While disinformation is usually condemned, it was once employed as weapon against the Nazis. While the effectiveness of the tactic can be debated, Sefton Delmer waged his own disinformation war with various radio shows such as Der Chef. Given the evil of the Nazis and the context of a war, it seems reasonable to regard this use of fake news disinformation as morally acceptable. This, of course, provides a launching point for arguing in favor of fake news and disinformation in general.
Disinformation involves lying. If the person making an untrue claim does not know it is not true, they are engaged in misinformation. Things can get a bit complicated when someone is misinformed because they believe disinformation. But this will be set aside to focus on sorting out the ethics of disinformation by considering the ethics of lying. Sticking with the WWII theme, an obvious focus for a discussion of lying is the allies’ disinformation campaign aimed at deceiving the Germans about the landings in France. The allies were lying to the Germans, but this can be justified. One approach is utilitarianism: whatever harm might arise from lying would be offset by the benefits gained by these deceptions. In this case, the saving of lives and the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. Naturally, from the perspective of the Nazis, the utilitarian calculation would be different, but it is (I hope) still easy to convince most people that Nazis were evil.
Another approach is a conditional approach based on the ethics of war: if it is acceptable to kill people in war to achieve military goals, then the use of the lesser evil of deception to achieve military goals would seem to be acceptable. But there is a potential flaw in this reasoning because some lesser evils seems to be unacceptable even when greater evils are allowed. To use a disturbing example, while sexually assaulting a person is a lesser evil than killing them, the use of sexual assault as a weapon of war certainly seems unacceptable. One possible reason for this is that killing is an inherent part of the nature of armed conflict while sexual assault is not. That is, waging war without killing people is all but impossible but waging war without using sexual assault is possible. Of course, the general argument could be countered by arguing that killing, even in war, is unacceptable and a successful counter of this sort would defeat this justification for lying in war or similar conflicts.
A third easy justification is based on the idea that doing bad things to bad people is justified because they are bad. That is, the evil of the Nazis justifies deceiving them because they have no moral right to expect to be told the truth. While appealing, this can be problematic, and the obvious counter is to argue that doing bad things to bad people is still bad. These three justifications can be deployed in defense of the use of disinformation in American politics and it is to this that I now turn.
One interesting way to justify disinformation in American politics is to argue that we are in a state of war, and this justifies its use as a weapon in that war. On this view, Alex Jones calling his show Infowars is appropriate. There is also the notion that the United States is engaged in an endless culture war. If these metaphors are taken literally, then the ethics of war could be used to justify the use of disinformation in the same manner that it could be used to justify the deception of Der Chef. The challenge is to show that such a state of war exists and that it warrants the use of deception to achieve these ends. As this is being written, the culture war is more metaphorical than literal and thus the war justification does not seem to hold. But the political winds are blowing in the direction of violence, with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts saying that the “second American revolution” will be bloodless “if the left allows it.”
Arguing in defense of disinformation on utilitarian grounds involves making the case that the good done by it outweighs the harms. To illustrate, it could be argued that Biden being elected president would be so harmful that the use of disinformation to prevent this would be justified. The obvious problem with this justification is that if someone, such as Biden, is that bad, then the use of the truth should suffice. This creates a bit of a paradox: if someone is so bad that deception would be justified to defeat them, then no deception should be needed because the truth should suffice. From a practical standpoint, there can be cases where what would be seen by some as bad about the target of disinformation is good from the standpoint of those engaged in disinformation. For example, people on the left criticize Nancy Pelosi for exploiting her position of the speaker of the House to grow her net worth to close to $250 million. Obviously, the Republicans are not going to sincerely launch an attack on wealth inequality and take on the exploitation of political office as a cause, so they went after Pelosi on other grounds, often pushing disinformation. As another example, Republicans are not going to criticize Biden for outpacing Trump in handing out oil drilling permits; they will instead lie about other things. So, if a target is bad but in ways that one sees is good, then the truth would not suffice, which explains some of the lies Republicans tell about Democrats.
Of course, one could argue that the truth would not suffice even if someone were very bad. It could be claimed that people are not informed or intelligent enough to see the significance of the terrible truth and thus lies that they can understand are needed. This would be somewhat like the idea of the noble lie, that the people must be deceived for their own good. This is analogous to lying to children to get them to do the right thing because the truth is either beyond their understanding or would not motivate them to do the right thing. This counter does have considerable appeal and could certainly justify deceit to defeat the greater evil when people are unable to grasp or be motivated by the truth. So, for example, Republicans could argue that they need to falsely accuse Democrats of being pedophiles because the people are incapable of grasping or being motivated by facts about the true evil of the Democrats. But for this to be morally acceptable, disinformation would need to be necessary because the evil in question, though great, is incomprehensible to many and they can only understand an equal, but simpler, evil.
There is also the option of defending disinformation by arguing that the target is bad and thus has no right to expect truth. To illustrate, one could argue that Biden’s badness means that lying about him is okay—he is bad, so doing bad things to him is morally acceptable. While this might have some appeal, there is the problem that even if the subject of the lies is bad, there is the matter of the evil being done to the people being lied to. If the justification is used that bad people can be treated badly, this would require that the people being lied to also be bad. If they are not also bad, then this justification would not work, since they would seem to merit the truth. The counter is, of course, to argue that the evil of lying to people would be bad, but would be outweighed by the good done by doing a necessary evil to a bad person.
Thus, there do seem to be reasonable arguments in favor of disinformation—it is acceptable to lie when doing so would prevent a greater evil. In the ideal, speaking the truth should suffice, but perhaps a case can be made that the masses cannot grasp the truth and must be given a false evil they can grasp. However, one might suspect that purveyors of disinformation are lying about their target being bad and hence the justification of the disinformation would itself be a lie. Which would be a perfect circle of dishonesty.