Download or read book The Assault on Truth written by Peter Oborne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER * 'A clinical and merciless account of Johnson's mendacity... gripping' Guardian When Peter Oborne wrote The Rise of Political Lying, looking at the growth of political falsehood under John Major and Tony Blair, he believed things had got as bad as they could be. With the arrival of Boris Johnson at No 10 in 2019 began a new and unprecedented epidemic of deceit. In The Assault on Truth, a short and powerful new polemic, Oborne shows how Boris Johnson lied again and again in order to secure victory so he could force through Brexit in the face of parliamentary opposition. Johnson and his ministers then lied repeatedly to win the general election in December 2019. The government’s woeful response to the coronavirus pandemic has generated another wave of falsehoods, misrepresentations and fabrications. The scale and shamelessness of the lying of the Johnson administration far exceeds the lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and other issues under Tony Blair. This book argues that the ruthless use of political deceit under the Johnson government is part of a wider attack on civilised values and traditional institutions across the Western world, especially by Donald Trump in the USA. The Johnson and Trump methodology of deceit is about securing power for its own ends - even when they get exposed for lying, they shrug it off as a matter of no consequence. It matters because all Western institutions are built around the idea of integrity and accountability. This means that an assault on truth is an assault on the rule of law, state institutions and the fundamental idea of fairness, and even democracy itself.
Download or read book Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth written by The Washington Post Fact Checker Staff and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NATIONAL BESTSELLER In perilous times, facts, expertise, and truth are indispensable. President Trump’s flagrant disregard for the truth and his self-aggrandizing exaggerations, specious misstatements, and bald-faced lies have been rigorously documented and debunked since the first day of his presidency by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker staff. Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth is based on the only comprehensive compilation and analysis of the more than 16,000 fallacious statements that Trump has uttered since the day of his inauguration. He has repeated many of his most outrageous claims dozens or even hundreds of times as he has sought to bend reality to his political fantasy and personal whim. Drawing on Trump’s tweets, press conferences, political rallies, and TV appearances, The Washington Post identifies his most frequently used misstatements, biggest whoppers, and most dangerous deceptions. This book unpacks his errant statements about the economy, immigration, the impeachment hearings, foreign policy, and, of critical concern now, the coronavirus crisis as it unfolded. Fascinating, startling, and even grimly funny, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth by The Washington Post is the essential, authoritative record of Trump’s shocking disregard for facts.
Download or read book The Assault on Truth written by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented his revolutionary seduction theory, arguing that acts of sexual abuse and violence inflicted on children are the direct cause of adult mental illness. Nine years later, Freud completely reversed his position, insisting that these sexual memories were actually fantasies that never happened. Why did Freud retract the seduction theory? And why has the psychoanalytic community gone to such lengths to conceal that retraction? In this landmark book, drawing on his unique access to formerly sealed and hidden papers, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson dares to uncover the truth about this critical turning point in Freud's career and its enduring impact on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. The Assault on Truth reveals a reality that neither Freud nor his followers could bear to face. Bracing in its honesty, gripping its revelations, this is the book that prompted Masson's break with the psychoanalytic community-and launched his subsequent brilliant career as an independent thinker and writer.
Download or read book Against Therapy written by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking and highly controversial book, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson attacks the very foundations of modern psychotherapy from Freud to Jung, from Fritz Perls to Carl Rodgers. With passion and clarity, Against Therapy addresses the profession's core weaknesses, contending that, since therapy's aim is to change people, and this is achieved according to therapist's own notions and prejudices, the psychological process is necessarily corrupt. With a foreword by the eminent British psychologist Dorothy Rowe, this cogent and convincing book has shattering implications.
Download or read book The Assault on Intelligence written by Michael V. Hayden and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A blistering critique of the forces threatening the American intelligence community, beginning with the President of the United States himself, in a time when that community's work has never been harder or more important In the face of a President who lobs accusations without facts, evidence, or logic, truth tellers are under attack. Meanwhile, the world order teeters on the brink. Experience and expertise, devotion to facts, humility in the face of complexity, and respect for ideas seem more important, and more endangered, than they've ever been. American Intelligence--the ultimate truth teller--has a responsibility in a post-truth world beyond merely warning of external dangers, and in The Assault on Intelligence, General Michael Hayden, former CIA director, takes up that urgent work with profound passion, insight and authority. It is a sobering vision. The American intelligence community is more at risk than commonly understood. Our democracy's core structures are under great stress. Many of the premises on which we have based our understanding of governance are now challenged, eroded, or simply gone. And in the face of overwhelming evidence from the intelligence community that the Russians are, by all acceptable standards of cyber conflict, in a state of outright war against us, we have a President in office who chooses not to lead a strong response, but instead to shoot the messenger. There are fundamental changes afoot in the world and in this country. The Assault on Intelligence shows us what they are, reveals how crippled we've become in our capacity to address them, and points toward a series of effective responses. Because when we lose our intelligence, literally and figuratively, democracy dies.
Download or read book On Truth written by Harry Frankfurt and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having outlined a theory of bullshit and falsehood, Harry G. Frankfurt turns to what lies beyond them: the truth, a concept not as obvious as some might expect.Our culture's devotion to bullshit may seem much stronger than our apparently halfhearted attachment to truth. Some people (professional thinkers) won't even acknowledge "true" and "false" as meaningful categories, and even those who claim to love truth cause the rest of us to wonder whether they, too, aren't simply full of it. Practically speaking, many of us deploy the truth only when absolutely necessary, often finding alternatives to be more saleable, and yet somehow civilization seems to be muddling along. But where are we headed? Is our fast and easy way with the facts actually crippling us? Or is it "all good"? Really, what's the use of truth, anyway?With the same leavening wit and commonsense wisdom that animates his pathbreaking work On Bullshit, Frankfurt encourages us to take another look at the truth: there may be something there that is perhaps too plain to notice but for which we have a mostly unacknowledged yet deep-seated passion. His book will have sentient beings across America asking, "The truth—why didn't I think of that?"
Download or read book The Rise of Political Lying written by Peter Oborne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-truth, fake news - when did it all really start? Being 'economical with the truth' has become almost a jokey euphemism for the political lie - a cosy insider's phrase for the disingenuousness that is now accepted as part and parcel of political life. But as we face the third term of a government that has elevated this kind of economics almost to an art form, is it now time to question the creeping invasion of falsehood? What does the rise of the political lie say about our society? At what point, if we have not reached it already, will we cease to believe a word politicians say? Tracing the history of political falsehood back to its earliest days, but focusing specifically on the exponential rise of the phenomenon during the Major and Blair governments, Peter Oborne demonstrates that the truth has become an increasingly slippery concept in recent years. From woolly pronouncements that are designed merely to obfuscate to outright and blatant lies whose intention is to deceive, the political lie is never far from the surface. And its prevalence has led to a catastrophic decline in trust, at a time when people are more politicised than ever. Rigorous, riveting and profoundly shocking, this is a devastating book about one of the single biggest issues facing us today.
Download or read book Denying the Holocaust written by Deborah Lipstadt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Sixty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews, and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense, and that the Germans were the “true victims” of World War II. For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But as time goes on, they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas, and now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how—despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence—this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with organized chapters, “independent” research centers, and official publications that promote a “revisionist” view of recent history. Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of value-relativism, and argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge. Thus the movement has an unsuspected power to dramatically alter the way that truth and meaning are transmitted from one generation to another.
Download or read book Assault and Flattery written by Katie Pavlich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book exposes the truth behind the real war on women--the one being waged by Democrats. This book goes beyond the Democratic Party's rhetoric and exposes its shocking and sustained assault on American women that has lasted for generations. And in some cases, the word,assault is quite literal. Katie Pavlich thinks the Democrats have run the conversation for too long and is out to debunk the sacred cows of the so-called Republican War on Women. This book exposes the truth about the Democratic stance toward women on every major current issue and in every liberal stronghold, including: abortion, self-defense, the myth of the women's vote, Hollywood, academia, and more. Using original reporting and interviews, Pavlich deftly exposes the liberal heroes of the women's movement to show us the frauds they really are including such revered figures as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, often called the most pro-woman president in history.
Download or read book The Assault written by Brian Falkner and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2012 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the year 2030, six teens who have been modified to look like the aliens who are battling for control of Earth go behind enemy lines and discover a shocking, secret alien project.
Download or read book 935 Lies written by Charles Lewis and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facts are and must be the coin of the realm in a democracy, for government "of the people, by the people and for the people," requires and assumes to some extent an informed citizenry. Unfortunately, for citizens in the United States and throughout the world, distinguishing between fact and fiction has always been a formidable challenge, often with real life and death consequences. But now it is more difficult and confusing than ever. The Internet Age makes comment indistinguishable from fact, and erodes authority. It is liberating but annihilating at the same time. For those wielding power, whether in the private or the public sector, the increasingly sophisticated control of information is regarded as utterly essential to achieving success. Internal information is severely limited, including calendars, memoranda, phone logs and emails. History is sculpted by its absence. Often those in power strictly control the flow of information, corroding and corrupting its content, of course, using newspapers, radio, television and other mass means of communication to carefully consolidate their authority and cover their crimes in a thick veneer of fervent racialism or nationalism. And always with the specter of some kind of imminent public threat, what Hannah Arendt called "objective enemies.'" An epiphanic, public comment about the Bush "war on terror" years was made by an unidentified White House official revealing how information is managed and how the news media and the public itself are regarded by those in power: "[You journalists live] "in what we call the reality-based community. [But] that's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality . . . we're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." And yet, as aggressive as the Republican Bush administration was in attempting to define reality, the subsequent, Democratic Obama administration may be more so. Into the battle for truth steps Charles Lewis, a pioneer of journalistic objectivity. His book looks at the various ways in which truth can be manipulated and distorted by governments, corporations, even lone individuals. He shows how truth is often distorted or diminished by delay: truth in time can save terrible erroneous choices. In part a history of communication in America, a cri de coeur for the principles and practice of objective reporting, and a journey into several notably labyrinths of deception, 935 Lies is a valorous search for honesty in an age of casual, sometimes malevolent distortion of the facts.
Download or read book The Assault on American Excellence written by Anthony T. Kronman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy. College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing—over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students—has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem. “Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues. Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society—and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.
Download or read book Against Therapy written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Post Truth written by Lee McIntyre and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we arrived in a post-truth era, when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. Are we living in a post-truth world, where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lee McIntyre traces the development of the post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of “fake news,” from our psychological blind spots to the public's retreat into “information silos.” What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples—claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote—and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism—specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth—in its attacks on science and facts. McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.
Download or read book Psychoanalysis written by Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In the Freud Archives written by Janet Malcolm and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2002-11-30 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes an afterword by the author In the Freud Archives tells the story of an unlikely encounter among three men: K. R. Eissler, the venerable doyen of psychoanalysis; Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a flamboyant, restless forty-two-year-old Sanskrit scholar turned psychoanalyst turned virulent anti-Freudian; and Peter Swales, a mischievous thirty-five-year-old former assistant to the Rolling Stones and self-taught Freud scholar. At the center of their Oedipal drama are the Sigmund Freud Archives--founded, headed, and jealously guarded by Eissler--whose sealed treasure gleams and beckons to the community of Freud scholarship as if it were the Rhine gold. Janet Malcolm's fascinating book first appeared some twenty years ago, when it was immediately recognized as a rare and remarkable work of nonfiction. A story of infatuation and disappointment, betrayal and revenge, In the Freud Archives is essentially a comedy. But the powerful presence of Freud himself and the harsh bracing air of his ideas about unconscious life hover over the narrative and give it a tragic dimension.
Download or read book The Death of Truth written by Michiko Kakutani and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic comes an impassioned critique of America’s retreat from reason We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases. How did truth become an endangered species in contemporary America? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and politics, Kakutani identifies the trends—originating on both the right and the left—that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant. With remarkable erudition and insight, Kakutani offers a provocative diagnosis of our current condition and points toward a new path for our truth-challenged times.
