The Art of Political Lying

A young Queen Anne  (Photo: Wikimedia)

With idle tales this fills our empty ears;
The next reports what from the first he hears;
The rolling fictions grow in strength and size,
Each author adding to the former lies.
Here vain credulity, with new desires,
Leads us astray, and groundless joy inspires;
The dubious whispers, tumults fresh designed,
And chilling fears astound the anxious mind.

From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” XII. 56-61 (completed in 8 CE) as told in Jonathan Swift, “The Art of Political Lying” The Examiner

While the foundations of the USA tremble under the force of unprecedented vote fraud, color revolutionary operations, and the danger of a renewed fascist takeover of the Wall Street-Big Tech-NSA/FBI/CIA combine, certain facts must be separated from fiction.

  • Despite the corporate media announcements of Biden’s victory, the fact is that things are far from certain as President Trump has made the point that he will fight all cases of blatant vote fraud which have appeared across 8 states.
  • Despite corporate media assertions to the contrary, there are indeed growing mountains of evidence that vote fraud has occurred among democrat-controlled swing states which have either given tens of thousands of Trump votes to Biden via “glitches,” blocked republican observers, used rosters replete with dead voters, modified dates on ballots or hundreds of thousands of mystery ballots appearing out of thin air in the middle of the night tipping the scales for Biden.
  • Every opposing narrative to this political lie is being surgically shut down, such as the immense censoring of the President’s Twitter account and cancelling of the “Stop the Steal” Facebook group that garnered over 350 000 members in only 24 hours. Meanwhile MSNBC, CBS, NPR and NBC have decided to take the unprecedented action of censoring the President’s press conference of Nov. 5 which raised serious questions about the legitimacy of the fraudulent votes.

While more cases of fraud can be listed here, and here, and here, and here, and here, the political situation is so tumultuous that I think it is important to take another approach to the historic moment we are currently living through by reviewing a parallel moment of great potential which was squandered three centuries ago.

Jonathan Swift and the Battle for Britain’s Soul

On November 9, 1710, the Satirist and political organizer Jonathan Swift wrote a pamphlet called the Art of Political Lying providing a decisive blow against the proto-deep state of the 18th century which had only recently taken control of the Island (Britain) during the 1688 Glorious Revolution and 1694 creation of the Bank of England.

In 1702, a young Queen Anne took the throne of England, and it was here that a clash occurred which was nearly entirely written out of history. From the moment the Venetian Party of England orchestrated the 1688 coup: wars, speculation and usury became the driving force of Britain. The long-hoped for peace with France organized by the great Colbert and his mentor Cardinal Jules Mazarin years earlier was lost and a new epoch of forever wars began to dominate British Foreign policy and British spending. It was in this new war economy that the bill to charter the Bank of England was passed. Under this bank, monetary policy became tied to the creation of ever-growing debts without providing the means to pay them off.

While many informed citizens today may be aware of this fact, and even comprehend the parallels to the takeover of the United States by international financiers during the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve, very few people have come to realize that there was a valiant fight in opposition to this 17-18th century coup from which could teach us much of what organises today’s world.

The Republican Resistance

In opposition to the City of London-based deep state, an anti-imperial faction had been organized around the Speaker of the House of Commons Robert Harley (1661-1724) who worked closely with an influential network of collaborators who did much to resist the empire which had not yet consolidated its migration from the swamps of Venice to more secure grounds in the City of London.

Harley had worked closely with his advisor Daniel Defoe (1) and other Tories to counter the monstrous Central Bank of England with a National Land Bank in 1696. The Land Bank was designed to serve as a tool to generate credit for manufacturing, internal improvements and centers of education across Britain with a focus on long term projects that generated real wealth. Harley’s group also worked tirelessly to establish peace treaties with France in order to create a climate of stability needed for investments into the real economic sector to occur rather than leak money into wars of death and destruction, and in many ways this form of political economy served as a precursor to the later system that arose under the guidance of Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

Sadly, Harley’s Land bank was soon taken over by speculators and run into the ground as the Venetian Party deep state continued to rise in power.

When William died in 1702, Princess Anne became Queen and the cabal of Britain’s Venetian Party (then operating under the banner of the Whig Junto) continued to exercise vast influence over affairs of state driving the nation into ever deeper unpayable debts and war.

As the late historian Graham Lowry brilliantly demonstrated in his book How the Nation Was Won, tides began to turn against the Venetian Party Whigs by 1710 as Queen Anne had come to realize how she had been deceived by her close confidante Sarah Churchill, who together with her husband John Churchill (aka: Lord Marlborough) had gained full control of the British armies, siphoned millions of pounds from war profiteering, and insider trading in the City of London while gaining castles more luxurious than those owned by the royal household itself. (2)

Queen Anne Drains the Swamp

After eight years of manipulation, the Queen had decided that she had enough and on September 20, 1710, she dissolved the Parliament and began draining the swamp under the guidance of Robert Harley whom she promptly made Prime Minister (then called “First Minister”), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1710-11) and Lord High Treasurer (1711-1714). Before the Parliament was reconvened, the majority of John Churchill’s Whig allies were forced to resign in disgrace while Sarah Churchill was removed from her position as “confidante”, having been replaced with Abigail Masham, a key figure in Harley’s republican network of court insiders.

As Lowry demonstrates, Harley’s co-conspirators centered in the Scriblerus Club led by the satirist and Irish statesman Jonathan Swift who arrived in London weeks before the humanist counter-coup was unleashed and remained Harley’s chief advisor and propagandist from August 1710 until 1713. Other members of the Scriblerus Club included Queen Anne’s physician John Aberthnot, poet Alexander Pope, playwright John Gay, philosopher/statesman Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell (to name a few). An important characteristic of all these figures was that they were cultural warriors of the highest level whose poetry, plays and music was inspired by the intention to uplift the minds and morals of the people.

Describing Harley’s efforts to finally end the forever wars with France that ultimately resulted in the 1713 Treaty of Ultrecht and revive his 1696 plans for a National Land Bank (though this time with an international colonial infrastructure development orientation under a government-run South Sea company to counteract both the Bank of England and also the British East India Company), Swift wrote in his 1714 Memoires: “Mr. Harley, to give credit to his administration, resolved upon two very important points: first, to secure unprovided debts of the nation and secondly to put an end to the war.”

Much like today’s easily bewildered world, press agencies of 1710 were too often used by the forces of evil to make black appear white, up appear down and right appear wrong. Slanders and mistruths were soon spread across the press of Harley’s corrupting influence on the Queen and the population was soon induced to riot and even burn effigies of both the Queen and Harley in public squares.

In the face of this battle over information, Swift wrote The Art of Political Lying which some historians have called “the most influential pamphlet in British political history.”

The Art of Political Lying

In this biting essay, the satirist lays bare the techniques of mass manipulation artfully stating:

Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation, by the continual improvements that have been made upon him. Who first reduced lying into an art, and adapted it to politics, is not so clear from history, although I have made some diligent inquiries. I shall therefore consider it only according to the modern system, as it has been cultivated these twenty years past in the southern part of our own island… the moderns have made great additions, applying this art to the gaining of power and preserving it, as well as revenging themselves after they have lost it; as the same instruments are made use of by animals to feed themselves when they are hungry, and to bite those that tread upon them… It can conquer kingdoms without fighting, and sometimes with the loss of a battle. It gives and resumes employments; can sink a mountain to a mole-hill, and raise a mole-hill to a mountain: hath presided for many years at committees of elections; can wash a black-a-moor white; make a saint of an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign ministers with intelligence, and raise or let fall the credit of the nation. This goddess flies with a huge looking-glass in her hands, to dazzle the crowd, and make them see, according as she turns it, their ruin in their interest, and their interest in their ruin.

Although weakened and bruised, the Venetian Party both in England and its French Jesuitical allies made every attempt to thwart Harley’s designs for peace with France from 1710-1713 beginning with a March 8, 1711 assassination attempt on Harley. Concerned over Harley’s slow recovery and doubting the loyalty of Harley’s physician whom many suspected of being an asset of Marlborough, Swift published a widely read poem:

To Mr. Harley’s surgeon
On Britain, Europe’s safety lies
And Britain’s lost if Harley dies;
Harley depends upon your skill
Think what you save or what you kill.

Luckily Harley recovered and peace negotiations recommenced after several months, but soon it became clear that the Duke of Marlborough, still controlling the British armies and working closely with Dutch mercenaries was not going to let peace win without a fight, announced that he would soon take Paris, and commenced a vicious attack on the French town of Bouchain causing the Queen to write to Harley saying:

The Duke of Marlborough shows plainer than ever by this new project his unwillingness for peace, but I hope our negotiations will succeed and there it will not be in his power to prevent it.

Here Swift’s razor-sharp pen was again deployed to expose the military industrial complex of London when he published the immensely popular book Conduct of the Allies on November 23, 1712. In this short work Swift wrote:

We are destroying many thousand lives, exhausting our substance, not for our own interest, which would be but common prudence; not for a thing indifferent which would be sufficient folly; but perhaps to our own destruction which is perfect madness.

Swift attacked that carnage caused by “that set of people who are called the monied men; such as had raised vast sums by trading with stocks and funds and lending upon great interest and premiums; whose perpetual harvest is war.”

Citing the 50 million pounds of unpayable debts incurred by Marlborough’s war with France Swift called out the “conspiracy on all sides to go on with those measures, which must perpetuate the war.”

This immensely popular pamphlet went through three editions in only three months and invoked such indignation among the population that the heroic image of the Duke of Marlborough portrayed by the media was torn to shreds and vast support was won for the peace process. In her December 6 speech opening of the Parliament, Queen Anne stated:

I am glad that I can now tell you that not withstanding the arts of those who delight in war, both place and time are appointed for opening the treaty of a general peace.

Not only did peace negotiations finally move forward, but the Queen convened a House inquiry into Marlborough’s siphoning of funds and war profiteering resulting in his being stripped of all offices on December 29, 1712 and replaced with Harley’s long time ally James Butler (2nd Duke of Ormonde) as Commander of the Army.

The next 18 months were some of the most intense in British political history with continuous battles waged to sabotage the peace process from oligarchical representatives within both England and France itself. Much like today, these oligarchs and their upper level managers were always more interested in keeping the world at constant war, underdeveloped and stupid in order to maintain a global hegemony above nations. While the Duke of Ormonde maintained a neutral position in France during the long drawn out peace negotiations, dark things were occurring in France.

The Venetian Party Strikes Back

From the first week of the treaty negotiations throughout the subsequent two months, over four consecutive heirs to the French throne died of the same mysterious symptoms leaving a Duke of Orleans and a Jesuitical cabal who controlled the ailing King Louis XIV in a strategic position of power never before seen in French history. When Harley’s lead peace negotiator the Duke of Hamilton was deployed to take his new position as Ambassador to France, a duel was arranged resulting in Hamilton’s successful killing of one of Marlborough’s chief henchmen General McCartney (3). However, when McCartney’s second then stabbed an unsuspecting Hamilton to death minutes later, Marlborough quickly demonstrated his guilt as he promptly packed his bags and fled to Holland, not to return until August 1, 1714… the day Queen Anne died.

Upon the queen’s death (most likely due to poisoning under the hand of her new physician Daniel Malthus – great grandfather of the misanthropic high priest of depopulation, Thomas Malthus), the Venetian Party took full control of Britain and never let go again.

With the ascension of George Ludwig to the throne in 1714, the satanic Hellfire Club rose in prominence, Marlborough was re-instated to all of his former positions, Robert Harley was imprisoned in the Tower of London and the economy was driven into a new epoch of colonial exploitation. Wars were unleashed abroad as the South Sea Company was turned into a speculative bubble that soon burst by 1720 tearing down the British people while enriching City of London insiders in the same way that Wall Street cleaned up bankrupt assets for pennies on the dollar in 1929. Under the control of the British Africa Company and Board of Trade, the poisonous slave trade came to dominate the 18th century and a newly enforced era of divide to conquer tactics was unleashed in full force.

Writing years later of the events of 1710-1714 after he had long returned to a new base of operations in Dublin, Jonathan Swift wrote a poem reminiscing of this period of hope and tragedy:

And oh! How short are human schemes!
Here ended all our golden dreams.
What St John’s skill in state affairs
What Ormonde’s valour, Oxford’s cares
To save their sinking country lent,
Was all destroyed by one event,
Too soon that precious life was ended
On which alone our weal depended.

Concluding Thoughts

It may not be clear why this history lesson is important for us today.

The reason is simple: You are living in history. And unless we come to terms with the longer waves of the past, we will forever be incapable of shaping our destiny in any meaningful way.

Donald Trump has made it clear that he will not be giving into the political liars who have conspired to steal the American election and return the republic to the status of imperial deep state war machine which the world knew over the course of the past 50 years and unless the president is successful in the coming battle in ways which Queen Anne, Robert Harley and Swift were not then there is good reason to presume that the future will be darker than you would care to imagine.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review, Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow, and Director of The Rising Tide Foundation. He has authored three volumes of the Untold History of Canada book series and four volumes of the Clash of the Two Americas. He hosts Connecting the Dots on TNT Radio, Breaking History on Badlands Media, and The Great Game on Rogue New. Read other articles by Matthew.