Category Archives: Politics and sociology

In my now highly-dated e-book Seeing Through Smoke I wrote about how, once propaganda becomes the basis of a society, even the most sceptical will be fooled much of the time: In a society like the late Soviet Union, it may have been the case that everyone knew fifty percent of what they read in Pravda (ironically meaning “truth”!) to be false. But in a totalitarian state there was no independent way for them to know which fifty percent they should discount. I have no doubt that canny Russian dissidents who rightly rejected news reports on one issue were hoodwinked into believing other falsehoods, or indeed were dismissive of propaganda … Continue reading →

I have a feeling there will be many comparisons to the sinking of the Titanic once Britain hits the ice this winter (together with most western nations, only maybe they are not so connected to the Titanic mythology). Today the official inflation figure enters double digits, wiping out, according to the Telegraph, 16 years of pay growth – which is saying something given the below-inflation rises for most workers since 2008.

The characteristic thing about the Ukraine war – and indeed what many of us have noticed in the last two years or so over every new officially engendered panic – is that our State propaganda has moved from putting a particular spin on the facts to flooding the media with the diametric opposite of the facts.