Fear and lies in a world of fakes

The weekend round up

Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash

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Right then, while you fumble for your credit cards, I will talk about the rise of fakery: fake news, fake images, fake audio, fake politics.

Let me begin with someone I know. I admire Michela Wrong enormously. She does what journalists are meant to do: she afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.

Her beat was Africa, and Michela spent her career puncturing the West’s illusions about its rulers.

After Paul Kagame’s forces overthrew Rwanda’s genocidal Hutu regime in 1994, the world wanted to believe in a fairy story. The mass murder of Rwanda’s Tutsi population would be followed by peace, reconciliation and justice, it thought, as it threw praise and money at Kagame’s government.

Rwanda became the darling of the global aid industry. Under New Labour and the Tories, Kagame was feted.

Now our Conservative government declares that Rwanda is such a serene and safe country, Britain can dump asylum seekers there without the smallest concern for their safety or the faintest suspicion that corrupt officials will siphon off taxpayers’ money.

It was such a compelling story.  Kagame and his idealistic group of young rebel fighters overthrow a genocidal regime ushering in an era of peace and stability. Under his leadership Rwanda became the West’s donor darling, hailed as Africa’s “Switzerland” or “Singapore”

The compelling story was also such balls. Michela exposed the lies, and has suffered a campaign of terrifying vilification as a result.

 As AI and deep fake technology advance, not only journalists, politicians and celebrities, but potentially all of us can suffer equally ferocious attacks as calumny becomes ever easier to manufacture.

But first let me tell you what happened to Michela, then I will move on to the wider implications.