If there is one wholesale conclusion to be drawn from the Afghan resettlement scheme scandal, it’s that a problem we have today is not so much a profusion of ‘misinformation’ but rather the suppression of genuine information. In Britain now, it’s not ‘fake news’ that causes widespread resentment and anger, but moves made by successive British governments to silence real news.
The authorities continue to make matters worse out of fear that the truth must not out
Ever since the masses decided to vote against their overlords in Britain and America in 2016 in the EU referendum and US presidential election of that year, the elites have propagated the belief that an unintelligent populace has been vulnerable to ‘misinformation’. This is the idea that the suggestible lower orders have only become persuaded by populism because they get their news from unreliable social media outlets.
Notwithstanding that there are myriad, genuine reasons behind the populist turn of the past ten years, what indisputably generates current indignation and fury are efforts to withhold information from the public. The decision by the previous Conservative administration to allow thousands of Afghans into the country secretly, and then by the successive Labour government to cover it up, is but the latest in a long line of fateful decisions to withhold the truth from the people.
Many became aware of this increasing inclination towards state secrecy during the last decade, as revelations of the grooming gangs scandal began to emerge. Not only did the extent of these horrors come fully to light in January this year, but so too did the lengths to which local authorities and police forces had gone to keep these crimes quiet. While their failure to act, out of fear of accusations of racism, became a further source of outrage, revelations made by Dominic Cummings last month that Whitehall officials wanted to go to court in 2011 to cover up the whole episode have heaped yet more disgrace upon the state. The cowardly and deceitful response to these crimes by those in charge – a response going right to the top – is as much remembered now as the crimes themselves.
Yet dishonesty, evasiveness and an active determination to withhold facts seem to have become the norm among those in charge. This was made clear after the mass stabbing and murder of three girls in Southport last July, the chief suspect of which, the public was simply and repeatedly told, was ‘from Cardiff’.
Were we told this because the authorities didn’t want to let it be known that the chief suspect, Axel Rudakubana, was born in the Welsh capital to Rwandan parents? Merseyside police and countless politicians knew shortly after the attack that he was in possession of terrorist material, but on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service, the public was not told.
It was the failure to disclose this information, one borne perhaps from a fear that it might inflame anti-immigrant sentiment, that paradoxically fanned the flames of anger which led to the riots that actually followed. The online rumour mill had indeed gone into overdrive, but it did so because many people don’t trust the government to tell them the truth about these matters anymore. The public had become especially driven to cynicism and disbelief following the Islamist attacks in Britain and Europe in the 2010s, after repeatedly being informed that the perpetrators had ‘mental health issues’ or other such mendacities.
Yet still the authorities continue to make matters worse out of fear that the truth must not out, lest the easily-aroused hoi polloi fly into a rage. Elsewhere this week we’ve read that the Home Office has refused to share the location of asylum hotels with food delivery companies such as Deliveroo, citing ‘safety concerns’ for hotel occupants. And only yesterday the Daily Telegraph reported that ministers once more fear riots will break out in Britain following the disclosures of the Afghan resettlement debacle.
There is indeed much anger in Britain today about immigration. Yet the anger has seldom been conspicuously directed towards the incomers themselves – the assaults against immigrants after Southport last year were remarkable because they were unusual. However, the ire has mostly and increasingly been aimed at the liberal overclass who first decided that large-scale immigration was a good idea – for ideological reasons and stemming from vested economic interests – and then have lied and continued to lie about its consequences. When the general public do voice their resentment at the ballot box, or via mainstream or social media, the elites then have the audacity to accuse the masses of being stupid or ill-informed.
The ultimate irony of our situation today, one in which the smothering of information has become the norm and expectation, is that it feeds a genuinely counter-factual, conspiratorial mindset. The language of ‘government cover-ups’ is rapidly becoming common parlance. This is the direct fault of governmental deceit and dishonesty over actual facts.
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