"Stating the truth as you see it now requires not only clear-sightedness but often a considerable amount of courage too. That is a dark place for Britain to find itself in." READ Mark Littlewood's latest column.
I’m surprised Andy Burnham is considering granting new drilling licences in the North Sea. The incredible amount of gaslighting being undertaken by the British state should mean that stocks of gas are being safely preserved.
The term “gaslighting” now seems to have become common parlance in our public discourse. But it is often misused and misunderstood. I have similarly noticed that the word “existential” is thrown around like confetti and often deployed simply to suggest “importance” whereas, of course, it actually means pertaining to existence.
Similarly, I have often heard “gaslighting” thrown into a discussion to simply mean “lying”. It means something rather deeper than that.
The word comes from the 1938 play Gas Light, which went on to become a 1944 film starring Ingrid Bergman. The story revolves around a husband systematically manipulating his wife into believing that she is going insane by dimming the gas-powered lights in their home and then denying the lighting has changed when she points it out.
The concept is that people start to question (and eventually abandon) the clear and compelling evidence of their own eyes. This is due to a previously trusted authority undertaking a deliberate and cunning strategy of deception.
I fear this is now becoming a trait of our modern politics. We are used to politicians lying or at least being “economical with the actualité” but we now appear to live in a society in which not just our beliefs are challenged but our whole sense of reality.
The decision by the government to issue a “severe alert” to all mobile phones (although my new iPhone mercifully didn’t receive it) on August 17th to warn us of a “very high risk of wildfires nationally” was preposterous. There was no sensible or practical advice about what an individual should do (“don’t become an arsonist”?) which could credibly guide anyone’s behaviour.
Ludicrously, the Cabinet Office issued a press release fifteen minutes before the alert to inform the media that the intrusive messaging service was about to be deployed. Why not simply contain the necessary information in the press release and allow the media to report it to the public?
Even more absurd was the protocol that demanded in Wales the alert had to be issued in the Welsh language before it was sent in English. Given only around a fifth of people in Wales speak the native language, the other 80% presumably assumed that they were being told nuclear war was underway before learning a few minutes later that they simply were being asked not to go and start a fire in a field.
If the government has the time to consider cultural sensitivities around the Welsh language before issuing an alert, then there is no way that we can be dealing with a genuine emergency.
Elsewhere, we have had the initially farcical and now tragic tale of Jason Arday. It is surely completely obvious to anyone with eyes to see that this absurd and grisly tale is one of a woke-obsessed elite displaying wilful blindness towards the obvious failings of a man who was used to indulge their apparently limitless desire to virtue signal.
There is a racial element to the story – it is absolutely clear that Arday was treated preferentially owing to the colour of his skin. Had the powers-that-be at Cambridge University shown even a scintilla of interest in Arday’s fantastical claims, he would still be alive. They even chose to ignore and bat away an array of legitimate questions from students, academics and journalists over a number of years about Arday’s backstory. They preferred to perpetuate the fiction that Arday was some sort of academic messiah than to engage with reality on any level. A large cohort amongst the cognoscenti are now telling us that he was hounded to death by a vicious right-wing media – yet another claim issued with unflinching confidence that is clearly a lie.
For several years now those who have raised concerns – based on actual statistics – about the behavioural propensities of those seeking asylum in Britain have been labelled “far right” or “racist”. A Home Office pamphlet which came to light a few days ago now suggests that somewhere in the bowels of government there is a begrudging acceptance of the legitimacy of these concerns. The short brochure purports to help asylum seekers understand behaviours and expectations in the UK and essentially does little more than suggest that rape, sexual assault of children and genital mutilation are somewhat frowned upon on these shores. The pamphlet is so ridiculous – and therefore simultaneously offensive – because it treats these issues as if they are merely a matter of manners, not a clear-cut case of right and wrong.
I fear that we now live in a country in which the political divide isn’t about philosophical differences leading to competing solutions and prescriptions to tackle our country’s problems. Instead, there is now a disagreement about what the reality is.
This means that stating the truth as you see it now requires not only clear-sightedness but often a considerable amount of courage too. That is a dark place for Britain to find itself in.
Keep the flag of freedom flying!