FREE SPEECH IN A TIME OF WAR

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Twitter is a place of anarchy, malicious vitriol, ill-will, racial hatred and partisan political venom. It is also an arena for the exercise of free speech and a forum for the exchange of views and, occasionally, enlightenment. Twitter is also a home, either from the left or right, for the opponents of free speech and unfettered discourse. Rarely does a day go by without a demand that someone should be silenced, ‘no-platformed’ or prosecuted. In some instances, the silencing involves less sophisticated methods, by subjecting ‘miscreants’ to a tsunami of vitriol and hate designed to drive them off twitter, women being disproportionately targeted.

Of course, social media like Twitter or Facebook, present extreme examples of the levels to which ‘debate’[sic] can descend, however, there does seem to be some relationship between the coarsening language to be found on Twitter and the level of exchange in the wider political world including the growing demand that others should be made to just ‘shut the fuck up!’

These tendencies reflect the impact, already seen in The United States, of the ‘culture wars,’ being fought between liberals and hard-line conservatives. Now imported to the UK by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Nigel Farage, intensified by Arron Banks and the Leave crowd. It is a war fought against liberalism, diversity, tolerance, respect for institutions, multiculturalism and anything defined as ‘political correctness’ and liberalism.

Born out of Newt Gingrich and Fox News during the Clinton years, it is a war fought by people who ostensibly declare themselves on the conservative right, but by people who have no time for traditional conservatism, - with its respect for the rule of law and civil discourse, - it is a dynamic force that embraces the traditions of 20th-century fascism and contemporary Putinism. It is a war fought, without regard for truth or evidence, it is in the form of the so-called alt-right a lawless cult personified by Donald Trump.

As these fascistic cultural warriors hate the EU and everything it stands for, Brexit was tailor-made for the culture wars and has been fought with all the weapons at their disposal by the hard right, from the Goebbels big lie to savvy use of social media and information gathering techniques afforded by internet technology.

The Remain camp didn’t know what hit it, like a Napoleonic general trying to understand cyber warfare it was only in defeat that it slowly began to realise what had happened and the scale of deceit and outright fraud perpetrated by both Leave organisations.

Across the Atlantic, an even greater fraud was about to be committed against the American people, in collaboration with Vladimir Putin’s anti-democratic mafia state. We had entered the ‘post-truth’ world in which lies, deceit and the disingenuous became the norm for the sitting US president, mirrored across the pond by the likes of Boris Johnson, Liam Fox, Victor Orban and a hundred other minor and major populists scurried out of the shadows like baby spiders from a disturbed nest. Truth became not only the first casualty in these culture wars but the primary target. 

LIES, DISINFORMATION AND  TARGETED MESSAGING    

Politicians, of course, have always lied, from the Athenaeum in Athens to Horatio Bottomley examples abound of liars, chances and scoundrels. However, such figures tended to be aberrations noticeable and, occasionally, held accountable precisely because they did stand out. We now have a political culture in which lying has become the norm. Liam Fox is a liar who habitually tells lies about the EU, and our prospects for foreign trade, but is he worse than Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis, Dominic Raab, Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Patterson?  Both Gove and Johnson headed up a campaign that has been found in breach of electoral law.

What then of the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition? May has repeatedly mislaid public and parliament on matters relating to Brexit, especially regarding the situation in Northern Ireland. As recently as last week she told the Labour party one thing and the Ulster Unionists the exact opposite. Such two-faced postures and dishonesty barely attract comment now. As to Corbyn barely a week passes without a lie, either about his past or his involvement of disciplinary cases involving antisemitism.

But the lies of May and Corbyn arise, as it were, from a swamp created by others, a permissive culture of lies arising out of the culture wars being waged by others, they are merely making the most of this climate.

Now it cannot be said often enough that the attack on truth as an essential component of a civilised society is not some accidental by-product, collateral damage of a wider struggle, but is the object of the struggle itself. For the likes of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon objective truth, facts and realities beyond their control have neither value nor meaning. The world for them is as modelling clay, to be shaped as they want. What is true is what they say is true.

To be clear I am not saying that some conspiratorial cabal gathers in darkened rooms deciding strategy. Boris Johnson, for example, a minor player in the culture wars tells lies because he has found, possibly to his surprise that he can get away with it. It is this background of ubiquitous lying that enables him to ‘get away with it.’ If you want a villain then perhaps you should imagine an amoral computer nerd working for Cambridge Analytica or a sun-starved young woman working for Russian intelligence working several fake Twitter accounts, or perhaps just a pre-programmed computer pumping out disinformation. The aim is to firstly to properly target information that reinforces existing prejudices, confirms, develops and enhances paranoid outlooks, suspicions and anxieties. Information that undermines confidence in democratic institutions, elections and representatives and sells an alternative scenario in which they take centre stage. It’s their turn now, ignored and pushed around for way too long, time to take back control, make America great again, recover lost freedoms and past glories. Of objective facts, of ‘truth’ there is none, to even ask the question, “is this true?” For some smartly dressed consultant working for Cambridge Analytica or The Taxpayers Alliance, the naivete of this remark is guaranteed to produce a smirk. For it is clear that you obviously don’t get it! The purpose is not to disseminate truth, whatever that might be, but to send out carefully targeted messages that will support the client’s goals and objectives. If people believe that migrants are keeping down wages and overburdening the healthcare system and that helps our clients cause, then the job is to reinforce and amplify those beliefs. And I mean ‘amplify,’ for it is from this very milieu, with their opinions validated shout the loudest to silence others. The consequences in terms of polarisation, division and lack of trust in the mainstream media are of no concern.

As the ‘stabbed in the back/betrayal’ myth is peddled and takes hold, it will be amplified by a million voices paid for by so-called dark money. For it is a potent myth, one with a proven track record.  Free speech has, of course, always accommodated liars, with the caveat that they face consequences when exposed.  No more, it seems, consequently, free speech becomes seriously devalued. Is this compatible with a pluralistic democracy? I think you know the answer.