From Trouthe to Truth and then to Post-Truth? A Mirror. A Serpent. And ‘Fahrenheit 451’.

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
― Fire Chief Beatty, Fahrenheit 451

It is now commonly accepted that we are in an era of post-truth and fake news. These two terms gained prominence in late 2016, following the referendum on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections. These events led the Oxford English Dictionary to select “post-truth” as its word of the year, which many believed was a perfect reflection of the zeitgeist.

According to the dictionary, “post-truth” is defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Or to put…