Abstract
This chapter posits the post-truth condition as a phenomenon with a global reach causing significant geopolitical effects, and it locates its discussion within the academic debate on cultural and political globalization. The epistemic crisis ushered in by postmodern relativism is discussed in the chapter as being inherently related to the trust crisis suffered by gatekeepers and truth-arbiters of twentieth-century modernity, such as mainstream media and mass parties. Changes in the political economy of media, the hybridization of entertainment and information and the rise of populist politics are also regarded as conducive to the current post-truth condition. The broader state of crisis of the Western liberal democratic model and of neoliberal market capitalism are identified as the conceptual perimeters within which post-truth acts as a catalyst of ideological tensions and geopolitical power struggles.
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Notes
- 1.
Pulver, A. (2019). “Sacha Baron Cohen: Facebook would have let Hitler buy ads for ‘final solution’”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/22/sacha-baron-cohen-facebook-would-have-sold-final-solution-ads-to-hitler.
- 2.
Following the now standard definition of the Oxford Dictionaries, which in 2016 awarded ‘post-truth ’ the title of word of the year, the term can be defined as a social and political condition in which appeals to emotions and beliefs supersede rational or fact-based arguments, thus leading citizens and politicians to no longer respect objective truths. See https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth.
- 3.
Kessler, G., et al. (2019). “President Trump has made 10,796 false or misleading claims over 869 days”. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/10/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/?utm_term=.fa1bf3f96ff5.
- 4.
“Trolling can refer to relatively innocuous pranks, but it can also take the form of more serious behaviors. (…) In practice, however, trolling has grown to serve as an umbrella term which encompasses a wide variety of asocial internet behaviors” (Marwick and Lewis 2017, 4).
- 5.
“Political bots are software agents used to generate simple messages and ‘conversations’ on social media” (Woolley and Howard 2018, 3).
- 6.
“Computational propaganda describes the use of algorithms , automation and human curation to purposefully manage and distribute misleading information over social media networks” (ibid., 4).
- 7.
The term alt-right was coined in the US context to identify a loose aggregation of right-wing and far-right political movements standing in opposition to the authority of the Republican establishment and to liberal and progressive politics. The main feature of the alt-right is to operate primarily on-line, relying on a sophisticated knowledge of the technological, political and cultural dynamics of the Internet. While alt-right members distance themselves from traditional neo-Nazism or racism, the movement is considered to be a media savvy rebranding of the traditional White supremacist ideology (Marwick and Lewis 2017).
- 8.
4chan and 8chan are Internet forums or discussion boards based on the sharing of images and comments by mostly anonymous users. 4chan and 8chan are credited for having popularized terms, jokes and memes which have become staples of on-line subcultures as well as of the broader popular culture. Since the mid-2000s, 4chan has also been the breeding ground and meeting place for the notorious group of hackers and activists that gather under the collective pseudonym Anonymous, whose name is derived from the ability of users to post messages anonymously on the imageboard.
- 9.
“In modern internet parlance, a meme is a visual trope that proliferates across Internet spaces as it is replicated and altered by anonymous users” (Marwick and Lewis 2017, 36).
- 10.
During the campaign preceding the Brexit referendum, British MP Michael Gove famously argued that “people in this country have had enough of experts”. See Mance, H. (2016). “Britain has had enough of experts, says Gove”. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c.
- 11.
Following the definition offered by Tuathail et al. (2006), geopolitics can be defined as “a discourse about world politics, with a particular emphasis on state competition and the geographical dimensions of power”.
- 12.
For a definition of neoliberalism see Harvey (2005): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade” (Harvey 2005, 2).
- 13.
By ‘regimes of truth’ Foucault meant the types of discourse which a society ‘accepts and makes function as true,’ as well as the issues and locus of political debate and social confrontation.
- 14.
Cadwalldr, C. (2017). “Follow the data: Does a legal document link Brexit campaigns to US billionaire?”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/14/robert-mercer-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-referendum-brexit-campaigns.
- 15.
Jaishankar, D. (2016). “Brexit: The first major casualty of digital democracy”. Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2016/06/29/brexit-the-first-major-casualty-of-digital-democracy/.
- 16.
Rutenberg, J. (2017). “RT, Sputnik and Russia’s New Theory of War”. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/magazine/rt-sputnik-and-russias-new-theory-of-war.html.
- 17.
False flag narratives suggest the existence of covert operations, often by government agencies, behind events such as mass shootings or terrorist actions, which are alleged to be either staged or purposely conducted in order to exploit the ensuing public outrage to implement political agendas. An example would be unsubstantiated allegations, popularized by conspiracists such as Alex Jones, that the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was staged in order to enforce stricter gun control regulation. See Williamson, E. (2018). “Truth in a post-truth era: Sandy Hook families Sue Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/us/politics/sandy-hook-infowars-alex-jones.html.
- 18.
Isaac, M., & Wakabayashi, D. (2017). “Russian influence reached 126 million through Facebook alone”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-google-russia.html.
- 19.
Berardi, F. (2017). “Verità e simulazione”. Alfabeta2. https://www.alfabeta2.it/2017/04/09/verita-e-simulazione/ (Translation by the author).
- 20.
Translation by the author.
- 21.
Khan-Harris, K. (2018). “Denialism: What drives people to reject the truth”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/03/denialism-what-drives-people-to-reject-the-truth.
- 22.
Pilkington, E. (2018). “‘Truth isn’t truth’: Giuliani trumps ‘alternative facts’ with new Orwellian outburst”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/19/truth-isnt-truth-rudy-giuliani-trump-alternative-facts-orwellian.
- 23.
Gopnik, A. (2015). “Trump and Obama: A night to remember”. The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-and-obama-a-night-to-remember.
- 24.
The conspiracy theory , which started to spread as early as 2007, before the popularity of social media , relied on speculations circulating via chain emails and blogs. It allegedly started among Hillary Clinton supporters and later spread among followers of the Tea Party movement, eventually reaching the mainstream Republican constituency. The popularity of the Birthers movement is telling of how easily, in the current cultural and technological scenario, rumors can be ‘weaponized’ in order to mount a political attack. While in the past the gate-keeping function of mainstream media might have effectively prevented the birth certificate rumor to enter the public conversation, Obama felt compelled to address it by publicly displaying his birth certificate, thus amplifying the rumor and making it a legitimate topic of media coverage. For a more thorough discussion of this, see Cosentino (2017).
- 25.
Even after Obama’s display of the birth certificate, a Gallup poll in 2011 showed that one quarter of Republicans were still uncertain about Obama’s citizenship. See Morales, L. (2011). “Obama’s birth certificate convinces some, but not all, skeptics”. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/147530/obama-birth-certificate-convinces-not-skeptics.aspx.
- 26.
Subramanian, S. (2017). “The Macedonian teens who mastered fake news”. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news.
- 27.
Lulz is an alteration of the acronym LOL (‘laughing out loud’ or ‘lots of laughs’), often used in on-line conversations.
- 28.
Ellis-Petersen, H. (2018). “Facebook admits failings over incitement to violence in Myanmar”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/06/facebook-admits-it-has-not-done-enough-to-quell-hate-in-myanmar.
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Cosentino, G. (2020). The Post-truth World Order. In: Social Media and the Post-Truth World Order. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43005-4_1
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