Lie-Distract-Attack: The rules of modern propaganda

Putin, Farage and Trump follow the same playbook

One year ago, Donald Trump gave a flawless demonstration of how to win by lying. As a tribute to his master, Nigel Farage repeated the demonstration this week.

The performance comes in three acts: Lie-Distract-Attack

Lie:

In September 2024, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and J.D. Vance took up claims from a Facebook group that Haitian migrants were so contemptuous of the standards of decent Americans they were eating people’s beloved pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio.

This week, Nigel Farage maintained that migrants in Britain were eating swans – a crime that is almost as taboo in the UK as capturing and eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

Swans are royal birds. Buckingham Palace even appoints a Warden of the King’s Swans. Farage emphasised how repellent foreigners were by adding the detail that “swans were being eaten in Royal Parks.” Brutish aliens were despoiling the majesty of our monarchy and the serenity of London’s parks.

Distract:

When the lie is exposed, propagandists never apologise. Instead, they distract. Local officials in Springfield – who, it’s worth remembering, were members of Trump’s very own Republican party, said there was no evidence of Haitians eating pets.

London’s Royal Parks issued a statement this week saying it had no incidents reported of people killing or eating swans.

Normal people would feel shame and the overwhelming urge to correct the record. Trump, Farage and politicians like them know no shame. Instead, they sniff an opportunity.

They welcome the refutations from journalists and opponents because every time a lie is refuted it is spread. They know enough about the psychology of cultish politics to understand that a portion of the public will just hear the lie and ignore or dismiss the truth.

Meanwhile politicians can count on ideologues in the media to brush aside the fact that their claims are just plain false. This week Faragist journalists were saying we should forget that their hero was wrong and remember that in 2007 or 2010 there were cases of migrants poaching fish from lakes and rivers, and maybe swans too.

Go on YouTube cried the Spectator and watch videos of “the man walking along a bridge holding a swan. Or the man carrying a goose in a lift.”

The geese are in the lift. The dogs are in the pot, and the bats are in the belfry.

Any claim will do, however unhinged, if it distracts attention from the fact that the cult leader is a brazen liar.

Attack:

With the ground cleared propagandists attack. Far from being ashamed, they exult in their lies and use them to damn their opponents. J.D. Vance said it was entirely legitimate to lie about migrants eating pets if lying made a biased media focus on immigration.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Meanwhile Faragists in the UK press damned journalists who still believed in telling the truth.

“They seem to think they can quash the rightful outrage about another ugly factor of mass migration through sheer force of sneering.”

The lie-distract-attack tactic was developed in Putin’s Russia.

When Trump told his cat and dog stories last year, I put up a long read on the Russification of Western politics, and how strategies developed in Moscow were being deployed in Europe and the US.

I am sorry to say that it is more relevant than ever.

As it’s behind the paywall, I should add that the generosity of paying subscribers allows me to carry on writing without fear or favour. The cost of an annual subscription is a mere £1.15 ($1.40) a week.

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Sarcastic, sneering and sadistic: The voice of modern power

In the US town of Springfield Ohio far-right terrorists are calling in bomb threats to schools. State troopers are guarding pupils and public officials because Donald Trump told a…

What?

A lie?

“Lie” is too weak a word for our time of demagogues and dictators.