Latest news with #truth
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The real Kemi: what everyone gets wrong about the Tory leader
My favourite story about Kemi Badenoch happened in a classroom thousands of miles away in the mid-90s. She was 15 and writing an exam when a classmate started cheating with a textbook. Everyone could see it – the boy wasn't exactly subtle about flipping through pages under his desk. But this was Nigeria, where you learned early which battles were worth fighting and which weren't. Making a fuss about cheating meant making enemies. Kemi stood up anyway. 'I studied for this exam,' she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, 'and this guy is here cheating.' The boy was expelled. Word spread around the entire school and Kemi spent the rest of the term as a curiosity in her school. Who was this girl? Many thought her reckless; someone who invited hostility, possibly even violence. I heard from others that what was most odd was that Kemi didn't seem to care. She was so convinced that she had told the truth and done the right thing; her strict Methodist upbringing provided her with a thick skin. In a country where getting by often meant looking the other way, she had refused to look away. It's tempting to see this as the origin story of a future Conservative leader, but the truth is more complicated. Had she lived to adulthood in Nigeria, that fierce sense of right and wrong might have been worn down by the daily grind of compromise that living there demands. Standing out in the crowd in an African country is dangerous, and especially bad for women. There are rules to be followed. When to speak, what to like, what to wear, who to marry. The choice is to follow the rules or to be an outcast. The year she stood up in her classroom against injustice – 1995 – Nigeria was kicked out of the Commonwealth for human rights abuses; the nation she and I grew up in was marked by economic upheaval, military dictatorship and deep-seated corruption. Where Nigeria might have demanded compromise, Britain simply let her be. In Lagos, standing up to a cheater had made her an outlier; in London, it would have made her a hero. The very qualities that marked her as difficult in one place made her formidable in another. Those of us who have known her over the years can trace a clear line from the girl who refused to look away in that sweltering classroom to the woman who still refuses to look away today as leader of the Conservative Party. That freedom is why she loves Britain with a passion that baffles the Left, who cannot conceive of her as anything but a puppet of Right-wing interests. She confounds their tidy expectations of what a black woman should think, say, or aspire to. They believe she doesn't know her place. According to their world view, Britain is a bastion of white supremacy and racial inequality, and a black woman must unequivocally denounce the country. Kemi is an oddball to them. Now, as Conservative leader, she faces the mirror image of this contempt from some on the fringes of the Right: the white supremacists, for instance, who denounce her online as a 'diversity hire', a plant by the WEF, the Jews, or whatever conspiracy is trending that week. They, too, believe she doesn't know her place. Both extremes share the same fundamental error – they cannot fathom that her place is exactly where she chooses to stand. Kemi and I are good friends. But we could not be more different. I prefer to mind my own business and I'd sooner jump off a bridge than run the gauntlet of British politics. Yet in all the years I've known her, I've come to recognise that we share something fundamental: we both found in Britain a place that would accommodate who we are without judgement, yet still possess a set of customs and values that define it as a particular place. This isn't about blind love for a country. It is about understanding the delicate balance between tolerating others and maintaining a coherent identity: there are different shades of British identity, but they are undeniably British. We may express it differently, but we both grasp the same truth: the space to be yourself only exists when certain boundaries hold. She is one of a handful of politicians I see able to make this subtle case with a thoughtfulness lacking in our politics today. Her British identity is not something which she takes for granted – she could easily have followed another route – and this gives her a refreshing insight into this country. Knowing all this about her, I was surprised when a journalist from The New Statesman called me a few weeks ago. He said he wanted to talk about Nigeria in the 1990s. In truth he was fishing for unflattering stories about Kemi. The published article bore no resemblance to the conversation we had: this is a small window into the misrepresentation she faces daily. The online caricatures, the lazy stereotypes masquerading as analysis, the attacks from Left and Right for refusing to be what others expect – she's navigated being misunderstood since that Lagos classroom. Her job ahead may look impossible to some; fixing the Conservative Party's reputation after a tumultuous 14 years in government is no easy task. But those who doubt Kemi, or sneer at her, should consider that her Methodist upbringing prepared her for politics – just as it prepared her 30 years ago to stand up to that school cheat. Standing alone is sometimes the price of standing for something.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Beware the blizzard of lies: US advice on how to handle Farage's Trump tactics
Truth, the progressive California politician Hiram Johnson once said, is the first casualty of war. His oft-cited remark was supposedly made in 1918 in reference to the first world war, which had by then caused millions of human casualties. More than a century later, truth is again caught in the crossfire, this time as a casualty of 21st-century culture wars. If Donald Trump is the high priest of disinformation, then Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, is showing signs of being a willing disciple, if his behaviour in the UK this week is anything to go by. Farage has proposed sending prisoners abroad – including to El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent hundreds of deportees and suggested sending US citizens. He also suggested an extensive police recruitment drive and prison-building programme all while cutting health and education spending. The parroting of Trump's policies by a UK populist has not gone unnoticed in the US. And for those who have studied the president's modus operandi, there is one particular tactic the British public should be braced for: the blizzard of lies and false statements that frequently overwhelms his opponents. The Trump experience, they say, contains sobering lessons for Farage's critics. US pro-democracy campaigners says Trump has become even harder to factcheck since his first term, thanks to a combination of factors including looser social media content moderation and a reluctance among some media owners to stand up to his intimidation. The Washington Post, which tracked more than 30,000 lies or misleading statements from Trump during his presidency, lost subscribers and public trust after its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, reportedly vetoed an editorial endorsing the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president. 'It's become more difficult because there's less commitment from those who are in the best position to do the factchecking,' said Omar Noureldin, a senior vice-president for Common Cause, a non-partisan group. 'Seeking the truth here comes with costs and risks.' Complicating matters is the loss of trust in institutions, with many consumers relying on social media platforms for news. 'Even the best factchecking can be unpersuasive, because we're not just facing an information crisis here, but also a trust crisis in the American information ecosystem,' Noureldin said. Media watchers say the political environment has become so deeply polarised that factchecking can even have the counter-productive effect of further entrenching misplaced beliefs. 'From a lot of research, we're reaching the conclusion that factchecking hasn't been as effective as one would want,' said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters for America, a media watchdog. 'One reason is that information and disinformation spreads faster than you can check it. It takes a lot longer to factcheck something than it does for it go viral. 'But the other thing is factchecking can backfire. People so distrust institutions that factchecking can validate the misinformation in their minds and make them more inclined to believe the lie they believed in the first place.' A 2022 report from Protect Democracy suggests this is the result of a deliberate strategy of authoritarian regimes. 'Disinformation is spread through coordinated networks, channels and ecosystems, including politically aligned or state-owned media,' the report said. 'The goal is not always to sell a lie, but instead to undermine the notion that anything in particular is true.' Further complicating the problem in the US has been Trump's appointment of allies to key government agencies that have traditionally served as sources of accurate and reliable data for factcheckers. A case in point is Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has engaged in anti-vaccine theories. As Trump's pick for health and human services secretary, he is in charge of the country's vast health bureaucracy. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Factchecking wasn't working very well in the first place, but now you can't even get access to the facts that you need be able to factcheck as well as you used to,' said Millican. The outlook seems bleak, but campaigners say that does not make the problems insurmountable. One answer is to invest in independent, non-partisan research. A prime purpose would be to increase media literacy among young people, who primarily get news from platforms such as TikTok which can be subject to disinformation tools such as AI-manipulated videos. The aim is to teach consumers how to spot doctored footage. 'Media literacy is extremely important and something that should be invested in and taught at a young age,' said Millican. Another solution is the development of 'pre-buttal' strategies to inoculate the public against disinformation, in effect getting the truth out first. Media Matters for America and Common Cause used this approach during last year's presidential election, partly by producing videos designed to counter anticipated false narratives surrounding voting procedures in certain areas. Also important, said Shalini Agarwal, special counsel at Protect Democracy, is calling out the demonisation of vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, as soon as it happens. A crucial role is played by media, even as Trump intensifies his assault on journalists as 'fake news' and tries to exclude certain established outlets from press briefings. 'It's really important when there are opportunities for one-on-one briefings and there are multiple reporters,' Agarwal said. 'Part of it is a sense of collective action. Often, whoever is speaking at the podium won't give a straightforward answer or gives a false answer and then tries to move on – it's incumbent when that happens for other reporters to jump in and say: 'Wait. What about what the other reporter asked?'' Millican has two pieces of advice for Britain and other European countries hoping to arm themselves against any coming authoritarian onslaught: fortify the media and preserve legislation designed to combat disinformation and illegal content online – represented by the online safety act in Britain and the digital safety act in the EU. 'The first thing that's going to happen in these authoritarian takeovers is they're going to try to silence and take over the media and information landscape,' she said. 'Any efforts to rein in hate speech or misinformation on platforms will be seen as tantamount to suppression of conservative thought or free speech. 'I can't stress enough trying to buffer the pollution of your information ecosystem as much as possible. One of the first things that they're going to do is just take down any barriers they can.'
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Beware the blizzard of lies: US advice on how to handle Farage's Trump tactics
Truth, the progressive California politician Hiram Johnson once said, is the first casualty of war. Johnson's oft-cited remark was supposedly made in 1918 in reference to the first world war, which had by then caused millions of human casualties. More than a century later, truth is once again caught in the crossfire, this time as a casualty of 21st-century culture wars. If Donald Trump is the high priest of disinformation, then Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, is showing signs of being a willing disciple, if his behaviour in the UK this week is anything to go by. Farage has proposed sending prisoners abroad – including to El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent hundreds of deportees and suggested sending US citizens. He also suggested an extensive police recruitment drive and prison-building programme all while cutting health and education spending. In the US, the parroting of Trump's policies by a UK populist has not gone unnoticed. And for those who have studied the president's modus operandi – there is one particular tactic the British public should be braced for: the blizzard of lies and false statements that frequently overwhelms his opponents. The Trump experience, they say, contains sobering lessons for critics of Farage. US pro-democracy campaigners warn that Trump has become even harder to factcheck since his first term, thanks to a combination of factors including looser social media content moderation and a reluctance among some media owners to stand up to his intimidation tactics. The Washington Post, which tracked more than 30,000 lies or misleading statements from Trump during his presidency, lost subscribers and public trust after its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, reportedly vetoed an editorial endorsing the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president. 'It's become more difficult because there's less commitment from those who are in the best position to do the factchecking,' said Omar Noureldin, a senior vice-president for Common Cause, a non-partisan group. 'Seeking the truth here comes with costs and risks.' Complicating matters is the loss of trust in institutions, with many consumers relying on social media platforms for news. 'Even the best factchecking can be unpersuasive, because we're not just facing an information crisis here, but also a trust crisis in the American information ecosystem,' Noureldin said. Media watchers say the political environment has become so deeply polarised that factchecking can even have the counter-productive effect of further entrenching misplaced beliefs. 'From a lot of research, we're reaching the conclusion that factchecking hasn't been as effective as one would want,' said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters for America, a media watchdog. 'One reason is that information and disinformation spreads faster than you can check it. It takes a lot longer to factcheck something than it does for it go viral. 'But the other thing is factchecking can backfire. People so distrust institutions that factchecking can validate the misinformation in their minds and make them more inclined to believe the lie they believed in the first place.' A 2022 report from Protect Democracy suggested this was the result of a deliberate strategy of authoritarian regimes. 'Disinformation is spread through coordinated networks, channels and ecosystems, including politically aligned or state-owned media,' the report said. 'The goal is not always to sell a lie, but instead to undermine the notion that anything in particular is true.' Further compounding the problem in the US has been Trump's appointments of allies to key government agencies that have traditionally served as sources of accurate and reliable data for factcheckers. A case in point is Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has engaged in anti-vaccine theories, Trump's pick for health and human services secretary, putting him in charge of the country's vast health bureaucracy. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Factchecking wasn't working very well in the first place, but now you can't even get access to the facts that you need be able to factcheck as well as you used to,' said Millican. The outlook seems bleak. Yet that does not make the problems insurmountable, campaigners insist. One answer is to invest in independent, non-partisan research. A prime purpose would be to increase media literacy among young people, who primarily get news from platforms such as TikTok which can be subject to disinformation tools such as AI-manipulated videos. The aim is to teach consumers how to spot doctored footage. 'Media literacy is extremely important and something that should be invested in and taught at a young age,' said Millican. Another solution is the development of 'pre-buttal' strategies to inoculate the public against disinformation, in effect getting the truth out first. Media Matters for America and Common Cause used this approach during last year's presidential election, partly by producing videos designed to counter anticipated false narratives surrounding voting procedures in certain areas. Also important, said Shalini Agarwal, special counsel at Protect Democracy, is calling out the demonisation of vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, as soon as it happens. A crucial role is played by media, even as Trump intensifies his assault on journalists as 'fake news' and tries to exclude certain established outlets from press briefings. 'It's really important when there are opportunities for one-on-one briefings and there are multiple reporters,' Agarwal said. 'Part of it is a sense of collective action. Often, whoever is speaking at the podium won't give a straightforward answer or gives a false answer and then tries to move on – it's incumbent when that happens for other reporters to jump in and say: 'Wait. What about what the other reporter asked?'' Millican has two pieces of advice for Britain and other European countries hoping to arm themselves against any coming authoritarian onslaught: fortify the media and preserve legislation designed to combat disinformation and illegal content online – represented by the online safety act in Britain and the digital safety act in the EU. 'The first thing that's going to happen in these authoritarian takeovers is they're going to try to silence and take over the media and information landscape,' she said. 'Any efforts to rein in hate speech or misinformation on platforms will be seen as tantamount to suppression of conservative thought or free speech. 'I can't stress enough trying to buffer the pollution of your information ecosystem as much as possible. One of the first things that they're going to do is just take down any barriers they can.'
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on handling Donald Trump: a lesson on how to respond
For Donald Trump, the truth, more often than not, is beside the point. So powerful is the US president, and so accustomed are his interlocutors to his casual relationship with facts, that he is rarely challenge as he makes his long and rambling public pronouncements. So it was refreshing to see Jerome Powell, the chair of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve Board, shake his head and publicly correct the record in real time as he stood alongside the president at an event on Thursday. The backdrop was a lengthy campaign by Trump to force the Fed to lower interest rates and his outspoken attempts to try to get Powell to quit. As part of this campaign, the administration has weaponised a renovation programme at the Fed, which it claims is running way over budget. Standing beside Powell in his hard hat, Trump theatrically produced a piece of paper which he said showed that the $2.7 billion bill was now set to be $3.1 billion. Powell calmly studied the note and pointed out that this included the cost of another building that was already completed. 'It's a building that's being built, ' Trump responded. 'No, it was built five years ago,' said Powell. The exchange underlined how seldom Trump's 'facts' are challenged in public by those around him. Everyone wants to humour the unpredictable president. The irony is complete when he publishes posts on his 'Truth Social' channel, a name which carries echoes of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984. READ MORE World leaders face the same dilemma as Powell did when they stand beside Trump. Most choose to grin and bear it. This is what the EU appears to have done in trade talks with the US, as they face Trump's chaotic mixture of fact and fiction. As the talks come to another crunch – and with the need for support on the Ukraine war in the background – the EU may concede Trump's call for 15 per cent tariffs. When you lead the world's biggest economic and military power, sometimes you get to choose your own facts. A quiet-spoken bureaucrat just gave the world a lesson in how best to respond.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Hulk Hogan's wife slammed by his ex-best friend in angry outburst over death of WWE icon, 71
The former best friend of the late wrestling icon Hulk Hogan revealed his anger over being branded as a 'bad guy' for reporting 'the truth' about the WWE superstar's physical condition prior to his death. Hogan passed away on Thursday after paramedics were called to his Florida home for reports of cardiac arrest. He was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 71. A day later, Hogan's former friend - a radio host known to listeners as 'Bubba the Love Sponge' - called out multiple people for 'lying' about the wrestler's condition. Among others, Bubba called out Hogan's wife, Sky Daily, and WWE Hall of Famers Eric Bischoff and Jimmy Hart. 'I can't take away from what I've already said, and what I've already correctly predicted,' said Bubba, who was born Todd Clem before legally changing his name. 'But I am officially the guy that was the only one telling the truth about Hogan's physical condition. 'And that has caused some people to say, "You know what, Bubba was right." — No, I wish to God I wasn't right, because being right means we have a dead Hulk Hogan.' 'I don't know if my telling the truth would be such a big deal if the people like his wife [Daily], Brian Blair, Jimmy Hart, Eric Bischoff, Missy Beefcake and all the other keyboard tough guys were [calling me out].' Bubba added, 'I have a special connection to this guy that's not special anymore. 'But, for 15 years, this guys was one of my best friends. We saw each other everyday. There are things that I'll take to my grave that I know that him and I went through.' Bubba had been reporting on Hogan's condition since mid-June - revealing that his health was getting worse and that he'd been in the ICU for six weeks on his deathbed. Representatives for Hogan, Bischoff, and Daily denied Bubba's reporting. Bubba and Hogan had a very public and embarrassing falling out after a sex tape that Hogan made with Bubba's then-wife Heather - recorded in secret in 2007 - was leaked by Gawker in 2012. Hogan sued the outlet for invasion of privacy and was awarded $140m, leading to the downfall and eventual bankruptcy of Gawker in 2016. Days before Hogan passed away, Hart posted a since-deleted tweet saying, 'Hulk is doing great, doing phenomenal!' Earlier in the month, Daily denied rumors that Hogan was in a coma and had brain damage, saying 'his heart is strong' and that he was recovering from neck surgery. Friday, the day after his death, Daily said in a Facebook post that Hogan 'had been dealing with some health issues, but I truly believed we would overcome them.
