Lying for Britain

For me, the most shocking thing about the government Commission on Race and Ethnic Diversities' report which concluded that there is actually no such thing as institutional racism in the UK isn't that it is clearly a fabrication, nor that it tries to justify this country's history of slavery and Imperial exploitation, but that people are actually shocked by the fact that the government can think that it can pass off such a patent pack of lies as fact without challenge.  Isn't this exactly what we've spent years working up to?  What do you think the last few decades of blatant, bare faced lying on the part of those in power has been about?  Whether it as all those denials of corruption during the Major years, Blair and his dodgy dossier, Cameron and his falsifications of the economic situation in order to justify austerity or Boris Johnson every time he opens his mouth, the underlying strategy was clear: to normalise the idea that lies are the truth.  That anything authority says must be accepted without challenge.  Even when there is overwhelming evidence that it is untrue.  This has been backed up by the parallel strategy of the media, particularly the right wing print media, also consistently lying.  Most of the stories they carry are clearly 90% fabrication, yet are accepted as truth by a large proportion of the public who have been successfully programmed not to question the veracity of such stories.

Successive governments have weakened education in this country, suppressing the teaching of subjects which might lead to students making independent critical assessments of popular narratives and openly condemning any teaching which appears to encourage students to question the status quo as 'subversive'.  With people increasingly inured into unquestioningly accepting what they are told, the authorities now ensure that their version of the 'truth' is disseminated via their media outlets as quickly as possible, knowing that if it is read first, then it is more likely to be accepted, even if subsequent facts contradict it - the original false narrative will endure.  How else do we explain the fact, if asked, most people will tell you how the Brazilian guy shot by mistake by the Metropolitan Police during the aftermath of the 7/7 terror attacks ran away from the police and jumped the barriers at the tube station, when CCTV footage clearly shows that no such thing happened?  By the time that footage became public, the other narrative had been embedded in the public consciousness thanks to the relentless efforts of the press.  Having got away with one murder pretty much unscathed, it has been possible for the police to use similar disinformation and character assassination of victims to do it again and again.  It doesn't have to be illegal deaths they are covering up - just look at the way Avon and Somerset Constabulary immediately reported that some of its officers had suffered broken bones, even a punctured lung, during the recent 'Kill the Bill' demonstrations in Bristol - it was headline news across the media for a couple of days, discrediting the protestors as violent thugs.  By contrast, their subsequent retraction of these claims came and went from the news in a few hours.  So, please don't claim to be surprised by this latest pack of lies - it's the new normal.