Are you the Hero of your own story? Or the villain in someone else’s...

Story telling is as ancient as human beings. Humans live in stories. Stories we tell about ourselves, our families, and our societies help us make sense of reality. Storytelling is the oldest form of identity formation and the bedrock of culture since the dawn of human civilization. I’ll return to this.

On my recent speaking tour, I included a slide showing a tweet by a well-followed X account supposably based in Gaza. It read: “Hell is happening now where I live. Pray for us. Gaza.” This post is time stamped Oct. 7th, 2023 6:33 AM. It received over 1 million views. I asked: How did he know, while the Hamas attack has hardly started, weeks before a single Israeli shot fired into Gaza, that this is the case? I used this as an example for the pre-planned propaganda campaign launched against Israel on the same day of Hamas’ brutal attack. As it turns out, the reality was even worse. The account isn’t based in Gaza at all. It’s all a lie. 

The new location feature on X.com shows that a large portion of the major “news” and prominent Gaza-based accounts on X, are not from Gaza at all. They’re operated from elsewhere, collecting donations with no transparency as to where the money actually goes. More importantly, they trafficked in propaganda: false accusations, real and staged tragedies, and emotionally loaded images, some real, some AI generated and some from other conflicts altogether designed to vilify Israel and manipulate Western audiences.

These posts, packaged as “testimonies from Gaza”, are then repurposed by strategic communications platforms like RT and Al Jazeera, as supposed news items. From there they were cited by AP and Reuters, sometimes with a quote from “Gaza health ministry”, an arm of Hamas. Once they reached the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC under the familiar disclaimer “sources in Gaza say…” the lie had already been laundered into legitimacy. Hamas press releases, quoted uncritically by the UN and other NGOs with supposed credibility, completed the perfect circle of cross-referencing. Amplified by “respectable” users, the claims spread into TikTok and Instagram as memes and short emotional clips, where they solidified into public “facts.”

Many accounts had been exposed. Who can guess how many more exist across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok? The X.com exposed not just anti-Israel influencers but even pages posing as MAGA or “America First” that were later revealed to be operated far outside the United States.

And it is all built on lies.

Indeed, the scale of the human tragedy in Gaza must be acknowledged. There is no worse human endeavour than war. Yet, faced with overwhelming evidence that much of the reporting from Gaza was fraudulent, surely journalists would re-examine their methods. Surely the finger-wagging celebrities and social-media moralists would reconsider their positions.

But they will not. Such soul-searching requires intellectual honesty and journalistic integrity, something sorely lacking in the age of activist-journalists. There is no social or professional benefit to admitting errors that harmed Israel. And there is certainly a financial incentive to maintain the narratives.

What we are witnessing is not journalism but social engineering: the crafting of reality and the shaping of an overarching narrative that becomes the lens through which millions understand the world.

This isn’t just an information loop from obscure accounts to legacy media. It is embedded in the digital knowledge infrastructure—Wikipedia, Reddit, and the data that train AI language models. Together, for decades, they have created a tidal wave of misinformation that now serves as the foundation of Western academic and cultural discourse. In this worldview, truth is no longer a guiding principle; it is an obstacle. The consistent villain is the West itself, with Israel as the poisoned tip of its alleged evil spear.

For years, post-modernism has taught that “narrative” supersedes history because history is merely “his story.” What about her story? Their story? Who decides? If everyone possesses their own “truth,” then Truth itself becomes meaningless. When there is no truth, there are no lies, only competing narratives.

Which brings me back to storytelling.

What role do you play in the story of your life? Are you the protagonist, shaping your own destiny? A supporting character in someone else’s script? Or, perhaps worst of all, the villain in someone else’s narrative? Increasingly, the West has cast itself as the latter. Generations of Westerners have been taught that their civilization is the root of global injustice. That Western civilization is responsible for the poverty, violence, and failures of all others. That the West is, inherently, the villain.

Why do young men and women who believe they are good and moral and virtuous become so critical of their own identity? Because if that story is true, why defend Western values at all? Why feel pride in your identity? Instead, many young people, encouraged by their progressive academic elders, feel morally driven to join those who want to dismantle the West. Because if you believe you are the villain, then the “ethical” thing to do is to help your enemies bring down those you believe are responsible. The road to hell is paved with virtue and moral superiority.

There is a reason the Bible makes such emphasis on truth. That it prohibits perjury, false testimonies, bribes, cheating and lies. (“For the Lord your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly” Deu. 25; 16). Our civilization is based on the fundamental Biblical idea that the arbiter of justice is truth. A world without truth is a world without justice, because how can justice be administered if the truth is not exposed? Without truth there can be no science and with it progress, health and prosperity. Without truth there is no trust and with out trust we cannot “...love your neighbour as yourself” (Lev. 19; 18). Without truth tyrants rise and freedom fails. Without truth there is no protection from harm or violence. It is a world where nothing can be defended because nothing can be proven.

In the end, the survival of the West depends on the simplest idea we have always taken for granted: that truth exists, and that it matters. Without it, our institutions crumble, our freedoms erode, and our moral vocabulary disintegrates. We can no longer outsource the defence of truth to journalists, to universities, and certainly not to algorithms. It is our responsibility as citizens to insist on honesty from our media, demand our elected officials expose the double-speak, relinquish political correctness, and to rebuild the shared reality that makes justice and liberty possible. In a world addicted to narratives, choosing truth is an act of courage. And today, courage is the only way to remain the hero of our own story rather than the villain of someone else’s imagination.