As James O’Brien astutely observed:
“The moral and intellectual compromises needed to sustain and disseminate campaign lies during the referendum created a cohort of conservative politicians that would become increasingly detached from both observable reality and any semblance of public integrity.”
As we enter the turbulent period of election purdah, we can expect a deluge of disinformation and misinformation regarding climate change and the necessity of urgent action, driven by an amoral government and the equally unscrupulous ideologues of Tufton Street, whose ultimate puppet masters are the fossil fuel industry.
The spectrum of deception
These lies will manifest across various messaging platforms, making it crucial for the electorate to recognize the hallmarks of deception.
Cherry-picking facts
Right-wing propagandists often cherry-pick data from legitimate research to distort facts for their own ends. A prominent example is the argument that more people die from cold than heat, conveniently ignoring the indirect effects of warming, such as the spread of vector-borne diseases, flooding, and drought. Moreover, more people are projected to die from both temperature extremes if emissions are not reduced.
Another can be seen in an article for The Times, in which coal mine owner Matt Ridley based a claim that ‘Arctic sea ice has declined hardly at all’ on a tiny anomalous dataset.
When she resigned, finance manager for the Murdoch press, Emily Townsend, said she could no longer work for an organisation that had run a “misinformation campaign […] that has tried to divert attention away from the real issue which is climate change”.
False equivalence
The cynical obfuscation extends beyond the print media. The BBC’s shift to moral relativism (excused as ‘impartiality’) has allowed the broadcaster to shy away from objective reporting on topics that might conflict with the government’s unsustainable growth agenda, fearing their charter might be revoked.
Journalist Emily Maitlis, in her McTaggart lecture following her resignation, highlighted widespread concerns within the BBC about a return to false equivalence presented as balanced debate. BBC Director of Editorial Policy and Standards David Jordan’s suggestion that the views of ‘flat earthers’, such as those of the Tufton street delayists, should be platformed flies in the face of their mandate: “to educate and inform.”
More subtle are the techniques of subliminal messaging.
Dog whistles
Semiotician Jacques Derrida posited that every text generates multiple realities: denotation shadowed by subtle connotations. In short, ‘dog whistles’. President of the Public Philosophy Network Ian Olasov explains the relevance of semiotics to propaganda:
“I think of dog whistles as falling under two basic types. [They are] tools for covertly or sneakily communicating […] morally suspect messages to a subset of the audience […] Or communicating something in a sort of sneaky or covert way below the level of the conscious awareness of your audience.”
The first type is evident in the use of violent trigger words such as ‘threat’, ‘chaos’, ‘hijacked’, and ‘mob’ scattered throughout a hit piece. This tactic has paved the way for peaceful activists being labelled as extremists, and the encouragement of vigilantism. A prime example is Douglas Murray’s article in The Telegraph titled ‘Extinction Rebellion’s eco-fanatics are the very definition of dangerous extremism’.
The latter can be seen in the strategies employed by “the primary American organisation pushing climate change scepticism”, The Heartland Institute, which was notorious for launching a poster campaign equating environmentalists with Charles Manson and Osama Bin Laden. It can also be observed in the frequent juxtaposition in the billionaire press of reports of peaceful demonstrations alongside photos of completely unrelated violent encounters.
As Waterloo chair in social and political philosophy at the University of Waterloo, Jennifer Saul says:
“Both kinds of dog whistles are powerful tools. The coded ones facilitate communication and organisation among people engaging in behaviour that violates societal norms. The others can manipulate people to act [or vote] in ways that they might not if they were aware of what was happening.”
Fig leaves
This is a form of deception that offers a veneer of respectability for opinions that might otherwise be seen as unacceptable.
By framing deceitful positions as rhetorical questions, commentators avoid making direct, rebuttable statements, instead sowing doubt without evidence. Journalists claiming to merely report what others are saying, or politicians conveying what they “hear on the doorstep”, absolve themselves of the need for verification.
And when journalists refer to ‘motorists’ or ‘activists’ in inverted commas, they create the illusion of vast nebulous cohorts, either supportive or targeted. Activist and blogger Paul Walter noted that The Times pioneered using single inverted commas to paraphrase contentious statements that were never actually said.
In the title of Guy Walter’s Mail on Sunday piece, ‘Did Putin Plot With Eco-Warriors To Halt Britain’s Fracking?’, misinformation is cleverly presented as speculation, sidestepping accusations of defamation or deceit.
Journalists will also hedge their bets with studied imprecision. A recent article in the Telegraph warned that, “replacing a traditional gas boiler with a heat pump can lower a home’s energy efficiency rating. A heat pump can cost up to £20,000 …” : the auxiliary verb easily overlooked and essential to duck accusations of misleading readers.
As Jennifer Saul observes:
“As this happens over and over again, ideas that would never have garnered mainstream attention in the past come to seem like normal parts of public discourse. And, with repetition and normalisation, they can seem increasingly plausible.”
We see here echoes of Goebbels’ well-known dictum: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”. But what is less known is his observation that: “The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
But ultimately this malevolence can be traced back to Niccolò Machiavelli whose 16th-century treatise on governing, The Prince, has since become known as a ‘dictator’s handbook’. His dictum: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
In his 2021 article, Zachary Rogers writes, “realpolitik requires the prince beware ambitious subordinates and prepare himself and his kingdom for foreign threats and internal disorder”. With rising xenophobia, wild accusations of a ‘woke’ deep state, and a confected fear of citizens who don’t adhere to ‘British values’, I don’t think it an overstatement to say that UK statecraft today is mired in his malignant influence.
Dog whistles and fig leaves: the propaganda war
Leo Strauss refers to Machiavelli as a “teacher of evil”, since he advises leaders to prioritise cruelty, violence, fear, and deception over commonly upheld virtues like justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and care for their populace: to win at any cost.
The dissemination and rebuttal of their propaganda is now the frontline of the war of survival that if won by the forces of the extreme right will be beyond Pyrrhic as they will die with the rest of us on a planet whose demise they will have hastened.
A key Machiavellian tenet is, “the biggest difference between most criminals and other people is that the criminals are stupid enough to get caught”.
Let’s ‘catch’ our present day ‘princes’ out at the ballot box on the 4 July – our own independence day – free from the tyranny of an oppressive, corrupt and wicked government.
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