Post-truth with a white tie

We are on the brink of a new era shaped by post-truth politics, where facts are undermined and imagination is weaponised to pursue political goals. Sadly, large lies spread like viruses through culture and, despite evidence, facts, ethics and standards being present, no antidote exists. This further erodes institutions and silences journalists who refuse to bow to the powerful, governments and capital.

The argument that ‘you’re right because everyone is against you’ is hardly enough to justify maintaining the same mistaken mindset. The term ‘post-truth’ has become widespread because truth, when it exists, does not align with our selfish aspirations,´-or-is inferior to them. Post-truth, on the other hand, reflects our desires for others and defines our self-serving concept of nationalism.

This is evident in the ongoing media war surrounding fake news, where the real danger lies in the media losing the meaning of words altogether. If journalists are not held accountable for their writing, public opinion will be shaped by bloggers expressing personal grievances, aspirations and visions for themselves and others. This is a dangerous trap that leads the media down a terrifying abyss where accusations and counterclaims are not tools fit for responsible journalism.

Today, we are living in the flickering glow of the post-truth era, in which the world’s largest political administrations control the machinery of media manipulation! During her inaugural news conference as White House press secretary, Karoline Levitt declared her commitment to “telling the truth from this podium every day.” Moments later, however, she claimed that the new administration had cancelled a -$-50 million contract to provide condoms to Gaza, arguing that “this was a foolish waste of taxpayers’ money.”

This claim was absurd and was quickly exposed as a lie. The money had actually been allocated as federal grants to prevent sexually transmitted diseases in Mozambique, not the Palestinian territories. This claim quickly spread and seeped into the political rhetoric used by President Donald Trump to justify his efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce.

Elon Musk, who is leading a campaign against federal spending, has also spread disinformation, including the claim about sending condoms to Gaza. Despite acknowledging the errors, he has faced no consequences.

On the same day that the White House press secretary made the false claim about condoms for Hamas fighters in Gaza, digital platforms were filled with misleading and fabricated details labelling the condoms as ‘terrorist condoms,’ even while the press briefing was still ongoing and before media organisations had the opportunity to verify the facts.

These false narratives, which would previously have remained confined to the dark corners of the internet, are now being promoted by heads of state, party leaders, ministers and business people, and amplified by media echo chambers. This confuses political discourse and deepens the erosion of trust in institutions.

The public needs something to cheer for, and fake news increases the range of options, creating more polarisation and amplifying the noise. Supporters of President Trump, for example, portray his false´-or-exaggerated statements as negotiation strategies. Trump himself has described his manoeuvring as a means to an end, saying at a rally: “If you say something enough times and keep saying it, people will start to believe it.”

In the post-truth era, questions are being asked about what cancel culture represents as a poor substitute for freedom of speech, and what George Orwell’s writings can teach us about the brutal war Israel is waging on Gaza. Indeed, Donald Trump, whose ethical principles remain the subject of endless debate, did not hesitate to quote Orwell, which led to a significant spike in sales of the book “1984”. In one of his speeches, Trump said, “What you see and what you read is not what is happening,” a statement that Audrey McCabe, a government oversight analyst, calls the strategy of “overwhelming disinformation.”

Thus, while many political statements can be interpreted as exaggerated rhetorical tools, other lies belong to the category of media manipulation, deliberate attempts to mislead the public. The surge in these false´-or-misleading claims in today’s political discourse is also a result of technological transformations in the media landscape. This explains why the public is increasingly distancing itself from traditional news outlets, instead immersing itself in the digital noise of podcasts, live streams and social media, where partisanship, anger and resentment generally outweigh balanced exchanges of facts.

Thus, fake news derives its existence not from its power, but from what we, the gullible´-or-the deeply mistaken consumers, do to promote it in pursuit of narrow, selfish desires.
We live in what John Thornhill calls “filter bubbles,” because technology and social networks have destroyed the truth. He writes in the Financial Times: “We live in a post-truth world, where we can ignore the facts that don’t suit us and embrace any personal narrative we desire.”

Thus, conflicts around the world, fuelled by the digital age as a hyper-connected tool, have turned facts into contradictions. News stories and circulating opinions now bear multiple faces of a missing truth and express, quite disturbingly, underlying grudges.

The strange thing is that the world seems to be under a spell, as who can trust the news when its source is social media? Is not the term ‘post-truth’ and the rise of fake news an extension of Facebook’s growth? It has already become the largest digital company, drowning in darkness. There is nothing more terrifying than digital platforms becoming the world’s largest autocrat for exchanging information.

Kate Starbird, a media manipulation researcher at the University of Washington, describes this phenomenon as a ‘machine of nonsense’, built over time by design. She says that this phenomenon “has become intertwined with digital media and has been effectively exploited by populist right-wing movements. It is now sinking deep into the political infrastructure of this country and others.”

Throughout history, we have seen that the path to power and wealth lies in lies. This is nothing new. What is new in the digital age is that we gullible consumers continue to engage with lies as if they were truths. Mental bias is the hallmark of consumers in the digital world: they believe what they wish to believe, regardless of the truth, and work tirelessly to spread it.

If facts are considered a thing of the past, as Ruth Marcus, a writer at The Washington Post, suggests, the next unrelenting step will be to reduce all news to the same level of distrust and disbelief. If nothing is true, then everything can be false.

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