Idiots who believe in conspiracy theories - what could possibly go wrong?

EVERYONE is entitled to an opinion, however stupid. And no country, community or generation has a monopoly on stupidity. In the Eighties there was a successful public information campaign to combat the spread of Aids with the catchphrase “Don’t die of ignorance”. If it were possible to actually die of ignorance, Britain would be as underpopulated today as it was after the Black Death.

Why does this matter so much when we are gripped by anxiety over the war in Gaza spilling out across the region and the world? It matters because the seams of society will come undone if we base our opinions on lies. War in all its forms — the most terrible thing imaginable — is being understood within a narrative of fantasy by those without even basic facts at their disposal: and therefore Israel killed 1,200 of its own people on October 7 as a pretext to attack Gaza; Hamas are not terrorists but kindly freedom-loving rebels; the Houthis are bravely standing up to Israel by attacking international shipping; US and UK attacks on Houthis are at the behest of their Zionist masters. This is not hyperbole. This is what a lot of people in London and Glasgow and New York and California believe.

Social media is piled high with dumps of hot, steaming opinion, and among them are increasingly regular instances of pro-Palestine demonstrators who have a zero-tolerance approach to knowledge. A few days ago a 12-year-old boy interviewed a marcher who did not know that two million Arab citizens lived in Israel. She claimed Israel created and finances Hamas. Her charming response to not knowing anything was to ask the boy if he was Jewish.