Politics As Self-Deception
The finger-pointing over free speech exemplifies a fundamental truth about human nature.
Accusations of hypocrisy over free speech are being hurled across the Western political spectrum. Nick Clegg, the liberal former deputy prime minister of Britain, where I live, recently accused American conservatives such as JD Vance of “rank hypocrisy” for criticizing UK speech laws while stifling dissent at home. Meanwhile, in The New York Times, conservative commentator Bret Stephens cataloged examples of progressives justifying censorship in recent years until they suddenly “cared about free speech again” when Jimmy Kimmel was taken off-air.
Greg Lukianoff has suggested that we are pretty much all hypocrites. “If you’re a free-speech lawyer, you face a choice,” he said. “Either expect to be disappointed by people of all political stripes—or go crazy.” That may well be true, but I don’t think it tells the whole story. While there are certainly outright hypocrites on both sides being consciously deceitful, there is likely also a deeper human force at play: our remarkable capacity for self-deception.
We are masters at persuading ourselves of what we want to believe. This shapes not just our everyday choices but also our politics and moral reasoning. Crucially, because self-deception operates under the radar of our awareness, it’s much harder to pinpoint and correct than conscious hypocrisy.
Psychologists have long known how flattering our self-perceptions are. The “better-than-average-effect” describes how most people consider themselves above average in intelligence, morality, and kindness. College students think their personalities are more complex than their peers’; drivers hospitalized after causing accidents still consider themselves better drivers than most others. College instructors believe they’re better teachers than their colleagues. In one study, prisoners convicted of violent crimes rated themselves as more moral, kind, and trustworthy not only than the average inmate, but than the average citizen.
This tendency transcends culture. While Westerners tend to self-index on individualistic traits like ambition and originality, East Asians do the same on collectivist virtues like loyalty and respectfulness. In other words, we overrate ourselves on the qualities our society prizes.
Importantly for the discussion about free speech, people are more likely to overrate themselves on attributes that are ambiguous or difficult to verify—such as questions of morality—than on traits that are easily verifiable, such as math skills. It is harder to convince ourselves we’re good at math if we’ve never done well on a math test than it is to convince ourselves we’re good people.
Where does our tendency for self-deception come from? Some evolutionary psychologists argue that it evolved as a tool for deceiving others more effectively, which can bring substantial benefits to the deceiver. If we can convince ourselves of a dubious claim, we don’t display tells like hesitation or visible anxiety that betray lying. The salesman who convinces himself his product is good (even if it’s mediocre) is more persuasive. The politician who believes their policy is righteous sounds more authentic. Importantly, both appear confident, and confident people are believed more than those seen as lacking confidence. As Mark Twain put it: “When a person cannot deceive himself, the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.”
Self-deception also fuels optimism, another adaptive and valued trait. People who convince themselves they can overcome daunting challenges against improbable odds make those challenges appear manageable to others, thus inspiring them. Optimists persist longer and tend to perform better, increasing their chances of success in life. Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama may have had little in common, but they both had an ability to make others feel optimistic. And people gravitated towards them. (Readers may remember the crowds chanting “Yes We Can” in 2008.)
Self-deception is also cognitively efficient. The philosopher Daniel Statman noted that conscious deceit is “exhausting work.” To consciously maintain a lie while knowing the truth requires constant mental juggling—hence the elaborate training and handling that spies require. But those who truly believe at least a part of their own story can relax into it, freeing their minds from having to handle both truth and fiction. We are also more convincing when, like actors, we really “get into character,” and at least partly internalize the values we espouse. This is likely one of the reasons Donald Trump contradicts himself so effortlessly without any visible strain. He has developed the ability to convince himself of whatever he is saying at any given moment. He thus comes across as authentic.
Other psychologists see self-deception less as a tool for manipulation than as a psychological shield—our defense against fear, pain, and loss. The person who refuses to see evidence of a cheating spouse. The addict who insists they can “quit anytime.” The terminally ill patient who believes they’ll recover. All illustrate how present and sometimes necessary denial can be in our everyday lives. Without some self-deception, life would be unbearable.
Whatever its roots, self-deception profoundly shapes how we process information. For instance, we demand different levels of evidence depending on whether a piece of information is welcome or unwelcome. We demand overwhelming proof for bad news or for claims that threaten our identity or worldview, while accepting the flimsiest evidence for good news. If someone praises our nation or group as creative and hardworking, we nod along; if someone calls it lazy and dishonest, we protest this as stereotyping. Both are instances of stereotypes, but we don’t reject positive stereotypes, only negative ones.
So too in politics. Conservatives demand rigorous proof that there is an issue with free speech today now that their side is in power, while progressives are setting the evidence bar much lower. Likewise, progressives require much less evidence to believe a white person is racist than to be persuaded a black person is racist.
I once attended a debate on British colonialism. I chatted with a white progressive academic and mentioned it is estimated that Nigeria’s rulers have looted some $600 billion since independence. “I suspect that’s more than the British managed to extract from Nigeria throughout the period they colonized it,” I said, half-jokingly.
“I’m sure that’s not the case,” she swiftly responded.
I waited for questions on how credible the $600 billion figure I quoted was or for her to cite what evidence she had of how much Britain had extracted from colonial Nigeria. But she promptly steered the discussion elsewhere instead. The very idea that African rulers could be exploiting their people more drastically than the European colonialists had was a possibility too anathema to her worldview to be seriously considered. She was sure it was impossible. That is how self-deception works; it is less that we consciously lie to ourselves than that we don’t look too closely. We can hence preserve both our self-image and political identity while still feeling “rational.”
Which is why many conservatives today, in the United States and elsewhere, simply refuse to look too closely at efforts by the Trump administration to curb free speech. Progressive objections are dismissed as hysteria or mere discomfort with what Donald Trump Jr. now describes as “Consequence Culture.” But this is exactly how progressives used to rationalize censoriousness. Accusations of cancel culture were dismissed as the hysterical reactions of privileged white men threatened by demands for justice. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in 2020: “The term ‘cancel culture’ comes from entitlement … Odds are you’re not actually cancelled, you’re just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked.”
Recognizing all of this should make us not cynical but humble. And perhaps hopeful. Few people consciously betray their ideals, and true hypocrites are quite rare. More often, people reinterpret their ideals to fit changing circumstances. The contradictions surrounding free speech are thus not simply a matter of hypocrisy or power plays, but of a deeper human need to see ourselves as moral even while defending our tribe and self-interest.
And that is precisely why free speech matters. It is not just a political right but a safeguard: a mirror that can reveal our own distortions. Open debate forces societies to test their stories against reality, and individuals to confront their own blind spots. But a mirror only works if we dare to look into it.
The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t just censorship. It’s our waning appetite for self-scrutiny. Defending free expression means defending the discomfort that comes with it—the possibility that our opponents might be right, and that we may well be wrong. And that would not be the end of the world. If we can learn to question not just our adversaries’ motives but our own as well, we may yet preserve the honesty and freedom for which most of us still seem to yearn.
Remi Adekoya teaches Politics at the University of York.
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An extremely important article. There is overwhelming evidence that a rudimentary moral sense is innate in humanity, starting with the Yale experiments on the eye movements of 3-month-olds watching puppet shows (Bloom, Just Babies). Our moral sense causes us emotional pain when there is a dissonance between our actions and our values, yet there are abundant historical examples of kind, intelligent people justifying the most appalling actions, from slavery to warfare. Robert Trivers and others have pointed out that self-deception enables us to unwittingly act ruthlessly in our self-interest, gaming a conscience wired for kindness and collaboration.
So free speech is key, but it's not a panacea. Not only does free speech offer a platform to people you disagree with or dislike, it can also be used to spread fake news and misinformation that can have lasting consequences. During the Renaissance a book called the Hammer of the Witches argued that "modern" witches were causing crop failures and irregular weather patterns. Coinciding with the Little Ice Age, the book became a best-seller second only to the Bible for centuries, overturning a ban on executions for witchcraft in western Europe that had lasted for a thousand years, and leading to the deaths of 60,000 people, 80% of them women.
In the 21st century we may have better scientific evidence to debunk fake news, but the largely unregulated social media platforms use algorithms that encourage polarization, feeding red meat that gives us an emotional high rather than challenging us with dissenting voices. We need to protect the right to free speech from attacks by the left or the right, but we also need to ensure that the media platforms we use force us to step out of the echo chamber.
Great article. Free speech is essential. And censoring speech is inevitably censoring political dissent. Today its the Trump admin censoring criticism of Israel. In Europe today its censoring people who criticize mass immigration. Three years ago it was the Biden admin censoring Stanford professors who questioned lockdowns to prevent covid spreading. A whole misinformation industrial complex has been funded, as Matt Taibbi has documented.