Imani Tafari-Ama | The truth is an offence or an outright lie

In 1984, I read George Orwell’s disturbing novel 1984, which was an eye-opening experience. One of my takeaways was that Truth is a casualty of the power applied by authoritarian heads of state. The routine lies used by dictatorships to control their populations are carefully crafted to achieve mass compliance. Repeated often enough, lies soon become “alternative facts”.

1984 was based on Orwell’s own life experiences. He actively resisted the fascist forces that ruled Spain, which were challenged during the Civil War of the early 1940s. In an ironic reversal of the title, which I suspect was intentional, the text was written in 1948. This reflected Orwell’s preoccupation with the double meanings present in every representation of reality advanced by the authorities and reflected in people’s everyday lives.

Beyond providing a critique of totalitarian regimes’ repression of freedom and justice, 1984 warns of the importance of remaining alert to the onset of such a political posture. It is also relevant as a prism through which to perceive the workings of authoritarian or totalitarian governments in present and future societies.

Orwell provides a template for understanding how fascist governments manipulate the media to recalibrate limitless lies into propaganda. Under such regimes, truth becomes extinct. The public gets so used to being lied to that it succumbs to even the surveillance of its thoughts. The result is that social actors learn to engage in the mass manufacture of lies as a function of cultural participation.

As Orwell suggests, in totalitarian societies, those who resist the rule of the authorities are treated as existential threats. They usually suffer the brutal consequences of cutting against the grain of such power arrangements. The psychosocial impact of the “doublethink” and “doublespeak” performance that is dictated by ‘Big Brother’ distorts the reality of societies and their citizens. This gives rise to cognitive dissonance so pervasive that it becomes a normative dysfunction.

Sales of 1984 escalated dramatically following the first incarnation of a Donald Trump presidency. The public resorted to this text as an aid for decoding the onset of a ‘post-truth’ era in the United States (US). It is not that Donald Trump was doing something novel by telling blatant lies. Lying is, after all, what politicians do. What made the public turn to Orwell was the fact that the president lied all the time and seemed to believe his own lies, not realising that the naked truth is obvious to all who should have been tricked by the falsehood.

In Jamaica, we take the free speech rights that we enjoy for granted. However, if we lived in Palestine, where, in Israel’s war on Gaza, journalists have been violently targeted and systematically “eliminated” for their coverage of the truth, the brutal news or the slant of political views, perhaps there would be more caution in our approach to coverage of certain hot topics.

Yet, even though we live in a relatively liberal space, it is remarkable that there are established political boundaries, which many writers are reticent to cross. The fear of facing sanctions acts as a firm mechanism of restraint. Writers know when a story is tackled literally at their peril.

The arrest and threat of deportation of two green card holding US residents provide the definitive indicators of the kind of authoritarianism that Orwell set out to critique. One student was accused of leading a demonstration denouncing Israel’s war on Gaza, while the other was accused of writing a critical opinion piece, siding with the Palestinians, for the university newspaper. In her case, masked men approached her on the street and carted her off to detention facilities.

Orwell’s sojourn in Spain during the Spanish Civil War was followed by a stint as a writer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Both experiences shone light on the methods used by government and its media apparatus to erase truth and spread propaganda. This mirrors the ease with which the Jamaican society is being convinced that police extrajudicial killing of suspected criminals is the best way to control crime in Jamaica.

I watched in fascination the performance of the pair of premiers in the Oval Office last Monday (April 7). President Trump 2.0 hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, in defiance of an arrest warrant issued for the Israeli leader by the International Criminal Court. He is accused of carrying out genocide against the Palestinian population.

In an ironic twist of fate, while the two heads of state were reflecting on the US’ bombing campaign in Yemen and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, they took time to mention the real estate re-development of the very country they are collaborating to ethnically cleanse. As Orwell explained, language is skilfully manipulated to make horrible news acceptable. So, even saying ethnically cleanse is a misnomer; it implies that there is something wholesome about this atrocity.

Meanwhile, the mass media of communication have failed to explain to the public that the modus operandi of misrepresentation of truth is the norm for global governments. The media is not pushing critical awareness of the implications of the persistence of the forever wars taking place in the world now. Why would Netanyahu have lobbied his joined-at-the-hip partner to launch the next war initiative on the horizon?

The possibility of an imminent nuclear conflict is on the table. The US president declared that, unless Iran destroys its ballistic missile capabilities and agrees not to create a nuclear weapon, they will be bombed by the weapons that the US has now amassed in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

Iran is not a walkover and is bordered by superpowers Russia and China, Iran’s BRICS partners. They hold the keys to the alternative economic system that is poised to replace the dominance of the Western powers. Iran’s surrendering of its deterrence is not going to happen.

Although Jamaica boasts of having the most talk shows per capita in the world, giving the impression that people are free to say what they want, the problem is that there are red lines that are rigorously observed when it comes to the tricky matter of truth telling.

In the US, freedom of speech, which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, has been a celebrated feature of citizen rights. So, the current reversal of such safeguards signals an ominous shift in the capacity of media practitioners to conduct their craft with equanimity.

The truth spoken by freedom fighters is an offence but not a sin. When uttered by a forked-tongue leader, you know it is an outright lie. As Trump’s discredited lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, infamously said, “the truth is not the truth”. That’s how brazen and barefaced these liars are.

Imani Tafari-Ama, PhD, is a Pan-African advocate and gender and development specialist. Send feedback to i.tafariama@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com