The Art of the Political Con

 

The sad thing about watching contemporary politics is that it is full of so many con artists in front of a willing public who falls for what’s on sale hook, line and sinker. But con artistry is not all equal, and here I’ll explain the distinctions I observe. First, let me establish a long-standing truth in psychology about the typical con artist: a good con artist doesn’t pressure you into doing something; they compel you to be a willing agent in your own downfall. But this is predicated on their success in knowing the true picture and veiling it from their subject(s).

Now, socio-politics is full of all kinds of con artist - differing widely in age, character, belief and presentation. But unlike the classic psychological description of the con artist I outlined, these are of a different breed. They qualify by successfully getting large swathes of the public to fall for their con, hook, line and sinker – examples of which are Jeremy Corbyn, Greta Thunberg, Owen Jones, Sadiq Khan, Nicola Sturgeon, Dianne Abbott, Ed Miliband, Ash Sakar, Paul Mason, Zack Polanski, to name but a few. But their distinction is that their con is not based on knowing the true picture and veiling it from their subjects (although there is, of course, a lot of concealing going on) – it is a kind of con of incompetence, where most of what they believe is so absurdly incorrect or miscalculated, yet tribalistically persuasive enough to compel people to be a willing agents in their own downfall.

You may be on the left reading this, thinking “Hang on, what about those on the right - the likes of Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, et al – playing a similar game?” Something different is going on there – it’s equally to do with psychological leverage, but it operates on almost the opposite mechanism. Because if you’re paying attention, the left tends to obtain its cognitive leverage by creating illusions, and the populist right by breaking illusions (see my blog on Hyperbolstering). They prick the balloon of the left’s illusions, and that’s why the vitriol coming from the left is more like the hate and rage that comes from being found out and exposed, alongside the inner malice many of them feel towards people who are more successful than them or have more status. The left deceives by pretending to be more competent than they are; the right attempts to expose what the establishment wants to remain concealed.

That’s also why the left’s cognitive leverage will always rest on a suite of well‑documented cognitive mechanisms that operate beneath the surface of rational enquiry. And as highly prominent figures like Greta Thunberg, Jeremy Corbyn and Zack Polanski are showing – you can be an utter simpleton and still cast in your net the willing acolytes of identity‑protective cognition, because the tendency for people to defend beliefs that signal loyalty to their tribe, and provide emotional reassurance and moral self-congratulation, even when those beliefs are demonstrably false, miscalculated or self‑defeating, is as old as the hills.

And for those like me who’ve always been interested in human behaviour, you might also see that the most striking feature of this phenomenon is that many of these political influencers are not deliberate manipulators in the classic sense. They are not con artists who know the truth and hide it; they are participants in the very illusions they propagate.

Most con artists manipulate by knowing they are above the manipulation. Yet most political con artistry is of a more peculiar dynamic: manipulation while not knowing they are part of the manipulation.