Web of lies and deceipt

Apr 13 2008 by Alan Ross, Sunday Sun

IT was Mark Twain, in the last century but one, who said “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”.

He was right. The only thing I’d change about his remark, apart from kitting the truth out in designer trainers, is to make the lie travel twice round the world . . . by internet.

I’ve been part of this process recently. It’s easy to do, and rather embarrassing when it happens. It also implicates everyone you passed it on to.

I’m not talking about some of our old favourites. If you’re an internet user, you’ll know the usual suspects. Things like the “Don’t open any email entitled Happy Birthday because your computer’s hard disk will be wiped and your legs will drop off” message.

Then there’s the one where the brother of the wife of the third cousin of the sender rang up Microsoft and got Bill Gates personally to promise that if you send this on to 10 of your friends, you’ll receive a brand new laptop/high-definition telly/new brain.

The one that got me was rather less obvious. It was to do with the Holocaust, and had all sorts of facts that are worth repeating about that event.

But in the middle of all this worthy stuff was a big fat lie. It said that UK schools had taken studying the Holocaust off the school curriculum to avoid offending Muslim pupils.

Nonsense of course, and when the first person I sent it to pointed out that their daughter’s school was sending pupils to visit Auschwitz, it became clear that the truth had been twisted.

A remark from a particular head teacher that the studies were “controversial” had become a blanket ban, which doesn’t exist, and a lie which people were being encouraged to send all round the world.

It seems to have been part of an email conflict between holders of extreme views on either side. As usual, the truth got squeezed out as a casualty of war.

Goebbels would have been proud. The bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed.