Welcome to a “post-truth” world
It has become trendy to say that we have entered a « post-truth » era. This is a new era where facts don’t matter and where one takes a stand according to one’s opinions and one’s personal bias rather than after a cold and careful analysis of reality.
This must be true, at least in the Anglo-Saxon universe. The Oxford Dictionary, lexical benchmark of the dominant culture, has chosen the expression « post-truth » as last year’s word of the year. As proof of the matter it sees the fact that the usage of this formula has bounced recently, to the point that many political events could not be explained otherwise.
The election of Donald Trump in the US, Brexit in Great-Britain and the growing use of social media are called upon to explain our entry in this « post-factual » world. Let’s not kid ourselves : our planet being largely globalized, even the most rational and Cartesian among us we will not be immune to the pandemic that is sweeping the Anglo-American world.
That should not stop us from wondering if the new shores we are supposed to be aproaching are real or only « post-real ». From time immemorial someone’s truth has been his neighbour’s lie. Weren’t the Resistants and the Freedom fighters called terrorists by those they were fighting ?
It would be innappropriated to dwell on the relative value of truth. But just as we are discovering that the Titanic probably did not sink only because of an iceberg but also because of a fire in its engines, it might be time to reconsider what has seemed obvious.
There is no doubt that Donald Trump took huge liberties with the truth in order to surprise the whole world and get elected. In his astonishing success there is a large amount of deceit and of promises that can never be fulfilled. But isn’t that the rule of the game in a campaign ? Can one be that naïve as to not know it ?
The same thing goes for Brexit. To believe that by leaving the European Union, the UK would recover its full political and economic sovereignty and better seize the opportunities of globalization is at best a lapse in judgment, at worst a cynical deception. To misunderstand the reality of today’s world is excusable. It is less so to mislead the voters, through manipulation or by self-deception. Should one see in this the intrusion of a triumphant « post-truth » ?
The pervasive role of social media is something newer and more of a problem. It brings about disruptions that affect the political sphere. Every citizen can now choose his own source of information without having to rely on the traditional media. One is free to construct one’s own truth. It has been a long time since the evening news on TV served as a daily civic education course on which government policy could build.
With Facebook, Google and Twitter, each individual lives in his own information bubble. Algorithms supply whatever he prefers to know about the outside world. It has become very rare to be confronted with conflicting ideas, an exercise that is at the core of any democratic behaviour.
In such a compartimentalized environment, the « post-factual » world thrives. Never mind facts or reality, what is essential is to know who is talking about them. Since one has given up on distinguishing between right and wrong, what is important is to tune in to the source of information that one trusts. In the US, Republicans will believe whatever Fox says while CNN caters to Democrats.
Polarisation of public opinion is such that one wonders how it is still possible to surpass this parochial way of thinking and strive for the general interest. The press in general is contaminated. Too often the journalistic exercise isn’t any more about asking the right questions to help the reader, the viewer or the listener make up his own opinion but rather it has become about giving hasty and biased answers to questions that don’t really matter to most people.
So, are Trump’s election and Brexit products of a « post-factual » world, as it is being said ? Whatever their obvious excesses, the followers of both of them have defended viewpoints which have the merits of disputing the established truth, the « politically correctness » so categorically exhibited by the governing elites.
If Trump and Brexit could find such an echo in public opinion, isn’t it also because the dominant discourse has lost a large part of its credibility ? In another arena, does Vladimir Putin’s behaviour — quite dubious, one must say — really justify the conspiracy theory it fosters ? Since when has propaganda become a one way street ? Aren’t we looking for a culprit for our own failures ?
As they repeatedly hear that globalisation is going to cure all ills, that Europe should expand for ever and become a Federal State open to millions of migrants, voters have a right to ask questions. They expect that all political shortcomings should not be blamed on a world that has suddenly become « post-factual ».
(This article was first published in French in La Tribune Afrique)
