WhatsApp: The Right Wing Truth-Serum

Are you a different person online to off? How about on-text compared to in actual conversation? Matt Hancock was different. So was Tucker Carlson. No wonder Right-wingers hate Snowden and Assange. Turns out once you pull the curtain up, beneath their cuddly, friendly veneers - they’re actually duplicitous, self-serving arseholes!? Who knew?

Is WhatsApp a sort of weird, fucked up conservative truth serum? Can we just communicate with MPs and TV rant-artists through instant messenger services from now on, please? They seem infinitely more transparent there. It's just on camera and on radio they come out with bullshit. Maybe we should always have access to their exchanges? I'm not one to pry. But if it's prying over murderous insurrections and sending riddled-with-Covid grandmas out to carehomes like respiratory viruses are a new category on Deliveroo, I'll probably take a peak.

That’s not to say *I’d* necessarily be comfortable with you reading all of my personal, private WhatsApps. I mean, I spend enough time apologising for the shit I say out loud. God knows what sort of fucked up apology tour I’d have to do if you saw the stuff I pollute my friends’ chats with.

Kidding. I'm 42 with two children. I have no friends.

But still.. there’s something insultingly hypocritical and yet simultaneously reaffirming about finding out how dishonest, how careerist, these people actually are, isn’t there?

It’s the Great Angry Arguing Paradox: you start off angry about the thing, then you're angry that your mate believes the other thing, then you angrily try to prove to your mate that he's wrong about the other thing, then it turns out you were right all along, the thing really was all bullshit - and yet somehow, even though you've been proven right, it all just makes you angrier.

Angry that we’ve been lied to (carehomes, testing targets). Angry that others believed them (US Voter Fraud). Angry that people mocked us when we told them they were being lied to. Angry that people in public office on high salaries are running the country like a fucking Conservative Party piggy-bank. Incredulous no one went to jail when the green shoots of this corruption first started.

I mean, here in the UK, Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson were using encrypted Signal messaging in 2020, to coordinate official Govt business, away from the prying eyes of the opposition, Ethics advisors and journalists. Are we supposed to believe that was all about their favourite brands of wine and cheese?

"Thanks for moving onto Signal, Boris, it's just much better if we can speak 100% privately with encryption where messages automatically delete after seven days."
"Sure, Dom, but what was so sensitive that you needed to talk to me about on here?"
"Which did you like better: US or UK 'The Office'?"

The Prorogation of Parliament was also strongly rumoured to have been organised through unofficial channels. I wonder if those private messages might include true motivations behind that (to ram Brexit through), how they all really felt about lying to the Queen;

There’s a tendency in the US/UK to personalise our political scandals. Take the story but give people a face to associate with it. A human element. A hero. A baddie. The conversation around Govt surveillance became tabloid fodder about Snowden on-the-run.

The Global Financial Crash of 2008 was a complex tale of corporate greed and shit regulation, but in Britain it largely became "Grrrr Sir Fred Goodwin!".

Despite Isabel Oakeshott’s well-voiced aspirations, her recent scoops about Govt overreach mostly topped out at “Matt Hancock’s Murderous Lies”. 

Even this week coverage that should’ve started and stopped at how disgusting and impractical the Illegal Migration Bill is, has morphed into "Your Calls!" and Comment about Gary Lineker's fucking contract.

(Incidentally if the Tories don’t like it when he compares them to 1930s Germany they’re going to lose their shit when I call them second-rate, Third Reich psychopaths)

But in wrapping a face around a story, we’re sort of led to believe that these things are one-offs, aren’t we? A few bad apples. Not institutional. Even when there's evidence whatever the issue is, is widespread, that it's almost cultural - and it's all around us.

I mean, here we are talking about Hancock saying one thing publicly and another thing in private. But who was he talking to? To how many? And how many times have Conservative MPs been asked to hand over their mobiles and refused, or accidentally broken them the day after the request, or dropped them in the sea, or refused to deny they might occasionally use burner phones?

Meanwhile over in the U.S., rumours of Fox treating its viewers with utter contempt have been around for ages. The question I always raise in my content: “Are they really this stupid or are they just hoping you are?” appears finally answered. Murdoch admitted in court (last week) that he allows demonstrable falsehoods to go out unchallenged, and therefore as fact, and therefore as lies - because that is what he and his producers think the audience want.

“If we tell them the truth, and it doesn’t perfectly decorate the weird, tribalistic hole they’ve dug themself into - they’ll switch over to Brietbart” - is NOT what he said, but it’s not far off.

Murdoch’s biggest star of the Fox News binfire, Tucker Carlson, could be found on air supporting the ridiculous notion that Jan 6th was peaceful (six people died), he’s pro Trump; But OFF-air he was telling his colleagues how he hates Trump “passionately” and yearned for the end of the guy's political career. He said privately to his colleague that it’s best for Fox News if they call the election early (which they did w/ Arizona). Then ON air he lambasted "unelected journalists" for calling things too hastily, presumably so he wouldn’t upset the cry-baby sensibilities of the insufferable MAGA crowd. 

It seems to me that in the quest for ratings (and by-proxy on the hunt for ad revenue) Fox will put out whatever keeps people watching, no matter the cost and mother-fuck their “news” or journalistic responsibilities. But they remain the most watched 'news' source in the United States of America. On that basis, America can no longer claim to be informed. They can certainly no longer claim the title of the world’s greatest democracy. Those descriptions are outdated. America now exists in a post-Capitalist, Oligarchical parody of democracy - where truth is too costly and lies are lucrative.

You might think the British State is different. It’s a public body. An institution. It doesn’t need to chase advertising dollars and so there’s not really a parallel to be drawn. But for the last decade the British state has operated almost exclusively with a view to put as much money (/profit) into the hands of donors as possible. Get money in (from taxpayers) and funnel it out to shareholders. In that sense they're very much the same. And if saying one thing in public and one thing in private is the mechanism by which they can continue to do that, so be it.

The question is - how do we fix this? Greater Govt transparency? Penalties for dishonesty? Wikileaks? More nationalised news services? I honestly don't know. And frankly don’t ask me. It's a complex question.

Don’t make me the face of it.