Everyone is entitled to an opinion, however stupid. And no country, community or generation has a monopoly on stupidity. In the Eighties there was a successful public information campaign to combat the spread of Aids with the catchphrase “Don’t die of ignorance”. If it were possible to actually die of ignorance, Britain would be as underpopulated today as it was after the Black Death. Too many of us are not just shy of a few facts, but living in a psychological fog in which facts are the enemy.
Why does this matter so much when we are gripped by anxiety over the war in Gaza spilling out across the region and the world? It matters because the seams of society will come undone if we base our opinions on lies. War in all its forms — the most terrible thing imaginable — is increasingly being understood within a narrative of complete fantasy by those without even basic facts at their disposal: and therefore Israel killed 1,400 of its own people on October 7 as a pretext to attack Gaza; Hamas are not terrorists but kindly freedom-loving rebels; the Houthis are bravely standing up to Israel by attacking international shipping; US and UK attacks on Houthis are at the behest of their Zionist masters. This is not hyperbole. This is what a lot of people in London and Glasgow and New York and California believe.
