The most disturbing element of the #GreatSmearingWar, for me, is how easily people were duped by it. People who are, presumably, of good sense and sound judgement in their ordinary lives became wide-eyed, credulous cattle, ready - eager, even - to swallow every scam and fraud.
Just swallow it all down, seemingly without the slightest hesitation. Many touting this conspiracy theory were, of course, merely cynical political operatives, political assassins doing their jobs. But those who believed them should not have believed them, and they did.
A culture in which an obvious scam like this can succeed so effortlessly is a culture in trouble. If large numbers of people can be persuaded so easily of something so obviously false - the exact opposite of the truth, in fact - then they can be depended upon to believe anything.
That Boris Johnson is ‘doing a good job’, for instance. That austerity is a necessity and not a political choice. That ‘sovereignty’ is worth tanking the economy for. That benefit claimants are scroungers. That the rich are ‘wealth creators’. That flags mean anything.
Those who swallowed #muralgate, for instance, did not trouble themselves to fact check. They did not ask themselves who benefited from the story, who was propagating it, for what reason. Nor, seemingly, did its almost defiant stupidity seem to bother them. Not for a second.
These people have votes. Instead of being laughed out of court like the flat-earthers they are, they're the subject of earnest media debate, po-faced newspaper columns, denunciations of any who dare to say The Emperor Has No Clothes.
A culture that no longer cares to distinguish between what’s true and what’s false cannot succeed. It’s corrosive of good governance, but it’s also corrosive of the basics of rationality: logic, reason, evidence.
If the #GreatSmearingWar has shown us nothing else, it’s shown us the gaping hole in UK society where a well informed and rational electorate should be.
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