On Sunday afternoon, placid weekends were disturbed as Twitter was suddenly full of esoteric references to an alleged conspiracy of silence around the Southport murders. Right-wing influencers big and small were dropping dark hints about “the truth”, which could “change Britain forever”. 

For the record, I don’t know what “the truth” is. I don’t know what “the truth” is meant to be. I guess I’m not in the right group chats. For all I know, something will emerge and “change Britain forever”. But it’s notable that the only times someone tried to articulate “the truth”, their irresponsibly incoherent arguments were community noted to death.

Again, that might mean nothing. Some real dynamite may be found. Contempt of court laws mean I’m not going to speculate further. But what kind of “truth” would make a massive difference?

Are we going to learn the final clinching argument that the British state neglects the safety of its citizens? What more evidence do we need? It’s no secret that the Manchester Arena bomber, who killed twenty-two concertgoers (ten of them children) in 2017, was the product of a family of Libyan radicals who had been allowed to travel backwards and forwards between Britain and the Middle East. It’s no secret that the Moroccan man who killed a Hartlepool pensioner “for Palestine” in 2023 had had his asylum application rejected yet remained in Britain. Hell, just today we learned that a Congolese man who sexually assaulted his stepdaughter and two other girls won’t be deported because it would “breach his right to a family life”. The evidence that the British state neglects the safety of its citizens is so mountainous that one only has to point to it.

I love esoterica — weird and neglected facts about history, and religion, and entertainment. Politics is full of esoterica too, of course — strange mysteries that have been neglected or obscured. 

There is also a risk that right-wing commentators will confirm leftist stereotypes about “disinformation”

There is no inherent problem with investigating this. Yet there is, it seems to me, a risk that by incautiously indulging in the esoteric — the sense of there being some exclusive “truth” to be revealed — as a means of persuasion, we lose the sense of how simple and popular our arguments can be. You don’t need some sort of arcane knowledge to illustrate the point that mass migration from dysfunctional countries has led to intolerable consequences. You just have to look around. 

There is also a risk that right-wing commentators will confirm leftist stereotypes about “disinformation”. If you’re a reader of The Critic, you’ll know that we are not big fans of disinformation journalism. We’ve discussed at length how “disinformation” is not the threat that it’s cracked up to be, and how its opponents have fuelled bad politics, and how it’s such a vague, subjective concept that the fear of it turns some of its biggest critics into what they most despise.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as bullshit.

Take “InevitableWest”. Whoever is behind this new Twitter account is such a blatant engagement farmer — i.e. someone who pursues follows, likes and reposts without much care for truth, insight and entertainment — that he makes Ian Miles Cheong look like Aristotle. The account has only existed for a month but has acquired 60,000 followers through the tried and tested means of reposting viral clips and dubious factoids.

Sometimes, “dubious” is too charitable. “BREAKING”, InevitableWest posted earlier this month:

Its happening, veterans have decided they WILL turn their backs on Keir Starmer at the cenotaph on Sunday.

This is huge. Brace yourselves.

 There was no evidence that this would happen, and it didn’t. “BREAKING,” InevitableWest posted the other day:

Police probe into British journalist Allison Pearson has been DROPPED following pressure from Elon Musk and Nigel Farage.

Another win for the free-speech patriots.

There was no evidence that the investigation had been dropped, but IntolerabePest left their claim up anyway, presumably because it had attracted 3200 reposts. I could raise other examples, but I think you get the point. This account is spraying out pure bullshit and it does not even have the dignity to be subtle.

This sort of account — and it is very much one of many — makes us look bad. But more importantly, it is bad. For me, the most important political virtue is truth. Aside from marginal cases — like wartime propaganda or evaluating a woman’s haircut — what is good depends on what is true. We don’t have to do good to know the truth, of course, but we have to know the truth to know how to do good. If we sacrifice the truth, what won’t we sacrifice?

To be clear, this doesn’t mean I’m such a smug git that I think I always say what’s true. It can be very difficult to know what’s true, because the world can be complicated and because we are all affected by our biases. But we have to at least try to tell the truth. Sometimes that’s difficult, to be sure, but sometimes it’s as easy as not believing something just because a random person with a statue in their profile picture said it.