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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Journalist, heal thyself “Why is it so hard for the authorities to win public trust? Maybe because they keep lying to us”, Gaby Hinsliff writes in the Guardian:
If you were to invent a scandal expressly to convince conspiracy theorists they were right all along, the story of the Afghan superinjunction would be hard to beat.
A secret back door into Britain through which thousands of immigrants were brought, under cover of a draconian legal gagging order that helpfully also concealed an act of gross incompetence by the British state? It’s a rightwing agitator’s dream. “The real disinformation,” wrote Dominic Cummings on X, a platform notably awash with real disinformation, “is the regime media.” Yes, that Dominic Cummings.
She’s not wrong about dishonesty and censorship from the authorities causing people to rightly distrust them, but she cannot see the elephant in the room because she is looking at the room from inside the elephant.
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Wow. If only the media would stop lying and gaslighting and causing paranoid suspicions, people would finally see that Big Brother truly loves them.
It doesn’t help when, after a bit of time passes, the supposed conspiracies often turn out to have been true.
Gaby Hinsliff does at least “get” that those like her that tilt left/liberal are in potential deep doo-doo because of this kind of thing. But do they draw logical conclusions?
Take the EU. Many years ago, the Observer columnist Hugo Young freely admitted, if memory serves, that the federal project was one that couldn’t be too clearly stated to the public, lest it provoke a backlash. I suspect a similar mindset applies to things such as “progressive” ideas about teaching literacy, Net Zero, and in this case, the management of immigration.
Hinsliff used to be political editor of the Observer. Her columns are a weathervane for how the soft left thinks on things.
Fun fact: her late Dad, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/sep/20/geoff-hinsliff-obituary Hinsliff, was an actor and played Don Brennan in Coronation Street.
BBC was at it again on last night’s 22:00 ‘News’. Film (from trusted sources©, naturally) of a seriously malnourished child and its remarkably well fed looking mother. Also other footage from Hamas proving yet again that, even after more than two years of practice, they haven’t cracked getting Gazans to form orderly queues for free food. Or delivering more than the occasional random dollop into the multitude of waving kitchenware. Conspicuously absent, apart from the emaciated child, were any malnourished looking people in the crowd scenes.