The Political Uses of Fakery—An Analysis (30 October 2025) by Lawrence Davidson
Part One — Walter Lippmann Sets the Stage
In the year 1922 (that is 103 years ago), the public commentator Walter Lippmann published a book entitled Public Opinion. A central part of his argument was, the further from our local area we look, the more dependent we are on limited and often distorted information coming from sources we know little about. This information can manufacture “pictures in our heads,” and create or reinforce stereotypes.
Here is how Lippmann explains our predicament: “Each of us lives and works on a small part of the Earth surface, moves in a small circle …. Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.”
It is in times of high tension and crisis involving foreign events that we discover our own ignorance of matters that range beyond our local environment. We then turn for information to others who we assume know what is going on abroad. These are the “experts”: government officials, academics, news pundits and journalists who come to us through the media in all its forms. The problem is that such reportage is often not the same thing as truth.
Part Two — An Era of Fakery
The potential for deception to masquerade as truth or proof is growing very quickly. A recent article in the New York Times (NYT) puts it this way: “Welcome to the era of fakery. The widespread use of instant video generators … will bring an end to visuals as proof.” Seeing is no longer believing. This report is actually close enough to the truth to be believed.
What is an “instant video generator”? It is an artificial intelligence (AI) computer program (often free for those with certain phone subscriptions) that allows you to “generate realistic-looking videos with AI by inputing a simple description, such as “police body-cam footage of a dog being arrested for stealing a rib-eye [steak] at Costco.” The example is juvenile but the capability for spreading disinformation by producing “fake footage” is real. Damaging and false pictorial information will now be part of the political scene. The NYT concludes that, “The tech could represent the end of visual fact … as we know it.”
Part Three — Precedents
Actually, the threat to “visual fact” is not new. It’s high-tech nature just makes the process of forgery much more dramatic and the consequences more Orwellian. We can trace back the manipulation of visual information to at least Lippmann’s own time, the 1920s, and specifically to the early period of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin rose to power in the Soviet Union by virtue of a struggle against several rivals, most notably Leon Trotsky. Once Stalin consolidated his position, his old rivals started to disappear from history—not only in terms of written records, but also pictorially. Essentially, this was an effort to rewrite history by laundering both the facts and the faces. For instance, there is a photo taken during the speech Vladimir Lenin gave to Soviet troops gathered at Sverdlov Square, Moscow in May of 1920. Besides Lenin, two other prominent leaders are seen in the picture: Leon Trotsky (head of the Red Army) and Lev Kamenev (soon to become deputy Premier of the Soviet Union). Both of these men became rivals of Stalin. The photo as presented during Stalin’s rule erased both men from the scene. This process of laundering was repeated with pictures showing gatherings of the early Bolshevik leadership to the point that only Stalin’s supporters remained.
Here is another, albeit apolitical example. There is an iconic picture taken in Berlin in the final days of World War II. Soviet soldiers are in the process of capturing the capital. We see them hoisting the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag. Initially, there was a problem with the photo. One of the soldiers helping to support the man with the flag is shown wearing a watch. Soviet infantry were not issued watches so this was a tip off that this soldier had been looting. Consequently, to be able to use such an otherwise iconic photo, the watch was erased. Soon copies of the altered
photo began showing up worldwide.
The folks who ran the U.S. government in the post-war era did not use the same falsifying techniques. This is not because they technologically incapable. It may rather have been that prevailing values kept the technique at bay. Until recently sentiments supporting values such as “transparency” were politically acceptable to most U.S. politicians. That is, enough of them felt that honesty was an expected standard among American voters. In addition, equalitarianism and fairness were at least theoretically expected political goals. These essentially progressive positions were seen as a corrective for the racism that characterized much of U.S. history. Perhaps the politicians of the 1960s and 70s, when these sentiments were strongest, were blind to the deeply held racist outlook of the country’s mostly white hinterland.
Part Four — Scamming the Nation
The most successful anti-progressive champion of that white hinterland, turned out to be Donald Trump. Here is what he is presently telling the nation:
“In the last decade Americans have witnessed a concerted effort to rewrite American history, and force our nation to adopt a factually baseless ideology aimed at diminishing American achievement. President Trump is fighting back by reestablishing truth and restoring Federal sites dedicated to American heritage.”
This message has many inaccuracies. For instance, the alleged activities he criticizes date from at least the 1960s. The “rewrite of American history” which he so despises is actually an attempt to honestly portray the roots of racial problems and growing economic inequality. The claim that this effort is factually baseless is itself baseless nor is it ideologically driven—that is, unless you think the setting out of a more complete historical record is an ideological project. Indeed, one might suggest that it is President Trump who is driven to make an alliance with the conservative and fundamentalist ideologues of the radical right. Many of these people see him as “god sent.” Trumps posturing feeds on such adoration, transforming it into an act of amour-propre.
Nonetheless, with the coming of Donald Trump and his followers, the selective falsification of U.S. history began in ernest. Stalin sought to erase individuals. Trump seeks to erase the history of just about all of America’s minorities, deny a history of pervasive racism, and, as if mimicking Joe McCarthy, transform liberal democracy into a form of left wing radicalism.
The vehicle for this anti-progressive, reactionary effort is Trump’s hijacked Republican Party. This organization is now apparently without ethics ready to: openly fix elections, pardon felons from jail, purge the historical record of the achievements of non-white heroes and leaders, destroy the greatest of the nation’s universities, and financially starve its scientific establishment. It does all of this under the slogan of “making America great again.” If Trump’s Republicans are seriously deluded so are a great number of the American white voters in the south and mid-west of the country. That is where most of their support is.
It is typical of Trump that he manufactures his battlecries by loudly accusing his opposition of doing exactly what he has done. Progressives have not rewritten, so much as produced a much broader and revealing American history. It is Trump, again following in the footsteps of Stalin, who insists that only the most narrow and racially idealized stories belong in American history books—stories reflecting Trump’s worldview. His followers obviously feel comfortable in this bounded world, and their critics risk being labelled unAmerican.
Part Five — Conclusion
We have now entered an entirely new world of possibilities. Recent advances in the production of AI edited images and videos reveal a troubling ability to create seemingly real but actually false perceptions. Trump has rapidly adopted the new technology. For instance, he has produced a fake video of “Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents. This digitally manufactured footage shows Obama being pushed to the ground and handcuffed in the Oval Office, before being placed in an orange jumpsuit in a prison cell.” Through out the video Trump looks on with a self-satisfied smile on his face.
Things are bound to get worse as AI assisted video technology gets better. And, let’s face it, some percentage of the population, any population, while of average intelligence, will be too local in their background knowledge to easily recognize the falseness of such images. Today, Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama, if presented visually with AI assisted imagery, would give half the nation heart palpitations.
103 years ago, Walter Lippmann was prescient enough to explain the circumstances that make propaganda so effective. His explanation serves as a warning that the use of “instant video generators” needs to be regulated. Unfortunately our present laws and culture do not encourage this sort of control of “free speech”. As a consequence, we are at the edge of a cliff and a pernicious use of AI may seduce us to take the next step.
