A Whiff of Fascism(s) in the Air: On the Use of Lying in Politics

At the European elections of May 2019, the parties of the extreme Right tripled their seats in the European Parliament by comparison with 2014. This result confirms that more or less all over Europe ultra-nationalist and populist parties are making progress and using the democratic process to move in on the institutions that govern us. Nevertheless, we should not have any illusions about the profiles of these parties, as André-Yves Portnoff shows here, drawing on the Italian example: their only democratic arguments are window-dressing and they are expert in the manipulation of crowds and truth. This is how it is with the Italian neo-fascists who, through an idiosyncratic rewriting of history and of the Mussolinian past, peddle falsehoods and employ disinformation to attract votes, while maintaining systems of collusion and corruption very far distant from the virtuous conduct they claim to advocate. This Forum aims to dissect these stratagems and to warn of methods that might rapidly spread to other extremist groups.