The Trouble with a Government that Always Lies

A few weeks ago, as part of my ongoing effort to review every Adam Curtis documentary, I covered the third part of The Power of Nightmares. One of the more shocking claims made by Curtis in that film is that Al Qaeda was essentially made-up by the American and British intelligence services. Yes, Osama Bin Laden was a real person and, yes, he hung around with some radical Islamist types, but they were never formally organised as ‘Al Qaeda’. One cannot help but laugh out loud re-watching the extraordinary claims by the American and British governments during the Bush and Blair era, including trying to pass off a tourist video at a theme park as evidence of Islamic terrorism, and wild claims about Al Qaeda’s vast underground mountain fortress, something akin to the lair of a Bond villain that – surprise, surprise, never existed.

Just as the Bush and Blair administrations lied about Saddam Hussein harbouring Weapons of Mass Destruction, they lied about practically every aspect of their ‘War on Terror’. Until, that is, daily media bombardment of this sort of thing actually did start radicalising a small subset of people. I have even seen it suggested that such radicalisation was deliberately fomented, that both the American and British intelligence agencies were actively involved not just in Britain but all over the world, in setting up ‘cells’ for this sort of thing, as a means to justify their own expanded powers in the aforementioned ‘War on Terror’. And thus came to pass the ‘neo-conservative era’, during which a certain tactical bigotry was actively fostered by the ruling class, even as they ran ‘politically correct’ cover for grooming gangs. This was the sort of environment that produced the Douglas Murrays and Tommy Robinsons.

But all that was an old script for an old hyperreality. At some point, as Jimmy Dore never tires of pointing out, a new hyperreality was devised which required a new script. In this new hyperreality, the old enemy, radical Islam, somewhat like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, was recast as ‘Islamism’, to be demarcated as being separate from ‘moderate Islam’. And in its place there was born a new enemy, ‘white supremacy’, ‘the far right’ and so on, conveniently used to redirect the ire of the left from the banks bailed out after the 2008 crisis, to the poor saps who had bailed them out, namely the normal (white) working men and women of America and Britain. And thus came to pass the ‘woke era’. Now the tactical bigotry encouraged by the ruling class was against whitey, and there was an attempt to ‘bring in’ the formerly despised Muslims into the rainbow coalition. As I have written about, at length, ‘woke’ failed to really take as an ideology with the population en masse, created an unprecedented backlash, and, especially in the wake of October 7^th, 2023, presented a problem for the ruling class as the rhetoric designed to be aimed at whitey was now being aimed at Jewish people and against Israel. Furthermore, with Israel’s increasing isolation, it would require the backing and perhaps even direct military support of the USA now more than ever, as well as requiring it to be somewhat capable and competent. The four drivers for putting the woke away have never changed since I first wrote the article, which, note, was before 10/7:

1. White boys must die once again in their wars

2. Crisis of legitimacy / competence

3. Direct order of the Dark Lord

4. “Jews don't count” (the title of a book by David Baddiel)

On the cusp of Donald Trump becoming President again, short of a miracle, I am basically assured of my cigar from Auron MacIntyre, I won the bet, and of this there was surely never any doubt.

Because of all this, the regime was caught between the capital it had invested in its failed new ideology (woke) and the political need to slip back to the old one (neo-conservative). This would require some deft political skill to navigate. Enter Keir Starmer. Of course, he would prove to be exactly the wrong man at the wrong time, failing to obey his master’s direct order to be ‘tough on wokeism’ while also, awkwardly, occasionally spouting enough neo-conservative, pro-Israel platitudes to alienate the entire left of his party (throwing Jeremy Corbyn out of the party and purging all his allies, did not exactly help). This has resulted in making Starmer one of the least popular Prime Ministers of all time, in a record speed.

Of course, one of the huge reasons for this extraordinary rating is Starmer’s mishandling of the Southport riots back in the summer. This situation was perhaps the perfect storm symbolising the clash of the two basically fake narratives perpetuated by successive governments over the past twenty years. During the events of the summer, Keir Starmer branded people who were angry at the stabbing and murder of three young girls in Southport ‘far right’ over and over again, and he jailed dozens of people, including some on charges of ‘misinformation’. One of the claims made by these ‘far right agitators’ was that Axel Rudakubana, the man accused of murdering the girls, was somehow caught up with Islamism. When it transpired that Radakubana was from Cardiff and born to Rwandan parents, a Christian and not a Muslim, it appeared to be the ultimate ‘gotcha’ for leftists against the sinister ‘far right’, and a weapon easily wielded by Starmer’s government against the rioters. I certainly believed the government on that score. I should have known better than to trust the government with anything, but I found it perfectly believable that Radakubana might have acted without being ‘radicalised’ by Islamism, since such acts of violence are hardly unknown. Only now, it transpires he had a training manual from Al Qaeda, which appears to show that the government lied and that those accused of misinformation in the first place at least had some modicum of truth in their concerns. Only, of course, as per my opening paragraph, Al Qaeda never really existed and was probably made up by the American and British governments in the first place. Oh what a tangled web we weave!

This, then, is the problem with a government that always lies. We have no idea what is true, whether we are coming or going. Is it true that Radakubana was a radical Islamist inspired by the teachings of Al Qaeda? This will certainly be a narrative now spun by some, but a whole range of other possibilities are also open. For example, maybe he was just curious and downloaded it from US Air Force University website one day.

For example, maybe the American and British Intelligence forces have had enough of Keir Starmer, and seeing trouble ahead with Trump coming back into office, decided to flip the script on him and stitch-up Labour by announcing this new evidence through all the newspapers. All of this is in the realm of possibility. The point is because the government just layers lies upon lies, and has incessantly lied about everything for the past 30 years, and perhaps even the past 80, we just cannot know. There can be few, if any, secure facts in an environment that is marked, defined by, its mendacity.