TRUTH, LIES AND THEIR FORMS IN POLITICS

Debate over the extent to which political statements are true has always had a place not only in politics. It is mostly argued that truth should be part of political action, yet there is no agreedupon definition of the term. Unfortunately, politics is also associated with less agreeable phenomena such as various types of misinformation and even lies. We attempted to clarify the current state of affairs by looking into the reasons behind, as well as the implications or impacts of, the proliferation of lies and half-truths in politics and their acceptance. Among other factors, we focused on the linguistic means used by politicians in their effort to win or maintain popularity and/or gain or maintain power, the veracity of information in the digital age and the freedom of expression in the media. To this end, we used qualitative methods of text analysis, adopting a hermeneutic approach. As shown by our analyses, loss of security, coupled with a sense of ephemerality, elusiveness, helplessness and perceived injustice trigger in individuals and groups the most primordial survival mechanisms such as fight-orflight response with black-and-white vision; this plays into the hands of populist parties, which feed on these sentiments, further polarising society and fuelling the spread of lies and halftruths. How we interpret information depends on many factors; with this in mind, one should make a clear distinction between the former (especially if emotionally charged) and actual facts.