The Bully Lie Some lies are told to dominate not persuade

On a recent Sunday morning, I was browsing YouTube for something short and thought-provoking on politics, philosophy, or science. The kind of content that often pulls me into a rabbit hole, when I come across a short video by Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge from the University of Birmingham. She’s an expert on Hannah Arendt, whose work I’ve long admired.

In the video, Stonebridge discusses Arendt’s article “Lying in Politics”, written in 1971 in response to the Pentagon Papers. Curious, I found it online and saved it for a closer read.

Along the way, I came across a striking idea: the bully lie. This is a lie told not to deceive but to show power. One example: someone steals your hat, puts it on in front of you, and insists he hasn’t seen it. It’s a blatant lie. You know it, and so does the liar. But the aim isn’t persuasion, it’s domination. If he can make you pretend not to see what’s in front of you, he wins.

It’s a form of political gaslighting. Arendt saw the danger: when lying becomes a habit rather than a tactic, the line between truth and fiction dissolves. And that, she warned, is where freedom begins to vanish.

Since then, I’ve written more about the bully lie in my blook.