Negotiating an age of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts'. 

Why do politicians find it so hard to tell the truth – the plain, simple and unvarnished truth? I was sad to see our Prime Minister refuse to answer a simple question this week as to whether or not she knew about the failure of the test firing of an unarmed rocket from the Trident submarine when the issue of renewing the weapon system was being debated in the Commons last summer.

Four times she was asked and four times she made little speeches, but dodged the question. She did not tell a direct lie; she simply refused to tell the truth.

It sometimes seems as though politicians have a different definition of ‘truth’. Donald Trump, during his first week in office, has striven to convince the public that he is more popular than Hillary Clinton who gained 3 million more votes than he did. He said this week that he didn’t try to win the ‘popular vote’ but he could have won it if he had tried! Trump also claimed that Clinton’s vote was inflated by fraudulent voting, for which there is no evidence – but that doesn’t seem to matter to him.

Aerial photographs of crowds at the Obama (top) and Trump (bottom) inaugurations. Crowd sizes have been disputed by Trump.‘Alternative Facts’

Trump’s spin doctor lambasted the press for reporting that the crowd attending the inauguration was not as great as the one attending Obama’s inauguration, despite the evidence of TV pictures and photographs, which Trump said were doctored.

Trump’s team also contested the truth of the vast crowd that demonstrated against his inauguration last Sunday. They invented a new term for truth – ‘alternative facts’! Just think of that as a definition of ‘truth’ – surely facts are facts and ‘alternative facts’ are lies! It’s as simple as that: you either have facts or lies.

May Vs. Trump

Donald Trump and Theresa May are meeting today for the first time in an historic encounter. Trump has already likened Mrs May to Margaret Thatcher, saying that he expects her to be his ‘Maggie’. He is the kind of man who prides himself on his female conquests and this meeting will be a particular challenge that he will be desperate to win. He will be wanting our PM to like him! But how will she respond?

Perhaps an even bigger question is – can Theresa May tell the truth to Donald Trump? He has announced that he is quite happy for American security services to use torture to obtain information from men suspected of being involved in terrorism. But this is directly against our national values.

It sometimes seems as though politicians have a different definition of 'truth'.

Moreover, our legal system would not allow the use of information in a trial that had been obtained under torture. It could mean that US and UK security services would be unable to share information on security issues affecting our nations. So, should Theresa May, on her first visit to the new President, jeopardise their relationship by not telling him the truth about British values?

These are difficult areas of moral responsibility for politicians to handle and our PM is going to require a great deal of wisdom. So much depends upon the importance the respective leaders put upon handling truth.

Great Battle Raging

What we’re seeing here is indicative of a great battle for truth raging right across the Western world. Another example of this is fake news deliberately being injected into the media. There is nothing new in the attempt to deceive the public with false information and by twisting the truth. It was the technique used by Joseph Goebbels who masterminded the Nazi brainwashing of the German public to make the murder of Jews socially acceptable.

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, when we remember the greatest act of mass murder in the history of the world, which happened in the lifetime of many still living. Many in the older generation will remember the sense of bewilderment as well as horror when the first pictures were published of the survivors in Auschwitz when Germany was defeated. It seemed beyond belief that such incredible mass murder and cruelty could have been carried out by human beings in our lifetime. Gradually it emerged that it was not only Germans who were involved; most of Europe was complicit in trying to exterminate the Jews.

There is a great battle for truth raging right across the Western world.

The rise of anti-Semitism today in Europe and across the world, which includes the increasing denial of the Holocaust, is part of the battle for truth. It is part of humanity’s self-delusion about our own goodness and popularity which millions of young people are seduced into worshipping through social media. It’s like Donald Trump trying to convince himself that he is the most popular President the USA has ever had! Why are we human beings so reluctant to face the truth about ourselves?

Defining Truth?

To answer this question, we must first ask: where do we get our definition of ‘truth’? In countries such as Britain with a long history of Christianity, our social and moral values are rooted in the Bible where truth, integrity, faithfulness and loyalty are seen to be attributes of God. These define the standard of ‘absolutes’, or fundament values, which we aim to follow.
In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus made a seminal statement regarding truth. He said:

Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. (John 3:19)

This applies to nations as well as to individuals. There is really only one standard of truth and that is the one established by the God of Creation which is part of his own nature. When ‘alternative facts’ are peddled as ‘truth’ in a nation; that nation is in dire trouble because nobody can trust the word of their neighbours, friends, family, colleagues, or government any longer. So, the whole basis of our human relationships begins to break down. This is what we face once we abandon truth.

Holocaust Memorial Day is an opportunity to face the reality of our unredeemed human nature and admit that we really need what only God can do for us – to bring about a basic change in our human nature through responding to his love and what he has done for us through Jesus.

There is a really only one standard of truth and that is the one established by the God of Creation.