Do we live in a ‘post-truth’ society?
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In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary declared ‘post-truth’ was its ‘Word of the Year’, 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’. That definition certainly fits the way many commentators viewed Donald Trump’s election as US president and the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.
Many of Trump’s supporters seem to have believed wildly inaccurate ‘fake news’ stories, many generated as ‘clickbait’ by individuals and companies in Europe, and shared them widely. In office, Trump has often made statements that seem at odds with the facts. For example, there was the rather odd debate about whether the audience for his inauguration really was the largest ever and leading one of his leading advisers to coin the term ‘alternative facts’ to explain the discrepancies between the administration’s claims and photographic evidence. Those who argue that the UK should have voted to remain in the EU repeatedly point to the misleading, if not outright dishonest, claim made in the campaign that an extra £350 million per week could be spent on healthcare if the UK voted to leave as a major factor in deciding the outcome.
But post-truth is by no means solely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. In March this year, a spokesperson for the Greek government declared: ‘We are officially in the era of fake news.’ Referring to an exclusive story published by Reuters, which suggested rumours of an early election, the Greek government insisted the media should be careful not to host reports of ‘dubious origin and zero credibility’. Earlier this year, when the IMF released its latest survey on the Greek economy, which stated its levels of public debt were unsustainable, the German government protested, the European Commission refused to accept it, and the Greeks flatly denied its factual worth. Wolfgang Münchau wrote in the Financial Times how the failure to tell truth to power lies beneath much of what is currently wrong in Europe and Greece. All parties, Münchau wrote, ‘want to keep up the fairy tale of Greek debt sustainability for a little while longer’. But there are also those creating solutions. Greek student, Valentinos Tzekas, has created a program that detects fake news on the internet. He is to present it to the European Parliament in the coming months.
It’s not just the Greek government who are being accused of making ill-informed decisions by rejecting expert advice – voters are, too. This is best summarised in a claim by a leading Brexit campaigner, Michael Gove, that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’. Despite almost universal support for the Remain side from politicians, institutions, academics and celebrities, both domestically and internationally, UK voters chose to leave the EU. For many commentators, this suggested that voters had chosen to ‘vote with their hearts’ rather than making a rational assessment of the facts.
But how new is this ‘post-truth’ society? Politicians have never been averse to telling lies in order to win office or justify policies. The war against Iraq in 2003, for example, was justified by the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that proved to be non-existent. In a speech in 2004, Tony Blair dodged the issue, saying: ‘I only know what I believe.’
Do we really live in a ‘post-truth’ society? If so, what does that mean for politics and democracy? Are we doomed to an era in which demagogues win elections by appealing to emotions rather than facts? Or societies where governments ignore expert advice and research in favour of a fulfilling their political ideology? Perhaps voters are given too little credit for working out the difference between truth and lies? Is the demand that we should follow the views of experts actually a more serious attack on democracy, leaving us with no choice about the future direction of society?
