What is really wrong when politicians deny brute facts?

One of the key features of the so called “post truth society” concerns a widespread circulation of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and denialist claims. Social media platforms not only fuel this phenomenon, but also make it possible for anyone to offer and share such contents within public discourse, considered also in its digital dimension. So, it may happen that a president of a democratic society and a private citizen, both writing on the internet, advance the same claim about, for example, the fact that climate change is not happening and that there is no climate crisis. In this context, a riddle seems to appear: why is it the case that, intuitively, a president seems more blameworthy than a private citizen for denying climate change, even when they advance the exact same sentence? In this paper, I attempt to tackle this riddle and to understand whether there is something distinctively wrong when elected officials and those who seek office deny brute facts. My hypothesis is that the answer is affirmative, and the reasons concern democratic representation. In a nutshell, the idea is that democratic representation implies a commitment not to displace the realm of factuality because such realm is essential to the handling of political conflicts in a civil manner, thus rejecting violence. In this sense, the aim of the argument is to contribute to the normative debate on democratic representation by elucidating a standard for distinguishing good representatives from bad ones, from a democratic perspective. Thus, my proposal is evaluative in kind: it offers criteria that democratic citizens ought to employ in evaluating their representatives. However, the argument I intend to offer has some interesting normative implications, on one hand, with respect to what representatives ought to do to be considered democratic when challenged by their constituency who support claims that deny brute facts; on the other, for activists who are pushing for reforms, but are not elected officials and do not seek office. The paper unfolds as follows: first, I define what I consider claims about brute facts and thus what does it mean to undermine the realm of factuality within public discourse. Second, I present the riddle and, rejected some possible alternative explanations, I zoom onto democratic representation to show that, to be considered democratic, representatives need to preserve factual reality. This may not be the only standard that representatives need to fulfil to be considered democratic, but I contend that it is an essential one. Finally, I discuss the different implications for representatives and activists.