What is all this nonsense about fake news? We live in a world of fake news. Always have done and dare I say it, probably always will. Only it used to go by a different name; propaganda. As national elites struggle for supremacy, over both the general populous, and over other competing elites, propaganda has been one of their essential weapons. George Orwell brought this dramatically to our attention in his dystopic novel, 1984. War became peace, hate became love, plenty was the cover word for starvation and the Ministry of Truth was responsible for disseminating an endless stream of lies. This Orwellian world is pretty much the world we have always had since civilisation began.

The clever and cunning elites told us lies about the other tribes. They told us lies about a paradise in the afterlife. They created a fiction about eternal hell. They told us lies about creation itself; complete with fictitious gods, prophets and miracles. They are still up to the same old tricks. The only thing that has changed, in the internet age, is the speed and range in which these lies can be spread. In our modern world, freedom fighters become terrorists, repressive governments become democrats. Free speech becomes communist subversion and global imperialism becomes sanitised as world democracy.

The United States of America has directly slaughtered some ten million world citizens since the Second World War, all in its pursuit of world hegemony, but has managed to successfully dress it up as a crusade for world peace and harmony. Those that dare to oppose them are branded part of an axis of evil. But things get worse. Much worse. Indirectly, the economic system that the leading democratic counties have imposed on the planet is accountable for so many premature deaths through starvation and preventable diseases, it is impossible to put a figure on it. Hundreds of millions would be a conservative estimate. And still the corpses pile higher. But we are routinely told that these deaths are the results of poor local governance, laziness, and/or an act of god. This is the world of fake news that we have all grown up with.

The US prison/industrial complex incarcerates millions of its own citizens, principally for the crime of being black and poor. This is tantamount to a crime against humanity yet we are told it is necessary in the fight against crime. The US government says it is fighting a war against drugs, yet the big food, drink, tobacco and pharmaceutical corporations routinely addict entire populations to any number of harmful substances; sugar, nicotine, anti-depressants and pain killers. The corporate controlled media is silent to this state sanctioned abuse.

The US military/industrial complex grows fat on the proceeds of selling armaments across the globe, often to directly competing factions, yet the corporate media propagate the notion of the US as a peace- loving nation leading the fight to keep the barbarians at bay. Regime change becomes the preserve of US administrations yet the US military/ industrial complex remains above the law and beyond scrutiny and accountability. Misinformation is routinely disseminated until in the end the average citizen becomes so bamboozled that they either fall lazily for the latest scam or retreat into an apathetic, drug fuelled oblivion.

And when the big imperialist nations are at war, we become truly saturated with fake news. During the height of Britain’s bloody interventions of the occupied six counties of Ireland, we were subjected to a torrent of fake news. Fake stories about the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four. Fake stories about the British Army shootings of unarmed civilians in Derry. Fake stories to cover up the collusion between the British States and the fascist gangs of Loyalists. Fake news to cover up the torture in the internment camps. And fake news to obscure the fact that Britain was an occupying colonial power. It still is but we hear nothing about it today.

Fake news distorts everything. It distorts the real reasons for the austerity policies carried out by neoliberal governments. It distorts the ongoing scam of corporate tax evasion. It distorts the real nature of the City of London the biggest money laundering tax haven on the planet. It distorts the real reasons that successive British governments have promoted mass migration to Britain- the need for an endless supply of cheap labour. And Fake news distorts and obscures the real levels of childhood poverty in this country. We are drowning in a tidal wave of fake news.

Every time we open a newspaper from the Murdoch empire we are confronted by a sophisticated wall of fake news. It’s pretty much the same for all the corporate controlled media. Their entire fabricated world view is a fake. It exists only to create a compliant climate for corporate profits. Hollywood and Disney too are an integral part of this fake world. Two billion human beings live on less than a dollar a day. They eke out an appalling existence on the rubbish tips of the bourgeoisie but the film industry, like the corporate media, consistently turn a blind eye to their plight. Instead we are bombarded with mindless blockbusters, monarchy and celebrity gossip. And on the very rare occasions that Hollywood dares to illuminate the actual world of human suffering, the real causes of this ongoing, man-made, human misery are obscured by spurious fantasies, unbelievable plot lines and childish super heroes.

So, on reflection, it quickly becomes apparent that the latest big story about fake news is nothing but an illusion – a fake story in itself.

Competing religions, competing nationalisms, and competing ideologies inevitable spawn fake news. Today, the job of the global citizen is to sift through the sea of propaganda and zoom in on what is objectively verifiable. Climate change is objectively verifiable. Growing inequality is objectively verifiable. The destruction of biodiversity is objectively verifiable. Homelessness is objectively verifiable. And mortality rates due to malnutrition and disease are objectively verifiable. All the rest is smoke and mirrors. The current wave of fake news merely serves to obscure the fake news we have always been fed. Nothing fundamental has changed.