THE TRUTH WILL OUT

Mark Twain famously complained in 1897, when a false rumour spread widely, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. We laugh away this error and enjoy Twain’s quip. For generations we have blithely assumed that “The truth will out”, that, no doubt after some delay, a trail will be discovered connecting one event with its perpetrator(s) and an undisputed “fact” will be proven. This easy assumption probably no longer holds good. Governments and politicians have long distorted, twisted and managed information but now everyone plays this unholy game – the conventional media, oppositions globally, the criminal classes, preening technologists and unregulated social media. The luckless citizen hardly knows where to turn if he wants to know if this or that assertion is objectively true – he struggles through a jungle of fabrication, a miasma of doubt and a swamp of contradiction. Mark Twain would not see anything to joke about.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I naively once supposed that lies would never emanate from The President of the United States. Remember the George Washington myth and his hatcheting of his father’s cherry-tree? “I cannot tell a lie” declared 6-year-old Saint George. Well, many Presidents have declined to answer pointed questions and have been at least “economical with the truth”. Richard Nixon (Watergate passim) and Bill Clinton (Monica Lewinsky passim) have told blatant whoppers. Barack Obama seemed reasonably straight in the revered tradition but his successor Donald Trump would not recognise the truth if it floated in his soup.

Would you buy a second-hand car from these guys?

It is unfitting for a Brit to criticise our friendly ally, the sovereign US republic, for electing The Donald President. Yet I must say that this choice seems strange as Trump lacks knowledge of the world, lacks the gravitas associated with Presidents and he perpetuates falsehoods. Trump’s ignorance is heroic. He invents mythical African countries, thinks Israel is not in the Middle East, mixes up European countries and knows nothing of Russian history. It would not matter in a property developer, but he is President of the USA! He tweets in a juvenile fashion and endlessly boasts about his personal talents and accomplishments to the world’s embarrassment. Worse, he belittles women, demonises blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, sowing unnecessary discord. Fact-checking sites are overwhelmed by his misinformation. Trump does not attract trust, which his office certainly should.

Trump, the embodiment of mendacity

In fact this disassociation of truth from event pre-dates Trump by very many years. W. Randolph Hearst notoriously helped precipitate the Spanish-American War of 1898 by claiming in his popular newspapers that the sinking of the US battleship the Maine in Havana harbour was the work of the Spanish. This was “fake news” as no cause of the Maine explosion was ever found. The strains of the Great War added to the wall of lies. Alleged atrocities by the Germans on Belgian nuns were luridly reported in the British press but were found to be false. British official propaganda exaggerated indiscriminate U-boat torpedoing (e.g. the Lusitania sinking) and had a marked effect on moving US public opinion towards entering the War. In reaction, in the 1920s and 1930s stories about atrocities in Turkey, famine in India and, tragically, re-armament and cruel persecution in Nazi Germany took time to gain credence. Hence the horror when the grim reality emerged after the war.

WW2 saw techniques in fake news develop rapidly. Goebbels had seized upon The Big Lie – a constantly repeated large-scale lie that can eventually be believed – pretending that the Jews were aiming at world domination, thus justifying their ruthless elimination. In Russia, with no government tradition of veracity anyway, Stalin lied about all and everything, war aims, casualties, military progress, seeing deadly enemies of the state in even the most muted critics, who paid a fatal price.

Fast forward to the self-righteous but flabby democracies of the EU and the UK in 2017. The Brexit process has given birth to a mountain of misinformation and distortion. The referendum campaign saw the Brexiteers claim that leaving will free up £350 million weekly to spend instead on the NHS. The Leave campaign persisted with this story even when the Office of National Statistics warned this figure was seriously misleading as it ignored counteracting exemptions. The Remainers unleashed a flood of scare stories forecasting balance of payment collapse, industrial paralysis, regional unrest and a mass exodus of talent – none of which has happened. Even after the democratic Leave vote was confirmed, a chorus of gloom and doom still emanates from the Remainers, egging on the EU to inflict as much damage as possible – a strange stance for presumably loyal citizens to take. The Brexit “negotiations” are not going well as the EU is not negotiating in good faith – it has no interest in a deal and seeks only to achieve revenge for the UK daring to defy the EU diktat. All this merely strengthens Leaver resolve.

So Brussels trades in lies, disseminated by unofficial briefings, last minute staged delays, which had so demoralised the Greeks, and hypocritical assertions of friendship. Is it true that a hollow-cheeked, wild-eyed Theresa May pleaded for help from Juncker to save her from the hard-exit Tories? The gloss on this (no doubt meaning to appeal to daughter of the rectory, Theresa) that there is strength in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9) would not butter many parsnips here in Folkestone and merely seems abject. The author of this tale is said to be Juncker’s eminence grise Martin Selmayr, known in Brussels as “The Monster”.

EU Hitman Martin Selmayr

The Brexit talks are covered in deceit: the US President has no credibility: what hope is there for clarity and logic in resolving Catalonia’s differences with Spain or the political future of Syria? Public opinion is too tolerant of falsehood – now there’s a good cause to be tackled by social media. How wonderful it would be at last to breathe pure air, see clear skies and hear honest dialogue!

SMD

29.10.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017