As Donald J. Trump is set to be the President of the United States of America for the second time, a particular book that was highly inspired by the character of the first tenure of President Trump (2017 – 2021) and its influence on the people of the United States and the world at large titled Post-Truth becomes a compelling read for any social scientist. The book was written by Lee McInytre, a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. His three degrees, B.A. M.A. and PhD are on the Philosophy of Social Science. Moreover, he has taught and is teaching philosophy in several universities across USA including at the Harvard Extension School. Therefore, it may not be wrong to call him a philosopher.
Post-Truth is a thought-provoking read. It is a kind of book that when you start reading you will not want to stop. So, what is the book about? The book is a daring quest to explain the concept and phenomenon of post-truth that is ravaging the world today. What makes the book daring, as the author rightly pointed out in the Preface, is that it is difficult to explain an existing phenomenon. This is because it is not yet understood. This is reflected in the very term of the phenomenon post-truth. What does it mean to say post-truth? Does post-truth mean beyond truth?
According to scholars the very inability to define the concept of post-truth is an expression of the phenomenon of post-truth itself. And it is with regard to the definition that the first Chapter commences.
Post-Truth, the Oxford Dictionary word of the year 2016, is defined by the Dictionary as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief (pg. 5).” This is not to say that facts do not matter, but instead “a conviction that facts can always be shaded, selected and presented within a political context that favours one interpretation of truth over another (pg. 6).” This is what the author called falsification (pg. 8).
The author made a lot of references to the administration of U.S President, Donald Trump especially his fabricated of lies such as the statement that “that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest in US history (photographic evidence belies this and Washington, DC, Metro records show subway ridership down that day); that his speech at the CIA resulted in a standing ovation (he never asked the officers to sit); that climate change is a hoax created by Chinese authorities to destroy America’s economy (p.2 & 10).” The author also pointed to the cult following that Trump was building, which today we see in MAGA and Qannon movements. Interestingly, he wrote the book in 2018, only a year after the first tenure of President Trump. I imagine how much more examples he would give from that administration when he revised the book now. The reason why Trump is at the centre of the book is because Trump is the personification of post-truth. In fact, a colloquial name for post-truth is Trumpism.
What makes post-truth a topic of concern is that it is a lie said by the authorities with the intent to deceive the public. Consequently, this is undermining the level of trust people have on the government. It is an appeal to emotions rather than to reason. It is about creating a subjective truth and downgrading objective truth that are based on facts. Post-truth Involves spinning and propaganda. Most notably, post-truth is well reflected in the phenomenon of fake news.
In chapter two, the author apprises us on how deceit, as a strategy of achieving interest, got into the political realm; how the development of alternative-facts by tobacco companies confuses public from realising the truth; and how this similar strategy is being adopted by the climate change deniers. The usual deceptive method involved getting a scientist or person with seeming integrity deemed in as authority and then pay that person to state or present a fabricated counter fact to the truthful fact. Another deceptive method is advert. For example, if valid research facts state smokers are liable to die young, then an advert would be sponsored presenting an 80-year-old man smoking with a caption, ‘Really?’
Chapter three discusses how such vulnerability of humans, to be deceived, is ingrain in our psychological make up. As rational creatures, we have tendency to ‘doubt.’ Such doubt arises from our cognitive bias that made us to fall into cognitive dissonance (that is our irrational tendencies tend to be reinforced when we are surrounded by others who believe the same thing we do), social conformity and confirmation biases. This psychological weakness is being exploited to hinder us from knowing the truth. As George Orwell rightly observed “people can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
Chapter four looks at the traditional media: first, the emergence and influence of newspapers on the public. Then the emergence, influence and spread of TV News and later TV shows on the public. The author exposes the strategies that newspapers and later TVs used to make and boast profit while influencing public opinion as well as the partisanship of these traditional media – for example, while CNN tilted towards the liberals, Fox News tilted towards conservatives (in fact, Fox News was established purposedly as alternative to CNN). One common marketing strategy among all the traditional media was that, despite claiming objectivity and trying to report facts, they target controversial issues. Controversial issues, even when reported objectively, that is reporting from different perspectives, are emotional issues. Therefore, the traditional media reports news in sensational manner. As Trump, cited by the author, rightly observed in his book The Art of the Deal, “the media loves controversy more than truth, (p.82).”
The consequences of this sensational partisan reporting, as reveal by the author is that of a study done in 2011 that found Fox News viewers were less informed than those who did not watch any news (p. 70). This should not be surprising if one looks at the fact that some people take what is said in Comedy Shows or satires as real and genuine. People taking satires as genuine shows deficiency in critical thinking. Hence, the most tragic consequence of objectivity or balanced reporting of controversial issues is that the public are susceptible to being confused about what to believe. What the traditional media need to realise is that “the goal of objectivity is not to give equal time between truth and falsehood – it is to facilitate the truth, (p.81).”
If traditional media outlet, despite censorship, confuses the public, the internet is then a complete challenge to reality. “With fact and opinion now presented side by side, who knows what to believe anymore? (p. 87).” This is complicated by the fact that people can hear directly from their President and other authorities (through social media handles such as X which President Trump enjoys using to make authoritative announcement), who are unfortunately liars. Who needs fact-checking when you can hear directly from the authority? Indeed, without the alternative media, Trump would never have been President of the United States of America.
Chapter five talks about the role of social media in the post-truth era. Social media has cut-down the profit of traditional media and have provided people access to the authorities and more information. But the author noticed an irony that “the internet which allows immediate access to reliable information by anyone who bothers to look for it, has for some become nothing but an echo chamber… With no form of editorial control over what is now sometimes presented as “news,” how can we know when we are being manipulated? (p. 95)”
The author also revealed a sinister strategy used by some of the online news platform by having website address very similar to that of a genuine reliable source. This makes it all the more difficult to tell what is true and prone to be cognitively biased thereby falling into the trap of manipulation.
The author gave a history of fake news, which he traced right back to the day newspaper was invented and its evolution. He educates reader on the terms “yellow journalism” (p. 100) and propaganda, and the relationship between fake news and propaganda. “Fake news is not simply news that is false; it is deliberately false (p. 105).” That is, there is an agenda or interest behind making the news false. It is a deliberate attempt to make people to react to one’s misinformation, whether for the purpose of profit or power. While propaganda is essentially driven to rule and can be true. But the dangerous thing we are experiencing today is that propaganda tools are being deployed to spread and propagate lies.
The author wonders may be if we develop critical thinking; that is ability to ask questions, we might build an inner filter to fake news and counter to post-truth. The tragedy is that this questioning attitude has also contributed to the escalation of post-truth.
The nature of postmodernism, as explained in chapter six, is that of questioning attitude. But it was confined to the academia. It started in the literary faculty, then the social scientists such as Focault adopted it. The disaster came when these social scientists, bloody sociologists, delve into realm they have little or no knowledge about, which is natural science. They called this field ‘social constructivist.’ They criticized scientific method and questions its claim to being the path to revealing the truth. That science does not have monopoly on the truth, they argued.
This attitude, through what may be called town-gown relationship, permeated into the society giving rise to the science deniers. The degree to which the science deniers have gone denying scientific phenomena especially climate change, worried even staunch advocate of post-modernism such as Bruno Latour making them to wonder “have they made a mistake? (p. 141 – 142).” To compound it, such denial has escalated to deliberate falsification of reality – post-truth. Thus, “what a complete misfire of the original politics that motivated postmodernism, which was to protect the poor and vulnerable from being exploited by those in authority. It is now poor and vulnerable who will suffer most from the climate change, (p.145).”
If seventy percent (70%) of Trump’s first tenure campaign statements were judged to be false, that nearly two-thirds of voters polled during the campaign said that Trump was not trustworthy, but he won the election anyway, it shows that truth is under serious threat. We have to fight post-truth. We should never surrender to the postmodernist statement that ‘there is no truth, it is all just perspectives.’ This is because “if there is no truth, and it is all just perspective, how can we ever really know anything? (p.150)” Therefore, the question is how can we fight post-truth? This is what chapter seven talks about.
One way is debunking. Always fight back against lies. “We should never assume that any claim is ‘outrageous’ to be believed. A lie is told because the person telling it thinks there is a chance that someone will believe… The point of challenging a lie is not to convince liar, who is likely too far gone in his or her dark purpose to be rehabilitated. But because every lie has an audience, there may still be time to do some good to others, (p. 155).” The author emphasized that we must challenge falsehoods before they are allowed to fester.
The second way is we have to fight against ourselves; our biases. The author rightly argued “one barrier to critical thinking is bathing in a constant stream of confirmation bias, (163).” We should always keep in mind that we may be entitled to our opinion, but not to our own facts. We must be brave to look and accept facts that contradicts our presumptions and beliefs.
Post-Truth is a very interesting read from the beginning to an end. As one goes through the pages, you cannot help but begin to question your perspectives and opinions, and probably realized how much victim of post-truth you have been. If after reading this book, you still do not believe in ‘truth,’ you should read it again. If the feeling of denial still persists, then you may be suffering from ‘Pre-Truth,’ a phenomenon the author touches a little bit at the end of the book; your case requires another book.
ibrahim Lawal Ahmed writes from Zaria and is reachable via [email protected]
