The Lying Game

EXTRACT: Therefore communists defend the right to be offensive, to be “robust” in your political language - something of course that large sections of the British life have problems with, historically prone to imposing all sorts of gags and blocks on free speech in the name of preventing “verbal abuse”. On the contrary, the CPGB has always argued that everyone should be free to speak their mind - free from bureaucratic/moralistic censure. Which, of course, does not mean that we therefore approve of attacks on a political opponent, or imagined political opponent, which are ad hominem in nature or consist of purely personal sleights - funny nose, big ears, unfortunate haircut, etc. Communists aim to tell the political truth, not indulge in personalised mud-slinging. So to call Phil Woolas an odious lying scumbag is no more than stating an obvious political fact and we fight for our right to do so - including in election material and propaganda. We say to the courts - keep out of political debate!
More centrally still, communists are obliged to point out that bourgeois politics in this country is not much more than the art of lying perfected to a near science - they all do it, to some degree or another. Just like in the United States, empire of the big lie - where the working class have been written out of official existence: we are all middle class now. In that sense, Woolas’s plainly deceitful electioneering is only separated by a question of degree from the more ‘normal’ election lies we almost take for granted.