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He doesn't know which way to jump (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
I have been thinking about truth a lot lately. Does it matter? Have we finally reached a consensus on Nietzsche’s claim that “there are no facts only interpretations”? Or is that consensus breaking down?
Today, we simply accept that leaders lie; not just occasionally but habitually. Trump did. Johnson does. Putin got there way before either of them. And yet, strangely, part of Johnson’s appeal has always been said to be his “authenticity”. He is a real person. His history of lying did not bother many people, nor his history of betraying everyone he has worked for or every woman he has been involved with. The electorate could not be expected to know the truth about Borisconi’s career.
I started calling him that because he always was — pre-Trump — the only politician with a similarly acute understanding of the incestuous relationship between politicians and the media. Surely he could be king of both? Or so he thought. He could control what he understood to be the most important thing about power, which was not “truth” but “the narrative”. His narrative was “fun”. For Bunga Bunga parties just substitute batshit-crazy Jennifer Arcuri and a Christmas quiz.
But things fall apart. Some lies matter more than others. This must have been a shock to Borisconi because the visual evidence of his lies — the video, the photo — cuts through. No amount of wordplay or random classical references can make people unsee what they have seen. Mirabile dictu!
Just as the CCTV footage of Matt Hancock snogging his bit on the side did for him, so these photos did for Downing Street. Those who worked for Borisconi were sent out to lie for him, and then he lied about them too. This we know for certain. It is not an idea, an opinion, or an interpretation. It is a fact.
But it’s not necessarily the end for him. He may stagger on until the next wave of the virus has passed. Who, quite frankly, would want to take over right now? He may chuck it in, not because he suddenly acquires a sense of morality or even shame, but because he is skint and there is money to be made in them there hills of after-dinner buffoonery.
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SubscribeThere I was thinking that redpilling meant finally seeing the truth. Oh well, there are a few men on this site that are hardened mens rights activists and are sure to make some enthusiastic commentary.
On the subject of leaders lying – why select the past president of the US (together with the current prime minister of the UK) to illustrate the point… why not use the present president? There are after all compilations of the outrageous lies Biden has told over many years – thank you TV. The reference to Trump was mediocre stereotypical writing.
Then talking of lying, what about this whopper “anti-vaxxers do not believe in science” – stated as fact.
Why? Because your presence on Unherd is a temporary inconvenience with your temporary allies against the trannies. Once you’ve seen off the trannies you’ll go back to Guardian la la land where you belong to resume your selective diatribing against the right, ignoring the sins of the left.
Lesley van Reenen is no Guardianista!
Davids comment is directed to Suzanne Moore not Lesley, the thought of Lesley writing for the Grievance is a funny one though. That building full of safe space snowflakes might literally melt once she started talking sense to them.
Haha. I largely ignore The Guardian, but in the past few days so many panicked Guardian headlines came down my Facebook timeline that I felt moved to comment this morning.
Obviously. Some people really are thick.
Cool guy
I think you meant to post this as a comment not a reply.
Er, I didn’t but thanks for the tip.
You can take the person out of the Guardian,but can never take the Guardians bulshit out of the person!
It worked for me though. I was a faithful Guardian reader since student days, until about five years ago when I couldn’t stand the woke rubbish any longer. I don’t think there’s much G BS left in me by now!
Me too. But you saw through the BS quicker than me.
Interesting that when you are sagging off another commentator, you use the word “trannies”, which you well know is both insulting and not a true description of the people you mean. Maybe you think you are witty. Unfortunately for you, it simply makes you look ignorant.
Is ‘trannies’ Unherd?
“mediocre stereotypical writing” is the hallmark of Suzanne Moore’s work. I don’t understand how she manages to keep her place at DT or UH. I don’t think having been ostracized by her Guardian’s brethren is sufficient.
I’m sorry? What sort of science do anti-vaccers believe in? Homeopathy? Reiki? Alchemy?
People who are Covid vaccine hesitant, are not all anti-vaxxers. They in fact DO follow different sides of the safety argument (as discussed by scientists), as opposed to believing compromised media outlets, non-impartial organisations (think the FDA) and many compromised scientists. Some of these scientists and doctors are not compromised, but do not speak out for fear of losing their livelihoods.
What would you call medical scientists, doctors, nurses, immunologists, virologists, GP’s, pathologists, vaccine designers, data analysts, epidemiologists etc who have reservations about the Covid vaccine then? “Anti science”? I can only assume that after +18 months of this drama you have still not looked properly at any independent thinking by qualified experts outside of the mainstream narrative…
My sister is just the same, highly educated, busy and completely trusting of letting the media and government tell her what is going on, never letting any glaring contradictions puzzle her for more that a few minutes. I am the other type and perhaps sceptical/contrary by nature. I have watched/read hours and hours of testimony and interviews by qualified scientific experts in order to satisfy myself. I have filtered out the nutters who believe in Atlantis and alchemy and despite being fully vaccinated at a travel clinic in 2017 with all the recommended protections I am confident in my risk/benefit decision not to take part in this “experiement”.
Any day now I expect to transmute lead into gold. Wanna buy stock in my company? I’ll make you a good deal as you will be getting in on the bottom floor.
Yes, kind of funny she talks about politicians lying and then casually tosses out that whopper. Extra funny considering how well known the phrase is. But we should accept her lie, apparently, because it’s different when she does it
“anti-vaxxers do not believe in science” – this bizarre statement just makes my head twist into knots if I try to take it seriously, especially the patented “believe in science” part. I can only make sense of it by considering it to be used as a tool to disparage and signal rather than have any actual meaning.
Also, when it comes to leaders who lie. Yes, it is part of the job. At the same time, I think that our Mr. Biden really doesn’t differentiate between truth and lie as much as between what will further his agenda or not.
Like when Biden stole Neil Kinnock’s biography?
I got no further than:
‘Today, we simply accept that leaders lie; not just occasionally but habitually. Trump did. Johnson does. Putin got there way before either of them.’
Merkel ? Nein
Obama ? Hapana
Madame Trudeau ? Est-ce que vous plaisantez ?
St Jacinda Twinkle-Dust ? Oooooh, NO !!
Should I have read further ? What’s the point ?
I thought exacy the same. On the Trump v Obama lying scale there is one clear winner and it isn’t the one she referenced. And Trump in a lying competition with Hilary Clinton wouldn’t be allowed as they are clearly at different weight levels. Clinton is a heavyweight and Trump a bantam weight.
I’m glad to have Suzanne Moore here, it means I’ve nearly filled out my exiled Guardian writers bingo card. If Onan Jones or George Montybont writes an article for unherd I win a car.
Maybe Unherd is actually a UN refugee camp.
OJ is the hero of my heroic couplet satire The Wokeiad:-
Wokeness observes it all, and is well pleased
To see the body politic diseased.
And yet one element eludes her eye,
One piece is missing from the jigsaw lie.
“It wants,” she snarls, “a useful idiot,
Some naive kidult who resents his lot,
Some milquetoast b3ll3nd, wet behind the ears
Some thirty summer suckling prone to tears. 180
His name is Legion, though, for he is many,
His kind’s superfluous and two a penny.
I face a cute embarrassment of choice.”
Just then is heard a chafing, peevish voice,
The whine of angel fallen into Hell,
Not so much ringing as to crack a bell.
Wokeness looks down to see who harshly moans
And fixes basilisks on O___ J___.
Half Oxon scholar and half stream of p155
A Gaveston unsponsored by Marquis, 190
Vile parcel of caught dirt from Shoreditch pub,
A chrysalid which hatched a writhing grub,
A scribe who now the noble chav defends
And now with fierce polemic gammon rends.
Today, quite out of countenance, young J___
For his oppressive whiteness thus atones,
Reclined like Chatterton without his looks
Upon his bed of anti-racist books:
‘Why I’ll No Longer To Pale Cracker Talk’,
‘100 Recipes For Curing Pork’, 200
‘On The Fragility Of Mr Snow’,
‘Laugh At The Tears Of Mrs Wypipo’.
A hundred other tomes haphazard spill
O’er unwashed coffee cup and unpaid bill.
While J___, this farouche starveling Jabba Hut
Troubles deaf Heaven with his scuttlebut.
Well done. I hope to see this piece anthologized alongside Pope, Dryden and the wicked Earl of Rochester.
Thanks, I’d love that, but I wouldn’t dream of comparing myself to Pope’s genius.
At first I thought this was about O.J. Simpson. Then I was just confused. Happens a lot lately.
Yes this obvious partisan list spoiled the point. Politicians lie. It’s in the job description. I went to University in the early 80s to study politics which I had always been interested in and still am. I intended fully to pursue a career in politics. I had the opportunity to be involved with people that went on to have decent political careers. What I couldn’t do though was change my mind and my opinion when a policy changed. I was unable to ignore inconvenient facts. Unwilling to go along to get along, I wasn’t very clubbable. I reaslised that I was no good at politics. I was, in fact, cured.
To Suzanne’s list you could add the duplicity of Starmer campaigning to get Corbyn into No10 and stating boldly that Corbyn would be a good PM. And 3 months later throw him out of the Labour Party for anti-semitism.
Or you could look at the LibDems criticising Labour from the left when Labour was in office and then joining a coalition with the Tories in 2010.
They are all liars, cheats, and calculating manipulators of facts and narratives. All of them. So let’s get over that and then we can understand what is happening in politics, and in wider society, a little better.
You can take the journalist out of the Guardian, but you can’t take the Guardian out of the journalist.
Exact.
“Will facts and statistics change their minds? I know now that we are living in a profoundly anti-science moment. Anti-vaxxers do not believe in science.”
Has Suzanne Moore been out and asked a statistically representative sample of anti-vaxxers about their beliefs? Can she point to a reliable study? If not the she herself is making a claim which she cannot substantiate, which itself is “profoundly anti-science”.
Yes, she has lumped all “anti-vaxxers” together.
I suspect not many people who chose not to be vaccinated would say that they are against science (I have no figures to back this up). I haven’t come across deliberately anti-science comments in UnHerd, although we are hardly representative of the population.
I think most of us either look at different scientific sources, or interpret them differently. Maybe some of us look at unreliable sources. It’s hard to avoid using what we read to support our existing beliefs, and not to restrict what we read to sources that we agree with.
It’s human nature, and maybe something that evolved to aid the survival of our tribe
Climate bedwetters do the same. If you question one iota of their religion or the whole thing, you’re a denier. There are no gradations.
It’s a useful indicator of bad faith.
Does Suzanne Moore know what an “anti-vaxxer” is? I am so sick and tired of this derogatory, lazy, insulting, uselessly generic label being used by people who really should know better. She should also know that many of those she might consider it fit and proper to apply this label to have spent the last two years educating themselves about science rather simply swallowing the poisonous misinformation served up on a daily basis by deluded and / or compromised mainstream journalists and politicians. That’s the real assault on the truth.
Best comment of the day
This term ‘anti-vaxxer’ is bandied glibly about but people who use it never seem to question what it means. I’m one apparently, because I haven’t had the covid jabs for medical reasons, but I spent many years in science and research, so I’m hardly anti-science. Likewise, I know several other quite ordinary, sensible people who are happy to ‘believe’ in science (and it’s not a flipping religion, fgs), but have also declined the vaccines because, for example, they’ve already had covid. None of us are anything like a neighbour of mine, who is a real Piers Corbyn-style conspiracy theorist and thinks the vaccines contain alien DNA or microchips, put there by the Illuminati. He’s hilarious to talk to and mad as a box of frogs, yet seems to be the rare extreme who ‘represents’ the unvaccinated, aka ‘plague rats’ as we’ve been called. Ridiculous.
The people I know who have refused the vaccine have done so because it has been cultured on cell lines derived from an aborted baby. I’ve decided that it’s nevertheless morally acceptable to have the vaccine, but I have great respect for their principles.
I agree with the author about the importance of the distinction between truth and falsehood, illusion and reality. But I’m afraid that, for such a brief piece, too many issues are being tackled at once.
What is under discussion?
A. Is it the propensity of politicians to lie? That is, they know the truth, but misrepresent it deliberately. Here, we the public – knowing that politicians sometimes lie – adopt a sceptical stance towards their utterances.
B. Or is it the alarming trend for some individuals and groups to abandon reality and reason? In other words (unlike the politicians) they don’t know the difference between truth and falsehood; they are mentally living in a world where transwomen can have abortions. They believe something which is impossible. They are deluded.
C. Or is it, like the 17-year-old girl talking to Keanu Reeves, who seems to accept that there is a difference between reality and illusion, but says ‘Who cares if it’s real?’ They are aware of illusion, but happily accept it.
A. Liars; but we know their game, we can make allowances. B. Nutters; but, disturbingly, law-makers, the police, universities, the media, pander to their delusions. (And why are they doing this?) C. A new generation who are not liars or nutters, but just don’t care about reality.
A, B, or C: which is the most terrifying?
I vote for option D.
B
Why stop at Johnson and Trump unless you’re trying to get your Guardian job back?
Every statesman in my adult lifetime has lied to get elected and then lied again to get things done when in office. Electors know this is the deal and price it in when they vote.
“I’m so tired of writing about the mendacity and entitlement of the man”
And, given her history in the left wing media, Suzanne Moore ventures into extreme irony. Does she have even a smidgeon, an atom, of self-awareness?
all the while talking about the politicians’ tendency to lie… The irony is palpable…
Reality may have something to do with the sense of smell. Everywhere is sterile now in terms of smells and scents compared to the olden days. In the old days, in abundance, we had the smell of used ashtrays, cigar smoke, the tape in cassettes, tea urns and sodden tea bags, of heady petrol stations, coal fires, old fur coats, shoe polish, perfume (cheap), dampness, dank and warm beer, mantle-piece-fastened socks being dried up as they dangled over the fire, cathode-ray-tube television, leather seats, and combinations of some of these things in a location: think whisky and what have you. No wonder people talk excitedly today about being in the bazaars of Morocco or wherever. The sights, the … smells.
How can the young today see the reality of fictional film when they have never even seen recording tape? They really do must think the real world is as real as the virtual world. But they miss out on a world without smells. The extractor fans today are the best things since sliced bread.
In the old days, people used soap and hot water to clean tables. Now they are there with their disinfectant spray guns ready to blast to death, like the gun-slinging cowboy, the few crumbs on the table top by showering the whole restaurant in a fug of chemical spray. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh! Oh … ahem, for the old days! Mmmm.
Back in the days before Covid, I worked in a corporate that had little chemical sanitizer pods everywhere. I enthusiastically avoided the chemicals and was happier living with a bit of dirt.
This constant spraying of sanitizer cannot be a good thing.
It might well cause some allergies and probably does.
I suspect that smell has a strong link to reality because it has evolved differently in the brain from the other senses. Smells have very strong associations to events in ones life but they are not relayed to the cortex through the thalamus in the way other senses are. Recollection is very limited and you cannot imagine a made-up smell in the way you can sound and vision.
Ms Moore,
You’ve spent the majority of your journalistic career at the Guardian – a newspaper that now delivers a “curated reality” to its readers that is every bit as divorced from “objective reality” as those you choose to criticise in your article.
It’s a wonder you hadn’t noticed.
I read the Guardian for many years, when it was committed to fearless journalism. Any journalist or editor who had a genuine interest in printing the truth, without forcing it through the prism of Guardian-approved orthodoxy, should shudder at what you have all done to the legacy of that once-serious newspaper.
I’m sorry to say it is only when you were ostracised and denounced by your former colleagues – for daring to have strayed from the group-think – that you noticed the hive-mind, though, incredibly and somewhat self-servingly – you still seem to give them a pass for the blatant untruths that the Guardian puts out, in favour of just complaining about the Tories …. AGAIN.
You might regain a bit of credibility if, alongside pointing out the lies, spin and distortions of those with whom you politically disagree, you also criticised the Guardian. Pandering to the intellectual smugness of their ever-dwindling readership by giving them consoling half-truths and blatant untruths is not a very edifying journalistic practice, is it? And yet you remain curiously silent on that.
As someone who first became aware of politics during the time of Clinton and Blair, I find it astonishing that we are supposed to consider Boris Johnson a uniquely pernicious liar.
Similarly, Donald Trump is as unscrupulous as they come, but the same people who affected such disgust at his lies and prevarications enjoined Americans to vote the Clintons back into the White House. In other words, the lies only seem to matter when they’re said by someone you already despise.
Very true!
I fear we are on the verge of a mental health crisis – among anti-Boris journalists . In a couple of months, the Tories will be back ahead in the polls. In a couple of years Boris will win another majority. What will these poor scribblers do then?
Dunno, once the Brexit bounce is over I’m not sure what’s going to keep boris around. The conservatives may win in a couple of years. Boris is going to flounder from one disaster to another.
When Covid cases go up, Tory poll leads drop (or if it’s Christmas, disappear).
I don’t think staffers in No 10 having a few illicit drinks will be any more damaging in the long term than Dom Cummings’ driving escapade or Matt Hancock’s extramarital activity. I think journalists are getting overexcited.
I expect that once the current omicron wave passes through, polls will revert to Con +5 territory.
Caste based rights are funny things. Perhaps the author could explain why this supposed right of women to abortion should be paid for by the tax donkeys when the equally — practically speaking, anyway — nebulous right to free speech doesn’t entitle you to a free newspaper or radio station to propagate your views.
Odd comment. Start a blog.
The alternate reality lives on the pages of left wing journalism and spews forth from the mouths of leftist politicians. Far more lies have been told about Donald Trump than he has ever uttered.
Absolutely true. I think the major problem the left had with Trump was he kept doing things that were in his election manifesto. What kind of politician does what he says he is going to do? It is just not the done thing.
“The year we gave up on reality.” Just who is “we?” Include me out, please.
People are now chemically attached to their biases so that they no longer want the truth.
Nice metaphor. I agree with you on this, it happens particularly at the two extremes of the political spectrum.
Suzanne Moore arrives with her amaing insight that politicians generally aim to spin narratives to their advantage. & that she likes Keanu Reeves. ‘Awesome.’
Maybe, now the trans controversy has died down, time to go back to the Guardian? Will they have her? Please?
‘I have been thinking about truth a lot lately.’ But no further than the 1st paragraph.
I read this morning that Virginia Giuffre’s lawyer is considering deposing Meghan Markle as part of the law suit against Prince Andrew, “because she can be counted on to tell the truth”.
We have officially moved into another dimension of reality.
Suzanne Moore and Howard Jacobson contributing to Unherd in the same week.
It must be Christmas.
Jacobson was illuminating!
“Can we really say physical reality has had its day?”
> Yes, it is on that which the Gender Recognition Act is based! If it wasn’t imediately apparent the trajectory should have been.
“…I’m so tired of writing about the mendacity and entitlement of the man, though…”
Doesn’t it pay the bills though?
Hey look, whatever the opinions Suzanne Moore has expressed here (and although I disagree with them- I have to admit to being impressed with the quality of prose. It’s quite rare nowadays.
Why call Trump’s communications lying – he’s only making the normal sort of headlines!
As is Boris …
Whereas Biden is seriously making money.
“I have fought my entire life for women’s right to abortion”
What a depressing sentence.
Happy whatever Suzanne! I don’t agree with 80 or 90% of what you say but I hope 2022 brings more of your articles. You are a very sharp mind. And sharp minds are needed. I ‘m with you in most of what you write this time. Reality rules in my world, tainted by my perception but reality nevertheless.
One thing good about the anti feminist right is that contrary to the anti feminist left they believe in the existence of women.
Have a great 2022.
How can tou possibly write an article about such a film: she is training to be interviewed; when? Not clear. She giggles. So what? Even looks knowingly. What is that meant to mean? How does it relate to Johnson? A half-awake judge would throw the film out of court.
Let’s have an end to postmodern journos, please.
We are not living in a time of anti-science; we are living in a time of corrupted science.
“Will facts and statistics change their minds?” – remember lies, damned lies and statistics. It is all about understanding and there is nobody better than Prof Norman Fenton to explain it. Try this video for starters which gives links to his work, and you can see how many lies have been told, but not knowingly, https://youtu.be/6umArFc-fdc
The photograph makes Boris look like an American evangelist. My first thought was “Isn’t that the guy who blows up the wormhole transporter in the movie ‘Contact’?” On the contrary, for all his alleged mendacity he can be refreshingly down to earth. His reluctance to concede to those who wish to lock down everything on grounds that are still controversial after two years, puts him on the side of freedom, even if his attempt to prorogue around defects in Brexit plans suggests the opposite. However, Brexit was all about shallow populism. Dealing with coronavirus goes deeper. Frankly, I find the tub thumping of tabloids and some MPs, and the scapegoating of young female assistants, more distasteful than obfuscation about year-old office parties. What should one think reasonable anyway, when half of people are elbow to elbow in stuffy pubs, while the other half queue all day in the cold for their third vaccination, and in London a third apparently don’t even intend to get vaccinated? Who wrote that program?
The seamless mixing of normality and unreality in the streets is accompanied by a sense of unreality in public policy produced by not knowing what is really going on together with constant changes in advice as to how to deal with what we do not understand. At the same time, emerging in the background is a stronger sense of reality, that the world is not a computer game we can tweak and reprogram, but functions outside our control. That at least is healthy. The way nature works is it consists of a lot of small things happening continuously and nearly invisibly, which occasionally release a cascade of big events. We see only the latter, which makes us think they are the reality and encourages us to approach everything by short-term firefighting. But the glitch in the matrix is really the cracked-open door to a vastly greater reality. Science is like a child peeping around that door, for unless we become as little children … At one time our behaviour had negligible impact on autonomous natural processes, but that is no longer the case. Maybe in time the same realisation may find its way into pretensions of personal identity too. I ramble, but it IS Christmas.
Why is this piece of averageness on here? There is all the rest of the corporate media for people who play that game.
Unfortunately the left has debased the words lie and liar by using them to mean ‘going back on one’s word’ or ‘not fulfilling one’s promises’ both of which may or many not be deplorable (depending on the circumstances) but are not lies. A word debased loses its force and becomes a mere vacuous insult.
You didn’t mention Bill Clinton having his Cabinet lie for him. As much as anything, Clinton was the point when lies were no longer for reasons of state, but personal aggrandizement. When the media accepted and parroted his lies about affairs with other women, in the 1992 campaign and peaking with the Lewinsky scandal, it was “game over” for any shred of honesty.
When so many commentators are do scathing if what is written, why do you bother subscribing and reading these articles? Surely you should be reading something else?
Because half the fun is critically picking apart the articles, and seeing different points of view that may support or challenge your own conclusions. Nothing duller than an echo-chamber where everyone is in agreement.
I actually love it when I change my mind about something (which is infrequent). It’s a light bulb moment
Alernative views are most welcome. Sometimes they help reinforce your existing views, sometimes they help add to your existing views, and occasionally they make you completely reassess what you originally thought. Who wants to live in an echo chamber.