We do not live in a "post truth" world

[Póg mo 1,749]

 

We do not live in a “post-truth” world, neither in the Middle East nor in the West – nor in Russia, for that matter. We live in a world of lies. And we always have lived in a world of lies.

 

We do not live in a “post-truth” world, neither in the Middle East nor in the West – nor in Russia, for that matter. We live in a world of lies. And we always have lived in a world of lies.

Just take a look at the wreckage of the Middle East with its history of people’s popular republics and its hateful dictators. They feast on dishonesty, although they all – bar the late Muammar al-Gaddafi – demand regular elections to make-believe their way back to power.

Now, I suppose, it is we who have regular elections based on lies. So maybe Trump and the Arab autocrats will get on rather well. Trump already likes Field Marshal/President al-Sissi of Egypt, and he’s already got a golf course in Dubai. That he deals in lies, that he manufactures facts, should make him quite at home in the Middle East. Misogyny, bullying, threats to political opponents, authoritarianism, tyranny, torture, sneers at minorities: it’s part and parcel of the Arab world.

And look at Israel. The new US ambassador-to-be – who might as well be the Israeli ambassador to the US – can’t wait to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. He seems to feel more antagonism towards the Jewish left in America than the Palestinians who claim East Jerusalem as a capital and whose state he has no interest in. Will Trump enrage the Arabs? Or will he get away with a little domestic rearrangement of the Israel embassy on the grounds that the Gulf Arabs, at least, know that Israel’s anti-Shiism – against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah – fits in rather well with the Sunni potentates who’ve been funding Isis and Jabhat al-Nusrah and all the other jolly jihadis?

I suspect that “post-truth” has more to do with social media than mendacious elections. The use of social media in reporting the battle of eastern Aleppo has been extraordinary, weird, dangerous, even murderous, when not a single Western journalist could report the eastern Aleppo war at first hand. Much damage has been done to the very credibility of journalism – and to politicians – by the acceptance of one side of the story only when not a single reporter can confirm with his or her own eyes what they are reporting.

 

We handed journalism to social media – and the armed men who control the areas from which these reports came know that they can pull the same trick again next time. They will, in Idlib. But this problem in the region is much, much bigger than a Syrian province. It’s now about the malleability of facts across the whole Middle East.

The 250,000 “trapped” Muslims of eastern Aleppo – now that 31,000 have chosen to go to Idlib, many more to western Aleppo – appear to have been somewhat fewer than 90,000. It’s now possible that at least 160,000 of the civilians “trapped” in eastern Aleppo did not actually exist, but no one says so. That vital statistic of 250,000, the very punctuation mark of every report on the besieged enclave, is now forgotten or ignored (wisely, perhaps) by those who quoted it.

Nor does anyone tell us about the civilians of Palmyra now that Isis has returned. And what about Mosul? Weren’t we about to liberate one million civilians trapped there by the jihadis – no less deserving, surely, than the 250,000 or 100,000 or 90,000 or fewer civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo?

Now the Americans say that Iraqi forces are “regrouping” and “repositioning” around Iraq’s second city; but “regrouping” and “repositioning” is what the British Expeditionary Forces did on their retreat to Dunkirk.

How can we complain about the lies of Trump and the Brexiteers when we journalists are chopping up the facts of the Middle East? Still, I notice in our newspapers and on television, Israel’s wall is a “security fence”, its colonies are “settlements” which are “disputed” rather than illegal.

Can we really shake our heads in disbelief at electoral lies when we have been lying to our readers and viewers for years?

My favourite journalistic philosopher, Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times, got it right this month when he wrote that “the mendacity of politics in 2016 has indeed been astonishing both in its brazenness and in its effectiveness. The claim by the Leave side in the Brexit referendum that £350m a week would be taken from the United Kingdom’s contribution to the European Union’s budget and put into the National Health Service was quickly and comprehensively demolished. Being caught out in a lie did not matter... it was a proof of a weird kind of authenticity. Flagrant lies showed that you were not one of the experts that the leading Brexiteer Michael Gove invited UK voters to despise and ignore...”

Lying, according to O’Toole, “floats freely, with no pretence to be anchored in evidence”. Nowhere could this be more fearfully represented than in denial of the Jewish Holocaust (or the Armenian Holocaust, for that matter) when social media – O’Toole specifically names Facebook and Google – “now direct users towards fake news stories and sickening neo-Nazi propaganda with barely a shrug of the shoulders. The companies evoke in their defence a notion of the ‘diversity of perspectives’, an Orwellian euphemism in which the belief that the Holocaust never happened is as valid as the knowledge that it did.”

I’ve never accepted the nonsense about Nazism and the American right. Trump is not Hitler, although there is a kind of theatrical fascism about his performance. He’s more buffoon than satanic, more Duce than Fuehrer. Cesare Rossi, an early collaborator of Mussolini, once described his leader as moving quickly “from cynicism to idealism, from impulsiveness to caution, generosity to cruelty... moderation to intransigence. It was as though he never knew his genuine self and was always striving after some counterfeit impersonation.” Could there be a better description of Trump? As Mussolini’s philosopher of fascism, Giovanni Gentile, said, “laughter is of the devil, and true believers do not smile except in bitter sarcasm.”

That grim use of the word “laughter” is a key to this. The Second World War finished before I was born. But there are distressing habits which those on the right of European politics demonstrate when they wish to sneer at their enemies, characteristics which I find deeply disturbing. It is the politics of “the last laugh”; of the humiliation of those who thought they knew better and must now rue the day of their supposed superiority. Just count how many headlines and writers have referred to Trump’s “last laugh”. It is vicious and vengeful.

 

Continued on link...http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-post-truth-world-living-the-lies-of-others-a7500136.html

 

 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2016 by Póg mo

[MarkPerry 488]

After a few lines, I don't read stuff like this.  Keep it simple and short

 

 

 

[Póg mo 1,749]

2 minutes ago, MarkPerry said:

After a few lines, I don't read stuff like this.  Keep it simple and short

 

 

 

Yes, I know you like simple. 

[Póg mo 1,749]

Seriously though, reading and attempting to expand your knowledge of a topic is traditionally considered a good thing, otherwise when you post on forums or open your mouth in educated company, you run the risk of sounding like a fool.

[MarkPerry 488]

6 minutes ago, Póg mo said:

Yes, I know you like simple. 

Cliffnotes version. I have a tad of ADD

[Póg mo 1,749]

25 minutes ago, MarkPerry said:

Cliffnotes version. I have a tad of ADD

I am very ADD, so summarizing is not an easy task for me. Sorry, but you will have to read it for yourself. 

[Boiler 45,663]

I have just been reading the Guardian, definition of post truth.

[Póg mo 1,749]

42 minutes ago, Boiler said:

I have just been reading the Guardian, definition of post truth.

Huh?

[Boiler 45,663]

5 minutes ago, Póg mo said:

Huh?

Facts are sacred....

[Póg mo 1,749]

Just now, Boiler said:

Facts are sacred....

I still don't follow. The article I posted is from the independent. Why are discussing the guardian newspaper? They are both English newspapers, but that doesn't mean they are the same. 

[Boiler 45,663]

Similar, both deal in post truth.

[Póg mo 1,749]

4 hours ago, Boiler said:

Similar, both deal in post truth.

Do you havs anything specific to say or are you just passing gas? P.s. you really should the article first before commenting.

[Boiler 45,663]

22 minutes ago, Póg mo said:

Do you havs anything specific to say or are you just passing gas? P.s. you really should the article first before commenting.

I read it when it was first posted, last night I think.

What amuses me is that this was posted in an organ that has been passing off distorted opinion pieces as news for a long time. I was wondering if anybody was going to point out the one sided nature of his article in the Comments section, I do not disagree with the principle, just that it seems to imply it is only one side doing it which is patently nonsense, Graunidad and Indy being classic examples.

I am not religious but this came to mind:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

 

[TBoneTX 45,522]

Supposed to quote just a little of other articles, then supply the "continued at" link.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

22 hours ago, MarkPerry said:

After a few lines, I don't read stuff like this.  Keep it simple and short

 

 

 

 

Agree I think the DNC was proven this year to be post truth