Lying politicians and fascism

The major political party, LDPJ, in our country has elected Sanae Takaichi for its president. She is a direct lineage of former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in political vision as well as political ethos. Their expansionary fiscal policy with quontitative easing in "another dimension" has ended in total failure, at least in my view. The debt monetization resulted in over 1000 trillion JPY government debt. Half of it has been imposed to the bank of Japan, which makes it quite difficult to do with the ongoing inflation. 

Takaichi is prone to lie in various situations. In politics, they should sometimes keep themseles mute about certain topics which is kind of silent lie. Such lying could be allowable in some cases. In Takaichi's case, she willingly tells lie for her profit. 

Since she has run for office in '90s, her culliculum vitae told she had worked as a congressional fellow in the US in her young days. It has been questioned and, recently, it turned out her name was not in the roster of congressional fellows in the past. When she worked as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication, she assumed that a paper published from the ministry had been a fake and, telling that in the House, she even told she would resign not only the minister position but also the Member of the House of the Representatives. However, even after the paper turned out authentic, she never did either. There are plenty of such cases with her. I am afraid such politicians prone to lie for their benefits would lead our country to wrong way.

Nowadays, there are a lot of populism politicians in power all around the world. It seems like a historical process that people are accepting and even applauding them. Brexit was an example and so is the ongoing mess in the Trump administration. In such an age, we should appreciate what Hannah Arendt told about lying and fascism as follows;

 Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, explored how truth can be systematically eroded until people lose the ability to think for themselves. She observed that totalitarianism thrives not through persuasion or conviction, but by breaking the link between words and reality—by turning people into beings for whom truth and falsehood no longer matter.

She noted that the goal of totalitarian education was never to instill belief, but to destroy the very capacity for belief. When people no longer know what to trust, when facts become interchangeable with fiction, the ground of moral judgment collapses.

Arendt wrote:

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

Her insight remains unsettlingly relevant. When truth is corroded, it is not replaced by another belief—it is replaced by confusion. And confusion, left unchecked, becomes the perfect soil for control.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a German-born historian and philosopher, spent her life examining how freedom is undone not just by violence, but by the quiet decay of truth itself.