As I write this article on the train, I hear a man telling his partner how the cancer vaccine discovered by eight doctors, who he “read about” on TikTok, has been hidden.
And we as a society increasingly live in this nebula of uncertainty: information comes from multiple sources with varying degrees of reliability, but with an appearance of veracity, and thus, discerning between truth and lies is increasingly difficult.
How many lies were told about the benefits of Brexit? And the lies that justified the assault on the US Capitol as the hoax of the arrest of Biden for pedophilia? How long did it take Lula unjustly imprisoned? How many more people have to die in Gaza, murdered by the Israeli army, before the Israeli government is condemned? Netanyahu and break off relations with this one?
We now have countless news outlets that, without any rigor, with their biased headlines, are dedicated to deceiving and confusing the reader. They are not a means to transmit news, because the business is deception and not information. They are a means to an end.
More and more people are getting their news through TikTok, Telegram, or similar, and, although they are aware that Instagram landscapes are usually enriched by increasing the tones of the photos, they believe the news blindly. Why would they be lied to?
Thus, the dissemination of lies runs wild.
Without truthful information, democracy is weakened, and if the messages also promote hatred and racism, the breakdown of social coexistence is even greater. Rejecting those who are even more unfortunate than us seems to work. This is how the “us” and “them” is constructed. A social division that is essential to achieve the true objective: electoral victory and access to power.
In democracy there is only one space where the powerful do not have to win over the humble, and that is in elections. Those who govern promote laws and with them try to benefit the majority or the minority. Governing for the 1% or for the 99%. We must get people to vote against their own interests. We must get humble people to hate each other based on their differences, whether they are religious, racial, origin, beliefs. It doesn’t matter, the important thing is that they hate each other.
The great fortunes do not want legal restraints on the management of their interests, so they have found a golden brick road to follow to achieve electoral success, supported by massive deception and social breakdown, laying a clear foundation: either their own people win or the rest is a fraud that must be put an end to.
For some, the democracy that elections represent is only valid if the results are favourable to them. Recently, in the United Kingdom we have seen the riots that followed the election result in which the right and far right lost the government (and the citizen protests against this social violence). Before that, there was the assault on the Capitol in the USA.
As a member of parliament in Les Corts, when the PP and VOX intervene, I cannot help but be upset by the lies they spread about the management of the previous regional government of which I was a part and how they strive to promote hatred among people. It is one lie after another, without shame.
While they repeal taxes on the highest incomes, cut social rights, eliminate environmental controls leaving our territory unprotected, place a sympathizer to lead the Anti-Fraud Agency, they are clear that information is key, and for this reason they have modified the Àpunt Law in order to be able to control it. Thus, they do not want you to know that through a mere instruction they are cutting back on dependency in terms of the effective date of economic benefits. Also trying to hide the disappearance of multiple places to study languages from the Official Language Schools. Or how the government of Mazon has given away 112 million euros in one year to private health management concessionaires in the form of perks and pardons. Or that the regulations for tourist housing will not solve the social problem of access to housing (which is a reality and not tourismophobia). Or that in the middle of the summer campaign the Consell de Mazón has eliminated the General Directorate for Fire Prevention. Or that victims of gender violence are no longer prioritized for access to housing rental aid.
Meanwhile, they want to focus the media’s attention on those abandoned children who come from other latitudes. On the people who emigrate out of necessity, because those who do it for pleasure do not bother. A strategy of hate and fear that the right has been using for years to win elections.
There is an urgent need to put a stop to these dynamics, raise social awareness about the problem of misinformation, educate and re-educate against hatred and the ability to discern between a lie and an opinion.
Because perhaps each of us can do a lot in this situation to stop the cult of lies, starting by asking ourselves about the reliability of the source of information and comparing it with other sources; not trusting everything we read or hear, and distinguishing between opinion and information. And, above all, condemning hate speech. Your enemy is not the black child without parents who arrives in a boat. Nor is it the teenager or the adult who pursues a dignified life. Your enemy is whoever wants you to believe that this human being is a problem for you.
