Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy  (idea)
Interest of	E. M. Forster
Do as I say, not as I do.

Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one's own expressed moral rules and principles.

Hypocrisy works on a bigger level as well, where different standards are used for foreign leaders and countries. The line is blurry between suspected hypocrisy and conscious lies.

Chomsky on hypocrisy

“let me formulate a thesis. The thesis is that we are all total hypocrites on any issue relating to terrorism. Now, let me clarify the notion "we." By "we," I mean people like us — people who have enough high degree of privilege, of training, resources, access to information — for whom it is pretty easy to find out the truth about things if we want to. If we decide that that is our vocation, and in the case in question, you don't really have to dig very deep, it's all right on the surface. So when I say "we," I mean that category. And I definitely mean to include myself in "we" because I have never proposed that our leaders be subjected to the kinds of punishment that I have recommended for enemies. So that is hypocrisy. So if there are people who escape it I really don't know them and have not come across them. It's a very powerful culture. It's hard to escape its grasp. So that's thesis number one, we are all total hypocrites, in the sense of the gospels, on the matter of terrorism. The second thesis is stronger, namely, that the first thesis is so obvious that it takes real effort to miss it. In fact, I should go home right now because it is obvious [...] Well, from all of this an obvious conclusion follows: there is an operational definition of terrorism, the one that is actually used — it means terror that they carry out against us — that's terrorism, and nothing else passes through the filter.”
Noam Chomsky (2002) 

 

An example

Page name	Description
Double standard	Hypocritical actions.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Robert Cooper	“The postmodern world has to start to get used to double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But, when dealing with old-fashioned states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era--force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.”	Robert Cooper	April 2002

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:UK PM Covers Up Crimes Against Humanity – Lectures Sri Lanka on Crimes Against Humanity	article	19 November 2013	Felicity Arbuthnot	A juxtaposition of the sanctimonious posturing of UK PM David Cameron at the opening of the Commonwealth heads of government conference over Sri Lanka's human rights record, with his own machinations to prevent the Chilcot Inquiry publishing papers fundamental to the understanding of how Blair and Bush engineered the Iraq war.

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