Brexit. Syria. Trump. 2016 in three words. It is human nature to see commonalities where there are none, but there are surely some here.
First, of course, there is the not-so-invisible hand of a resurgent Russia to be seen in each. Time magazine’s choice of Donald Trump as its Person of the Year was a mistake: it is not Trump but the subject of his admiration, Vladimir Putin, who has shaped world events this year more than any other individual.
Second (and not entirely unrelated to the first) is the triumph of mendacity. Key to each of the year’s key events was dishonesty. The referendum campaign felt at points like a contest to see which side could bend the truth furthest but it will, in the final analysis, be the Leave campaign that will be viewed as one of the most dishonest political campaigns in this country’s democratic history. Its mendacity was of course easily surpassed by Donald Trump, a man who in the face of inconvenient facts doesn’t just deny their existence but creates his own new reality. It didn’t help that the Democrats nominated a candidate much of whose political career has been defined by sleights of hand and questionable dealings: lying simply became relative.
But it has been in Syria where dishonesty has taken its most direct human toll. The war that Bashar al-Assad has waged on the people of Syria has always been predicated on a lie, but it took the particular skills of the Kremlin’s most advanced peddlers of deceit to provide cover for the atrocities that befell the Syrian people — particularly those in Aleppo — this year. All it takes, Putin discovered this year, for the civilised world to turn a blind eye to war crimes is a little misinformation, fed through Russian propaganda TV channels and sympathetic western journalists. Muddy the surface water sufficiently and it is astonishing just how many people will take the opportunity to deny what is happening below.
As Jonathan Freedland says, the term “post-truth” is really unnecessary when we have a better word: lies.
What to do?
First, gain a sense of perspective. There is nothing new under the sun – industrial-scale lying included. From Cold War disinformation to McCarthyism, the democratic world has faced these challenges before.
But as individuals the actions we can take are limited. Paying money for reliable news coverage would be a good place to start — and you could do worse than a subscription to the Financial Times and Economist. If 2016 taught us anything it should be that the internet, and the “free” news that it brings, must not spell the end of rigorous journalism.
We can also ensure that we are not spreading the falsehoods that infect social media. Fake news is not a phenomenon confined to the authoritarian right. Propagandism and denial of reality is equally as present on the left, as anyone who has read a thread of Corbyn supporters can attest. Organisations like 38 Degrees thrive on the half-truth. Fact-check before you share. Or in the case of, for example, Jonathan Pie’s conspiracy-laden nonsense, just don’t share at all.
As we leave a year that marked the triumph of mendacity we head to one in which both the US and Russia will have as heads of state authoritarians with no truck for accuracy, with a potential (Russain-backed) victory for the far-right looming in France. There is little we can do about such events.
But we can take a stand against the dishonesty. We can support honest, accurate journalism. We can call out “fake news”, propaganda and its proponents. And we can retain the scepticism (but not cynicism) that is required of a commitment to rationality and truth.
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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Raising a flap about letterboxes
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A swamp of lies and disinformation
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19 Comments
Bravo
I think one of the most important points you make is that lying has become relative, although I think it probably always has been. Most people can only know their own truth, the truth their lives give them and when they read or hear opinions that chime with that truth, they agree and in the case of politicians, support them.
I have found it very difficult recently to understand the conflict in Syria, to follow the implications of one group fighting against another or several groups fighting against each other. The only truth I can really find is that people are being bombed, killed, maimed, losing everything and so I want that to stop. I don’t care who started it because to follow that search for truth will take us back aeons and the truth for Syria is that we don’t have enough time to do it. Sometimes we just have to say enough! Stop it! I had hoped that was what the UN was for but it seems powerless.
I am glad there are still journalists who are seeking after truth, but the problem is there is always someone else with a different opinion and there is no longer any clear truth about so many issues. LDV shows us that when people are discussing an issue in depth. Life has become so complicated we don’t know who to believe and TV interviewers cut across people who are trying to explain things because they are seeking to be aggressive and only want a good sound bite. No wonder people who have the audacity to lie, lie and lie again are winning the battle for people’s trust.
I think, perhaps in the West that what has happened is that in many countries we have two alternatives of truth, one is where most of the contributors to LDV live, in a tolerant, diverse, quite prosperous world and the other in a world that is a struggle in every way. Our problem is that we haven’t recognised those two worlds are both true and now we are suffering the consequences.
I would have thought that all it takes to bring to the fore dangerously Right Wing movements across Europe is for people to forget that our major threat is ISIS and other militant Islamist factions.
The latest atrocity in Berlin is yet another attempt by ISIS to embolden and promote the extreme Right who portray themselves as our only hope of protection in a Europe where Liberal politicians are portrayed as weak and uncaring of the safety of their own populations.
Any retaliatory increased harassment or behaviour against integrated Muslims who have forged an identity where their Muslim beliefs sit comfortably with western values, and turns them against the society that vilifies them as a whole rather than those in their midst who are consumed with hate, is all to the good as far as they are concerned.
The people who are saying anything admiring about Putin are the likes of Farage and Trump, not people of the left such as myself. However, what confuses many people and what they want to know is, are we in a battle against ISIS or a battle against Assad?
As for lies and the current buzz term, ‘post -truth’. When has it been otherwise? Or have we forgotten some of the recent whoppers like ‘ Weapons of mass -destruction’ , or no top-down re-organisation of the NHS’ when the tories had been planning one for years. People don’t care that the side of a bus had a lie on it, it changes nothing. They expect lies from politicians and take them into account when making a political decision. The only change is that those telling the lies are so brazen. There is something almost refreshing about that.
Wasn’t Remain also moving into the post-truth era when it said the EU could be reformed in a way that suited UK interests, which it evidently can’t, and that it had no plans for an army, which it does?
If I see an alarmist headline from a website I am not familiar with I look to Google it and see if Snopes or anyone similar has a view on it.
The UK has supplied Saudi Arabia with cluster bombs which they are using against civilians in Yemen. The Saudi action in Yemen is defended by the British Government as ‘supporting the recognised government of the country’ against rebel forces. Yet Russian actions ‘supporting the recognised government of the country’ in Syria against rebel forces are condemmned!
Saudi Arabia (and to an extent Qatar) have encouraged and funded the conservative Salafi and Wahhabi sects within Islam and bear much of the responsibility for the growth of Sunni Jihadi groups like DAESH. the Al Nusra Front etc. Yet we are constantly told by the British Government that the repressive and despotic Saudi regime is one of our “key allies in the region.” Withe friends like these……
If western governments thought the ‘Arab Spring’ would usher some form of liberal democracy in a region that has been ruled by absolute monarchs and dictators ever since the end of WW1, then they were seriously self-delusional.
Assad may be a nasty individual but DAESH and the Jihadis are a threat to humanity itself. After 9/11, 7/7, Madrid etc. Why did it take further atrocities before western governments started to realise who the real enemy is? And have they realised it? Or are western intelligence services still secretly aiding DAESH?
The Syrian conflict is rightly raised as being the subject as being some of the greatest lies. Unfortunately, the author of this article is one of the propagators by his claims of “The war that Bashar al-Assad has waged on the people of Syria …” A critical eye easily exposes our own flimsy propaganda: repeating blatant misrepresentations, constructing the narrative by selective editing huge parts while highlighting others- here are 5 examples:
1. This year’s siege of Madaya, a town controlled by rebels and surrounded by the Syrian Army. Civilians were being starved, but our media portrayed this as 100% by the Syrian Army. It never reported that Maydaya had been a predominantly loyalist town overwhelmed by the “rebels”, who controlled the town’s food supplies.
2. In 2012 the BBC “World Tonight” with Rupala Shah ran for several months regular updates of a web blog, “Gay Girl from Damascus”, purportedly from a Syrian woman writing harrowing blogs to her Canadian girlfriend on Iranian and Syrian govt forces committing atrocities. The UK press also ran it, until the author was revealed to be some chap in Scotland.
3. The 2013 East Ghouta Sarin chemical attacks on civilians in rebel-held areas while there was much media attention on the regime’s chemical weapon stocks. “Rebels” put up youtube videos, immediately deemed as “evidence” by the media that the Syrian govt was to blame while western govts considered military strikes. But months later several Turkish opposition MPs gave a Turkish paper evidence of sarin being delivered from Turkish facilities to Syrian “rebels” during August 2013. The University of Massachusetts also concluded from collected site material etc that it was very likely that the “rebels” were actually responsible.
4. The siege of Aleppo: Known to be very pro-Assad until summer 2012, when countryside “rebel” militia stormed the city. The resultant year- long siege of over 1.2million people cramped into western Aleppo was almost never reported by our media. But the 4 month govt siege of “Eastern Aleppo” just ended has been covered in apocalyptic terms.
5. The US former general Wesley Clarke pointed out that the US govt policy during the Bush years was to destabilise the Syrian government by exploiting sectarian divisions through its gulf allies. This PNAC (Richard Perle et al) initiative didn’t stop in 2008- Gulf countries continued sending their sons, arms and funds into Syria.
By the way, Nick T, I’d be very interested to hear why you have a greater claim to know what is best for the Syrian people than what the ORB opinion polling during 2015 in Syria found.
Remarkably, sample polling conducted across the country included “rebel” and ISIS held areas, as well as the govt & loosely allied Kurdish areas and those in .
You can find the results here: https://www.orb-international.com/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf
But highlighted points are:
-Syrian opinion on Assad is pretty evenly split at the most positive influence at 47%, as well as the least negative influence at 49% (all other players are seen more negatively).
Assad= 47%,
Iran = 43%,
Gulf countries= 37%,
FSA= 36%,
Nusra= 35%,
Syrian opposition Coalition (Western-backed) 26%
ISIS= 21%,
The most negative players for Syrians are:
ISIS- 76%
Syrian opposition Coalition- 72%
Nusra- 63%
FSA- 63%
Gulf countries -55%
Iran- 55%
Assad govt- 49%
Yes indeed Tomas HJ. Does Nick T speak Arabic? Does he know any Syrians?Has he been to Syria?
Good thoughtful piece.
Truth can be complicated and we do have a bit of a tendency to make it complicated. As Mike Kingston would often remind us ‘the lie is twice round the world while the truth is putting its boots on’.
In my youth I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Ethics. In there he asserts that ‘truth’ is more than a literal state of factual accuracy, it is also a moral state that requires to be affirmed. An example he gave stuck firmly in my mind: if he had been hiding a jewish family in his house and the SS had come to the door would it be truth to say that he was harbouring them or would it be truth to deny it? He was clear that the lie of saying ‘NO’ would be an affirmation of moral truth.
The complicated discourse about morality that would attend the ‘yes, but …’ alternative would be pointless when the stormtroopers barge past him mid sentence to seize the fugitives.
Right now there are modern stormtroopers like Farage, Johnson, Trump, and Putin who make daily use of the the power of an impactful lie. It is not enough to be truthful. We must also deliver impact.
The challenge for us is to construct our own ‘No’ instead of trying so many different ways to put across our ‘Yes, but …’
Could Nick T please list the journalists who we should support because they are beacons of honest and accurate reportage? I would be particularly interested to know the names of those who are reporting on events in Syria.
Who is turning a blind eye to war crimes?
Alistair Ross
In my youth Anthony Eden said Nassar is a Hitler and must be resisted. Was that true?
Or were British interests at stake in the Suez canal zone?
Does someone want to build a gas pipeline across Syria?
“the not-so-invisible hand of a resurgent Russia”
Wow! Russia is big on the map but it’s mostly tundra. In economic terms the IMF’s projections for 2016 put it at 12th in the world, slotting in between South Korea and Australia and we keep being told what a basket case its economy is. So which is it? Basket case or resurgent?
As far as Brexit and Trump go the plain fact is the political establishment has ignored ordinary people for years then totally misread the situation plus they ran absolutely dreadful campaigns and are casting about for someone, anyone, to blame.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/20/it-wasnt-the-russians-hillary-lost-because-she-blew-off-sanders-and-his-voters/
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-trump-232547
Russia does of course fund RT and some fairly obscure websites but Murdoch alone via Sky and his print media must vastly overmatch their modest output. So, it’s simply not credible that Putin had a material impact on either Brexit or Trump’s election. And if you argue that, what does it say about the MSM? Its credibility is indeed in the toilet after the last few years – is Putin to blame for that too?
The Russians possibly did hack Clinton’s emails – but probably lots of others did too. What else should she expect when she illegally kept classified information on insecure private servers? And BTW in US law improper handling of classified data is a felony with no defence of mistake, lack of intent or public interest. However, there is no proof the Russians did hack her still less that they used any material they found. There is more than a little ‘psychological projection’ (see Wikipedia) going on here.
As for Syria, the US has with others sponsored a war of aggression. And what partners! In practice, the US and UK have allied themselves with Salafist jihadists dedicated to murdering, enslaving or driving out anyone who disagrees with their medieval outlook. We’ve seen how that works in ISIS-land so no-one can claim ignorance. BTW wars of aggression are a war crime.
On the bright side, supplying arms to the jihadists is immensely profitable for the manufacturers especially when western taxpayers are picking up the tab. (/sarc).
“not spreading the falsehoods that infect social media”
Well, yes. There are lots of lies in social media. Falsehoods – outright, by mistake, by omission or by slant – also infect ALL other media.
The defence is freedom of speech – a fundamental right our forefathers struggled for over many years but now under attack as never before in my lifetime.
To suggest that ‘fake news’ is somehow a new or newly urgent problem is to open the door to some very dangerous manoeuvres such as social media platforms vetting what they carry. Freedom of speech can be just as threatened by the new oligarchs of media as by the traditional power of the state.
Yes, that means ALL media will continue to be a mess of conflicting ‘news’ and views that will often be difficult to sort out. But the alternative is to have someone sort it out for us which would lead directly to a new fascism. Life can be tough; get used to that and learn to live with it or hand over your brain to someone you don’t even know.
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act” (Anon, often attributed to Orwell).
You could always ask for evidence for any assertions which have been made. If there is none then there must be a presumption against.
Dear Nick, I agree 98% with you except one thing: in the Brexit campaign, only leave lied. The remain side made perfectly plausibe projections, all of which can still materialize. They might have erred in terms of timing depending on article 50 invocation, but no remain claim has been disproofed yet.
“I agree 98% with you except one thing: in the Brexit campaign, only leave lied.”
That is of course an entirely untrue statement.
Both sides lied, implied and obfuscated, and whether one did materially more of which than the other does not give you the right to whitewash away the stains from history of your preferred side.
Why is the reporting on and action in Syria so patchy and puzzling?
Is it accident or policy?
Has anyone any awareness and/or knowledge of Defence Minister Fallon’s actual or alleged statement that British military instructors have already arrived In Syria “to restore the combat capability of units of the moderate opposition which has retreated from Aleppo”?
In 2030 we will be £4300 worse off per person because of Brexit; the London property market will immediately collapse; we will enter an immediate recession; the stock market will plunge; it will be the end of civilization; the beginning of the Third World War; we will be at ” the end of the queue; there will be an immediate austerity budget which will require cuts and tax rises the week after Brexit; no one will want to do trade deals with the UK; our trade with the EU will collapse; investment into the UK will dry up; terrorists will cheer.
Remain lying? Never.