The lies we’re told, the lies we believe and the lies we tell ourselves

This one is a lie I let myself believe, but it’s not one I believe anymore. This is a lie in the same vein as ‘I’m not racist, but...’, ‘I don’t dislike homosexuals, but...’ only it it’s on a much wider scale, a lie attributed to an entire society. It’s a lie that’s told by those leading voices and rehashed by those that follow. It’s the lie that goes ‘The British people are a tolerant bunch, but...’

It doesn’t feel good attacking our society like this. It’s something I slurred out to one of my progressive friends on a night out, only to find myself quickly rebutted. On the whole, she said to me, we are much better than most. A fair enough comment if we believe what we’re told, only I’m not sure what the source material for this is. We read all sorts of stuff that holds us up on the pedestal of tolerance in all sorts of publications, especially the Daily Mail. Only it’s usually written in a column that also drops some kind of anti-minority bomb or something against the disenfranchised in the same paragraph. The slur I made is the bomb I’m going to drop now. The British people aren’t all that tolerant at all.

I’ve often felt this after watching some political panel show like Question Time, listening to comments from the public on certain political issues like immigration or benefits, or even simple things like teenage pregnancy or recreational drug use. A placating statement followed by a spill of bile. I hear it so much that I think, maybe they are speaking the truth. I mean, this person is saying it, the slightly out of shape man with the thinning hair and glasses also said it, and the man in the all too padded, ill-fitting suit who’s trying so hard yet failing spectacularly at looking statesmanlike has also said it, so in there must be some truth here. Scroungers are stealing all the money from the public purse and the island is going to sink into the sea under the creaking weight of all those immigrants. If they repeat what they say, over and over, maybe it’ll be true.

Goebbel’s is attributed to saying something like that once, though I think that might not be strictly correct. However, it doesn’t sound too off what the mastermind of Nazi propaganda might have said. Say something enough and it becomes truth. The problem is this kind of truth is it can be smashed by things like facts and figures and statistics. You know, the pesky objective evidence thing that Locke and Hume so graciously gave us with that whole empiricism idea. And this is exactly what has happened to the great slew of Britain’s misconceived preconceptions.

Splashed all over all the newspapers recently are The Top Ten Common Misconceptions Among Britons About Britain. I first came across this in a rather right-leaning publication, so immediately thought ‘ah, it’ll be something about the length of rivers or about the species of birds we have here’, but instead it did actually list out the top ten of the list of countless items of crap we like to spill out on a daily basis. This includes all the fan favourites; immigration, benefits, overseas aid and – although it’s fallen slightly out of fashion recently – teenage pregnancy. I’m not going to reprint it here, but I would like to go into some specifics.

So, according to these stats, it seems capping benefits will not be saving us anywhere near the amount of money we thought it would, while 70p in every £100 is claimed fraudulently, not the quarter we all thought. Also, we’re spending much more on pensions than on job seekers allowance – fifteen times more.

The overwhelming increased demonization of those on benefits has come at a time when the economy has gone to shit. Many people in the public sector have lost their jobs and find themselves blamed for it – blamed (incorrectly) for causing the economic problems here in the first place and then for claiming benefits. In actual fact, it was the banking crisis that caused this, not the public sector and Labour. And people seem to forget those in the private sectors are suffering too, suffering from pay freezes and job losses while their company overlords thrive, both monetarily and in respect. It’s a sad and pathetic time where the weak maul the even weaker.

And what about immigration and religion? Well, today’s current, fashionable bogeyman is Islam. People talk about how it’s replacing Christianity and how 'soon Sharia Law will take over'. Well, 5% are Muslim, hardly the horde everyone talks about, while 59% of the people of this country consider themselves Christian. This is rather disconcerting to me because I don’t know where that puts the atheists and agnostics. However, it also show the ridiculous focus and obsession that people seem to need to need to put on something the consider 'other' in order to go about their daily lives. In the 21t Century, what does the representation of religious groups really matter?

As far as immigration and ethnicity goes, people of ethnicities other than white make up 11% of the population, not 30%. It’s more likely that if this country does sink into the sea, it won’t be under the weight of people mainly from the lands conquered by the British Empire, but rather from the descendants of those that conquered these islands between the end of the Roman Empire and 1066. It’s not race and immigration that we are buckling under the weight of, but just the number of people in general, whatever their colour or race. So now do we want to stop having kids entirely?

Of course, I do understand that people have to get their information from somewhere. Unfortunately, the media and politicians have been feeding us outright lies for years to fit their own agenda. After all, the erroneous figures must have some source. The problem seems to be, however, that no one bothers to think about them. No one trusts what they see and would rather apply themselves to a strictly abstract idea.

We, as a nation, are turning on each other. In our time of need, rather than sympathising with the jobless or those seeking sanctuary, we set them as targets. Rather than being inclusive, we shut ourselves off and try our best create moats and defences between us. We aren’t all in it together, and this is a myth that goes far beyond just the gap between the rich overlords and the rest of us. The citizens of this country are allowing themselves to become completely divided.

The problem is it’s the same new sources and politicians that deem us as a tolerant nation that come up with all the rubbish that we’ve let ourselves believe. It’s them that spout all the intolerant drivel that has been disproved by these latest, national figures and statistics. It’s another case of ignoring the evidence, only the evidence they are ignoring here is their own voice.

And even if we are more tolerant than some incredibly intolerant nations, it’s not a competition. Surely what we want to achieve is a harmonious and prosperous nation, which we cannot do if we aren’t working together.

When a Tory cabinet minister spouts something that creates misconceptions, they usually follow it up with ‘which the British public agree with’. So maybe it’s more their intolerance than all of ours, only we all get painted with the same brush.

Giving prisoners the chance of review, not the promise of freedom by any means, just the promise of review means we should let go of our human rights and allow this government to rewrite them for us – minus the Liberal Democrats. It’s what the British people want. Well, it’s not what I want and I’d thank you for not including me in anything you say. The British people you speak of are intolerant, but not all of us are the British people you speak of.

Read the source article here.