The Convenience of Forgetting

by Ram ben Ze'ev

The Convenience of Forgetting

History does not whisper. It records.

Every generation eventually discovers that the previous one was not told the whole truth. Files are unsealed. Minutes are published. Private memoranda become public record. What was once described as “necessary,” “urgent,” or “for the greater good” is revealed, years later, to have been partial, selective, or simply untrue.

Legislation was sold as protection but concealed its cost. Spending was justified as investment but masked its beneficiaries. Foreign entanglements were framed as defence yet proved to be ambition. Wars were launched under banners of certainty that later dissolved under scrutiny.

This is not partisan. It is historical.

Time has a way of exposing the architecture behind public statements. And the pattern, when examined honestly, is sobering: governments, across nations and eras, have frequently been economical with the truth. Sometimes they misrepresented. Sometimes they withheld. Sometimes they lied outright.

The unsettling part is not that this happened. It is that it continues to happen—and that we continue to forget.

Today, most of us do not possess first-hand knowledge of the events that shape our opinions. We rely on official statements. We rely on briefings. We rely on journalists interpreting documents we have not read and data we cannot independently verify. We absorb summaries shaped by editorial priorities and personal incentives, both known and unknown.

And the risk has grown.

In previous centuries, manipulation required control of printing presses or broadcast towers.

Now it requires only a device in one’s hand. Information moves at a speed unimaginable to our grandparents. So does distortion. Speeches can be manufactured. Images can be fabricated. Video can be engineered to show events that never occurred. Proof can be simulated. Evidence can be falsified.

The tools of persuasion have never been more powerful—or more accessible.

In such an environment, repetition becomes authority. Headlines become memory. Emotion becomes evidence. Many who share what they believe to be “news” do so in good faith, repeating what they have been told by sources they assume to be credible. Others advance narratives deliberately. Some are driven by ideology. Some by ambition. Some by fear.

But the common thread is this: we are rarely in possession of the full picture.

Years ago, the novelist Michael Crichton described what he called the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Syndrome.” The deeper point was not merely that readers spot errors in subjects they know well and trust coverage in subjects they do not. It is more troubling than that. We can know—clearly and repeatedly—that a particular source, institution, or government has misled us in the past. We can recognise the pattern. Yet when that same source publishes something that affirms our own position, echoes our frustrations, or validates our worldview, we suspend the memory of its previous falsehoods. We reverse the standard. The question shifts from “Is this source trustworthy?” to “Does this agree with me?” And in that moment of agreement, credibility is restored—not because the source has changed, but because it now serves our conclusions.

We forget what we just learned about unreliability.

We grant fresh credibility to a source we already know has misled us—because this time, the message aligns with our preferences, our loyalties, or our fears.

That is the convenience of forgetting.

History is not merely a catalogue of events. It is a training ground for discernment. If we know that administrations in the past shaped narratives to achieve policy goals, we must assume the possibility that present administrations do the same, if not more so today. If we know that media outlets have erred or misled, we must treat current reporting with measured caution—not cynicism, but scrutiny.

This does not require paralysis. It requires humility.

It requires recognising that most of us operate at a distance from primary information. It requires acknowledging that emotional satisfaction is not evidence. It requires resisting the temptation to believe something simply because it fits comfortably within our worldview.

The lesson of history is not that nothing is true. It is that truth is rarely handed to us whole.

And so, when evaluating current events, the responsible question is not merely, “What is happening?” but also, “How do I know?”

History has already answered the second question once. We would do well to remember its reply.

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Bill White (Ram ben Ze'ev) is CEO of WireNews Limited, Mayside Partners Limited, MEADHANAN Agency, Kestrel Assets Limited, SpudsToGo Limited and Executive Director of Hebrew Synagogue