Post #70
August 2, 2023
Claire Bodanis
Can we reverse the tide of invective and untruth that threatens to overwhelm reasoned debate? Claire finds hope in an unlikely pairing.
Unusually for a Sunday afternoon blog-writing session, today’s inspiration comes not from my morning snooze in the choirstalls; in fact, some might say, quite the opposite. I’m writing from Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, following my first visit to the US since 2018, where a key meeting was with one of the panellists for our October Trust me, I’m listed webinar. Dan Crowley is a partner at the Washington DC law firm, K&L Gates LLP. He’s also a life-long Republican and active party member.
Before you all recoil in horror and start waving garlic in my direction, please hear me out. The title of our session is Excoriate, Slander, Greenwash? Why the politicisation of ESG could endanger transparency. Along with Silvia Pavoni, founder and editor of the FT’s Sustainable Views, Dan is also sharing the panel with one of our regulars, Professor Bob Eccles, who, as well as being an ESG guru, is a life-long Democrat.
As I’m sure you know, ESG has reached such a pitch in the polarisation of US politics that the term itself has become toxic in some quarters, and given some of the headlines in the UK recently, it looks like we may be heading that way too. Despite real opposition, then, Dan and Bob have been working together on a bipartisan approach to ESG issues, demonstrating that what we need to address the challenges facing the world is a dispassionate appraisal of the facts, from people across the political divide.
As I discovered over lunch with Dan (a Republican of the old school, not an election-denying Trump supporter), even though there is much to divide us on the political agenda, we share an essential principle: the vital importance of truth. A healthy, functioning democracy is about recognising a shared, objective truth in public discourse, whatever your personal politics. With agreement on what is factually accurate, one can then listen respectfully to one’s opponent’s point of view, upholding their right to hold such a view even when – or perhaps especially when – we disagree with it. After all, it’s only through listening that we can actually learn anything from one another.
The tribalism and ideological mania that is becoming so prevalent in politics today, not just in the US but in the UK and parts of Europe and the rest of the world too, is hugely dangerous in the way that political leaders are playing fast and loose with the truth for their own political gain. In discussing this issue with Dan, I told him the story of why I’m increasingly passionate about why we must fight for truth, a story I’d like to share with you.
Seven years ago, almost to the day, David (my author husband) came back from speaking at a corporate event on behavioural science and creativity and said to me: ‘Today, I have seen evil.’ Those of you who know us both will also know that if anyone is likely to get over-excited in their language, it’s certainly not David – who, having grown up as a Jew in pre-Civil Rights America, uses words like wicked and evil very sparingly indeed.
I was astonished: what evil could one possibly find lurking in the comfortable shires of the south of England? David went on to tell me about a presentation he’d heard from the architect of the Brexit ‘Leave’ campaign (the referendum having happened a month or so earlier), and how they had swayed the vote in Leave’s favour. Now, before you dismiss this as a rather belated anti-Brexit rant, David was not saying that Brexit itself is or was evil, not at all. The important word here is how.
You may not know that the Leave campaign did some incredibly sophisticated segmentation of the audience – all 46 million or so eligible voters, down to groupings in the hundreds – and worked out what different messages would be most likely to persuade each group to vote Leave. They then used social media to target individuals with the appropriate message, and thus delivered the vote. Clever? Yes. Unscrupulous? Possibly. But evil? No.
Here's the evil bit. The messages were made up. They were untrue. Lies, to give them a more emotive term. And the presenter had no shame in explaining this; the opposite in fact. He was proud of his own cleverness – because after all, the truth and the consequences were unimportant; winning was all that mattered, and winning was the job given to him by Boris Johnson, the Leave campaign’s chief cheerleader. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to know that said architect was Dominic Cummings, who went on to become Johnson’s henchman in Number 10 and helped the then Prime Minister wreak havoc across our Civil Service and institutions, before being ejected himself and turning on his erstwhile boss.
Serious times call for serious people prepared to work together for the common good. And that can only be achieved by fighting for public discourse in which facts are facts, expertise is respected, and differences of opinion are discussed respectfully, with the humility to realise that we might even learn something from those with whom we disagree.
It’s not necessarily comfortable to have our views challenged, even by otherwise supportive people, as I know from the many discussions I’ve had about my ongoing campaign for regulating the use of AI in reporting, discussed in last month’s blog. I am therefore particularly in awe of Dan and Bob for extending the hand of friendship during the most tribal era of politics we’ve ever seen in the US, and I want to thank them, along with Silvia, for setting an example to us all on how we can – and should – work together on the ESG agenda.
Please do join us in October (sign up here) for what promises to be a fascinating discussion, and a refreshing dose of inspiration.