The Culture of Untruth
How Lies, Spin, and Cancel Culture Are Breaking Western Democracy from Within
In a political age dominated by perception, performance, and partisanship, the principle of truth-telling—once foundational to public trust—has steadily eroded. From the highest offices of Western democracies to their institutional peripheries, dishonesty is not merely a recurring tactic but, increasingly, a governing style. It manifests as deliberate misportrayal, disinformation, misinformation, spin, rhetorical aggression, and cancel culture. Together, these trends threaten the very coherence of democratic society.
Deliberate Misportrayal and the Politics of Straw Men
Modern political rhetoric thrives not on truth, but on distortion. It is no longer sufficient to disagree with one’s opponents; they must be misrepresented to maximise outrage. Moderate voices are often painted as extremists, and any dissent from progressive orthodoxies is caricatured as “phobia,” “bigotry,” or “denialism.”
A striking example unfolded in the UK Parliament. Labour MP Rosie Duffield faced intense criticism and effective ostracism from within her party after stating the biological fact that “only women have a cervix.”¹ In stark contrast, David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary, publicly and erroneously claimed that men can grow cervixes, despite the biological impossibility.² The contradiction illustrates not only the ideological confusion of contemporary politics, but also how dissent is selectively punished or ignored based on whether it conforms to the prevailing narrative.
Such misportrayal further poisons discourse, bypassing charitable engagement and reinforcing tribal divisions. Philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, who was dismissed from a governmental advisory position in 2019 due to selective quoting, warned: “To judge a thinker’s conclusions without understanding his arguments is a form of intellectual dishonesty.”³ When disagreement is no longer permitted without distortion, a culture of fear replaces the free exchange of ideas—and public debate ceases to be a means of seeking truth.
Disinformation and Misinformation: Strategic Tools of Chaos
The information landscape of modern politics is fragmented and confused. Misinformation—falsehoods spread unintentionally—and disinformation—falsehoods spread deliberately—are now pervasive. Disinformation is no longer a relic of Cold War espionage; it is a tool of domestic political strategy.
A defining example is the British government’s case for the Iraq War in 2003. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Director of Communications, Alastair Campbell, presented a now-discredited “dossier” to Parliament, claiming Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.⁴ This assertion was later revealed to be grossly exaggerated, based on unverified intelligence, and politically manipulated to strengthen the case for military action.⁵
The consequences of this disinformation were catastrophic: over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed, long-term regional destabilisation, and the near-total collapse of public trust in British foreign policy. Most tragically, the affair led to the suicide of weapons expert Dr David Kelly, who had privately challenged the government’s claims and was later exposed as the source of a BBC report questioning the dossier’s legitimacy.⁶
Yet despite these blatant and deadly lies, Tony Blair was later appointed as the Middle East envoy for the Quartet on the Middle East, tasked with promoting peace in a region destabilised, in part, by his own decisions. Alastair Campbell, meanwhile, now co-hosts The Rest is Politics podcast with former Conservative minister Rory Stewart, where, ironically, he offers weekly commentary on honesty, accountability, and political reform.⁷
Blatant Falsehoods and the Collapse of Shame
There was a time when being caught in a lie ended political careers. Today, lies are often shrugged off or rationalised. In a post-truth climate, falsity is not a liability but a weapon. “We’re not merely in a post-truth era,” remarked philosopher Lee McIntyre, “we’re in a post-shame era.”⁸
Consider Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in January 2022 dismissed the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protests as a “fringe minority with unacceptable views.”⁹ He claimed the demonstrators posed a threat to public safety and democracy, despite their overwhelmingly peaceful conduct and broad public support.
In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer, while serving as Director of Public Prosecutions and later as Labour leader, repeatedly dismissed calls for a national inquiry into Pakistani grooming gangs. In 2025, he accused ministers demanding one of “jumping on a bandwagon of the far Right,”¹⁰ and suggested the calls were politically opportunistic.¹¹ Yet these same demands were later vindicated by the Casey Report (June 2025), and earlier statutory inquiries, which confirmed that police and local authorities across England had failed to act on widespread sexual exploitation out of fear of being labelled racist.¹²
Both cases demonstrate how blatant falsehoods—used either to demonise critics or to shield institutions—can have serious consequences. In Canada, a protest movement was slandered to justify authoritarian overreach. In Britain, thousands of girls were sacrificed to narrative control. In both cases, leaders were not held accountable. On the contrary: they remain at the apex of their political systems, never having corrected the record, never having expressed contrition. That is not merely dishonesty—it is a profound dereliction of truth and justice.
Spin and the Subversion of Reality
Spin—truth presented selectively, manipulatively, or with theatrical emphasis—has become the default mode of communication in public life. George Orwell foresaw this: “Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”¹³
Examples abound. The rebranding of illegal immigration as “irregular migration” is a classic euphemism meant to soften public perception and suggest a moral neutrality to lawbreaking. Likewise, the description of civilian war deaths as “collateral damage” sanitises the horrors of armed conflict and absolves decision-makers of accountability.
One of the most egregious examples was the claim that Donald Trump defended white supremacists during the Charlottesville protests in 2017. For years, media outlets and politicians asserted that Trump had said there were “very fine people on both sides,” referring to neo-Nazis. But the full transcript reveals he explicitly excluded white nationalists: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”¹⁴
Similarly, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020, the dominant narrative—that an innocent Black man was murdered by a racist police officer—quickly eclipsed critical facts:
Floyd's violent criminal history, including armed robbery and threatening a pregnant woman with a firearm, was largely omitted.¹⁵
The autopsy report cited high levels of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system, and concluded death was due to “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”¹⁶
A Department of Justice review found Chauvin’s actions unjustified, but did not find evidence of racial motivation.¹⁷
Despite these facts, Floyd was elevated to sainthood status in global media and political discourse, while dissent from this narrative—no matter how factual—was condemned as racist.
Rhetorical Aggression and the Death of Civility
Truth suffers not only from omission and distortion, but from aggression. In the modern West, the tone of political debate has hardened. Where reasoned disagreement once governed public discourse, we now find a war of labels—shrill, reductive, and personal. The use of rhetorical violence has become not a last resort, but a first principle.
The shift can be traced back over several decades, but reached a cultural crescendo in the mid-2010s. In 2016, Hillary Clinton notoriously dismissed millions of Americans as a “basket of deplorables”—“racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”¹⁸ While many dismissed this as a slip, it echoed a broader elite habit of pathologising disagreement rather than responding to it.
This rhetorical aggression is now bipartisan and transatlantic. In the UK, Conservative MPs have been called “fascists” simply for opposing immigration reform or gender ideology. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was branded “dangerous” for defending family values and national sovereignty.¹⁹
Social media platforms have accelerated this collapse of civility. The algorithms reward outrage, mockery, and tribal affirmation. “Clapbacks” are more widely shared than counterarguments. Public discourse is now a battlefield of weaponised insults rather than a forum for civic deliberation.
Unless civility is recovered—not merely as a style, but as a principle of public honour—politics will remain locked in a downward spiral of mutual suspicion, where persuasion gives way to performance, and the truth becomes collateral damage in a contest of egos.
Cancellation: A Culture of Fear
Cancel culture is perhaps the most chilling expression of political dishonesty. Under the guise of justice, it silences dissent, rewrites reality, and enforces ideological conformity through intimidation. What presents itself as moral sensitivity is often an exercise in coercion. The goal is not dialogue but domination: to remove certain views from public legitimacy by punishing those who hold them.
Kathleen Stock, a respected academic and feminist philosopher, was forced to resign from the University of Sussex in 2021 after expressing gender-critical views. Despite her intellectual credentials and civil tone, she became the target of a relentless harassment campaign. The university’s failure to defend her—not against argument, but against abuse—signalled a shift: that safeguarding ideological comfort had overtaken the duty to protect free inquiry.²⁶
Elsewhere, American journalist Abigail Shrier was disinvited from speaking events and blacklisted by booksellers for raising questions about the social drivers of adolescent gender transition. In the UK, MP Joanna Cherry KC was removed from a university panel on free speech after students objected to her beliefs on sex and gender—ironically, the very topic under discussion.²⁷ These are not isolated incidents but part of a broader phenomenon: a culture of institutional cowardice, where administrators capitulate to ideological pressure rather than uphold the principle of open discourse.
Cancellation thrives on dishonest framing: misrepresenting a person’s views, motives, or tone in order to justify outrage. Most so-called "offences" involve good-faith arguments that merely challenge dominant assumptions. But honesty is irrelevant once the mob is mobilised. The accused are denied nuance, stripped of context, and condemned without appeal.
What is perhaps most sinister is that cancellation erodes the public space in which truth might emerge. When scholars, writers, teachers, and artists fear inquiry, the very processes by which society corrects itself are paralysed. A culture of fear replaces a culture of reason. And in such a climate, lies flourish—not because they are persuasive, but because they are safe.
Unless courage is recovered and protected space for dissent is re-established, cancel culture will continue to corrode the foundations of intellectual and civic life. Its target is not simply error. Its real enemy is truth spoken out of season.
Digital Echo Chambers and the Firehose Effect
Social media rewards provocation, not truth. A 2018 MIT study revealed that falsehoods spread six times faster than the truth, especially when they provoke strong emotion.²² This aligns with the “firehose of falsehood” model used in modern propaganda: rapid, contradictory, high-volume messaging designed to overwhelm rather than persuade.
A striking British case came in 2024, when Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate spread a false claim that far-right groups were planning coordinated riots across UK towns. The rumour sparked school closures, counter-mobilisations, business disruption, and police redeployments—yet no credible threat ever materialised.³⁰
Lowles later admitted the story was false, but has faced no charges or consequences for the disruption it caused. In the age of digital spin, impact outweighs accuracy, and credibility is weaponised more than earned.
This is how the firehose effect and echo chambers intersect: narratives reinforced in sealed-off digital communities gain momentum without verification. Once mainstream figures amplify them, retractions come too late—if they come at all.
As Harry Frankfurt observed in his classic essay On Bullshit, the bullshitter is more dangerous than the liar, because he does not care whether what he says is true or false—only whether it serves his purpose.²³
Until platforms and institutions are held to account for how they amplify and legitimise falsehoods, digital culture will continue to degrade democratic discourse. The problem is not just what people believe—but how they come to believe it, and whether truth even matters in the process.
Conclusion: The Recovery of Integrity
When facts no longer matter, public trust collapses. A 2023 survey found that 62% of citizens in liberal democracies believe their leaders routinely lie.²⁴ Democracy cannot endure such cynicism. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, liberty cannot survive without virtue.
But the crisis is not merely political. It is a crisis of integrity—of the shared commitment to reality that makes social cooperation possible. The deliberate distortion of truth is not a neutral tactic; it is an assault on reason and a breach of public responsibility. It replaces persuasion with manipulation, justice with narrative control, and civic trust with suspicion and fear.
In such an atmosphere, public discourse ceases to be a search for the common good and instead becomes a contest of competing illusions. The long-standing norms of open debate, intellectual humility, and principled disagreement give way to a politics of performance—where appearance outweighs accuracy, and emotional manipulation replaces evidence.
A society that normalises dishonesty cannot remain free. Freedom is not merely the right to speak, but the ability to make informed decisions grounded in reality. When information is unreliable, decisions become distorted, and democratic participation becomes a charade.
This is why truth matters—not simply as a virtue, but as the foundation of any functioning political order. History has shown that when truth is sacrificed for power, the result is not progress but decay: institutions hollowed out, laws twisted to serve factions, and citizens divided by manufactured grievances.
The path back begins with personal and collective responsibility. Citizens must demand honesty from their leaders, resist simplification, challenge false narratives, and refuse to amplify what they know to be misleading. Media organisations, academics, and policymakers must reassert the primacy of facts over feelings, and accuracy over popularity.
Truth-telling is not a luxury in political life—it is its foundation. Without it, there can be no accountability, no justice, and no freedom worth having. In an age of deliberate spin and strategic confusion, recovering a culture of integrity is not only possible—it is essential.
Only a society that values truth more than victory can survive the age of manipulation. And only those who commit to it, consistently and courageously, can lead the way back.
Footnotes
¹ Rosie Duffield, interview and fallout over statement “only women have a cervix,” BBC News, September 2021.
² David Lammy, LBC Radio interview, September 2021: “Well… some men have cervixes.”
³ Roger Scruton, “On Political Correctness,” City Journal, Winter 2016.
⁴ “Iraq: The 45-Minute Claim,” BBC News, 2003.
⁵ The Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary, Sir John Chilcot, July 2016.
⁶ “Dr David Kelly: The Death that Won’t Go Away,” The Guardian, July 2013.
⁷ Blair: Office of the Quartet Envoy (2007–2015); Campbell/Stewart: The Rest Is Politics podcast, Global, from 2022.
⁸ Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, MIT Press, 2018.
⁹ Justin Trudeau, Press Conference, Ottawa, 27 January 2022: “They are a small fringe minority… who hold unacceptable views.”
¹⁰ Hansard, UK Parliament, 20 June 2025, debate on National Grooming Gang Inquiry.
¹¹ Keir Starmer, Sky News interview, June 2025: “We won’t jump on a far-right bandwagon.”
¹² Casey Report on the Metropolitan Police, March 2023; Rotherham and Rochdale Independent Inquiries, 2014–2015.
¹³ George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946.
¹⁴ Donald Trump, full remarks, White House Press Conference, 15 August 2017: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists… they should be condemned totally.”
¹⁵ George Floyd criminal history, Hennepin County Court Records (public access), 2007–2019.
¹⁶ Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Autopsy Report, June 1, 2020.
¹⁷ Department of Justice, USA v. Derek Chauvin, Review and Charges Filed, 2022; no federal hate crime charge.
¹⁸ Hillary Clinton, LGBT Gala Fundraiser, New York, 9 September 2016.
¹⁹ CNN, “Meloni’s victory raises fears among progressive observers,” October 2022.
²⁰ Kathleen Stock, resignation from University of Sussex, The Guardian, 28 October 2021.
²¹ Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, Regnery, 2020; and media disinvitations (e.g. Joe Rogan, November 2020).
²² Vosoughi, Roy, Aral, “The spread of true and false news online,” Science, March 2018.
²³ Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 2005.
²⁴ Edelman Trust Barometer, 2023 Global Report.
²⁵ John 8:32, referenced in cultural use, not as a religious appeal.
²⁶ “Why I Quit,” Kathleen Stock, UnHerd, November 2021.
²⁷ Joanna Cherry KC removal from Edinburgh University panel, The Times, 5 April 2023.
³⁰ Nick Lowles, “I was wrong,” tweet and statement, March 2024; coverage in Reddit UK Politics, Yahoo News, and MailOnline, March–April 2024.
Brilliant and insightful