benefit scroungers.
When a majority of people believe something
to be true, whether it is or not, democracy tends to make it so.
© John Welford
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