Fake news is nothing if not new
Something you might need to relieve it.
I have not seen it, why would I want to? When a unique opportunity presents itself, we should not play with trifles. The BBC article refers to a film clip which has apparently been doctored, a term which is strangely used, but regardless:
Goebbels was incensed by the Lambeth Valk; would YouTube or Facebook have banned it in the face of dogged (careful with that word) complaints by the elected government of our Saxon cousins? Should YouTube even now ban it? It is clearly a ‘deep fakes’ video that has been edited, using then readily available technology, to realistically portray something very different. Charles Ridley should have referred to his employer as the British Ministry of Misinformation. The article tries to say that context matters ‘Simple matters of context make those arguments fall away’ but does it really?
Exeter University sacked an employee because he used words similar to the ones that answered my opening question on the grounds that this was a quotation from Rommel. Context matters. Rommel echoed these thoughts in the desert of northern Africa. Exeter University used them in promotional material. Whether the words were true or not did not seem to come into play. Neither did the context matter, the same words said in the heat of battle convey a different urgency than when read in the cool context of potential students’ studies. The irony of the Exeter situation is deepened of course in that Rommel was not actually quoted. What we read are the words of a translator not Rommel’s words. I do not dispute that the translation is accurate merely point out that the words were not Rommel’s. Perhaps the editor of the material would have done better, and been safer, to have produced his own translation and left it unattributed.
Secondly, there are other areas where mockery may be seen to be prejudicial to what would otherwise be good. There is much debate today about the mmGm vaccine. The smallpox vaccine was in for far worse treatement when it was introduced over two hundred years ago. Given what we could do eighty years ago, James Gillray may have marvelled at what he could have produced today in place of what we would now see as an amusing caricature of the vaccine based on cowpox. Would we permit such a video to reside in the pages of YouTube or FaceBook? But we do, except it is to be found on NetFlix where it is called family entertainment or perhaps better horror movies.
We must admit that fake news can be dangerous. It was, with hindsight an inopportune time, but perhaps some of you actually heard the 1938 announcement about the invasion from Mars, or at least know someone who did. What were the consequences of that piece of ‘fake’ information? More seriously, and I doubt that any of us could claim to know an eyewitness to another event but eyewitnessed it was, a group of individuals met Joshua (Joshua 9) about 3200 years ago with fake news, the consequences of which would be felt for many hundreds of years and be very severe for Israel. The Gibeonites were permitted to remain in Canaan. Fake news has been around for a long time, it is not new, just presented in different ways.
Fake news can be both dangerous and amusing. What are the warning words of the slapstick comedy? Don’t try this at home, it has been staged. In the words of another man who must not be quoted: Sie müssen sich hüten.
Would that we had the man of the stature and skill of Gillray to doctor the first mentioned video, perhaps then it would be worth watching.
The Cow Pock. James Gillray
Crushing into a small, crowded room out of a small pox infested London, the Cockneys submitting themselves to the quacks, yielding to the bovine infusion, awaited the inevitable apocalyptic extrusions.