POST TRUTH
‘’Binary
pictures always failed to represent real-life complexity’’
1.Post Truth is an adjective describing a situation in
which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their
emotions and beliefs, rather than one based
on facts. In a post-truth
era, “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight
than evidence.
1.1 Post Truth describes debate that is based
on passion and emotion rather than reason and evidence. It relates to or exists
in an environment in which facts are viewed as irrelevant,or less important than personal beliefs
and opinions ,and emotional appeals are used to influence public opinion.
2.The term post-truth was first used in
a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation. Tesich writes that following the shameful truth
of Watergate, more assuaging coverage of the Iran–Contra scandal and Persian Gulf War demonstrate that "we, as a free people,
have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."
The term "post-truth politics" was coined by the blogger David
Roberts in a blog post for Grist on 1 April 2010, where it was defined as "a political culture in
which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of
legislation)". In contrast to simply telling untruths, writers such as
Jack Holmes of Esquire describe the process as something different, with Holmes putting it
as: "So, if you don't know what's true, you can say whatever you want and
it's not a lie. The Guardian,( 2016)
states this tellingly in context of political power: ‘’In this era of
post-truth politics, an unhesitating liar can be king. The more brazen his
dishonesty, the less he minds being caught with his pants on fire, the more he
can prosper. And those pedants still hung up on facts and evidence and all that
boring stuff are left for dust, their boots barely laced while the lie has
spread halfway around the world. ‘’
3.Wikipaedia describes this in detail.’’
Post-truth politics (also called post-factual
politics and post-reality politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed
largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the
details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which
factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying
of facts by relegating facts and expert opinions to be of secondary importance
relative to appeal to emotion. ……..As with other areas of debate, this
is being driven by a combination of the 24-hour news cycle, false balance in news
reporting, and the increasing ubiquity of social media. In 2016, post-truth was
chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year due
to its prevalence in the context of that year's Brexit referendum and media coverage of
the U.S.
presidential election. ‘’
4.Social media adds an additional dimension, as user networks can become echo chambers . In this
environment, post-truth campaigns can ignore fact checks or
dismiss them as being motivated by bias. The digital culture allows anybody with a
computer and access to the internet to post their opinions online and mark them
as fact which may become legitimized through echo-chambers and
other users validating one another. Content may be judged based on how many views a post gets, creating an atmosphere that appeals to emotion, audience
biases, or headline appeal instead of researched fact. Content which gets
more views is continually filtered around different internet circles,
regardless of its legitimacy..The internet allows people to choose where they get
their information, allowing them to reinforce their own opinions. Hot-button issues in India illustrate this well.
5.Are we living in a
post-truth world, where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings
have more weight than evidence?
5.1 How did we get here?Lee
McIntyre [MIT Press Essential Knowledge series] traces the development of the
post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of “fake news,” from
our psychological blind spots to the public's retreat into “information silos.”
5.1 What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful
thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes
recent examples—claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the
popular vote—and finds that post-truth is an assertion
of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to
believe something regardless of the evidence.. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that
our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the
decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence
of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for
post-truth. What is ironic is that political
disagreements are couched almost always in the language of truth. We disagree
with each other because we do not want to rethink our fundamental beliefs but
express this always not in terms of ideology but truth. Our fights get out of
control because we make it a fight about two opposite truths and not about two
opposite opinions.
6. The Conversation,edition dated 23.1.2017
analyzes that ‘2014 can be marked as a significant inflection point in India for post truth
politics. India’s version of post-truth is different to its
Western counterparts due to the country’s socioeconomic status; its per
capita nominal income is
less than 3% of that of the US (or 4% of that of the UK). Still, post-truth is
everywhere in India.It can be seen in our booming Wall Street but failing main streets, our teacher-less schools and our infrastructure-less villages. We have the ability to influence the world without enjoying good governance or a
basic living conditions for so many at home.Nowhere is this more evident than
with India’s demonetisation drive, , against the advice of its central bank, and hit poorest people
the hardest,’ apart from failing to score against even the
shifted goalposts, and raising uncomfortable questions that remain unanswered.
7.Dissenting views to post truth concept
exist. The journalist George Gillett has suggested that the term
"post-truth" mistakenly conflates empirical and ethical judgements,
writing that the supposedly "post-truth" movement is in fact a
rebellion against "expert economic opinion becoming a surrogate for
values-based political judgements".
David Helfand argues, following Edward M. Harris, that "public prevarication
is nothing new" and that it is the "knowledge of the audience"
and the "limits of plausibility" within a technology-saturated
environment that have changed. We are, rather, in an age of misinformation
where such limits of plausibility have vanished and where everyone feels
equally qualified to make claims that are easily shared and propagated.
8.Yet the concept remains uncathed in decisively
large measure.In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’
the word of the year in response to a rise in its usage in relation to
political developments in the US for the presidential election and in the UK on
Brexit.
9.In her essay Lying in Politics (1972), Hannah Arendt describes what she terms defactualization, or the inability to
discern fact from fiction—a concept very close to what we now understand by
post-truth. The essay’s central theme is the thoroughgoing political deception that was unveiled with the leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Arendt
distinguishes defactualization from deliberate falsehood and
from lying. She writes,
“The deliberate falsehood deals
with contingent facts; that is, with matters that carry no
inherent truth within themselves, no necessity to be as they are. Factual
truths are never compellingly true. The historian knows how vulnerable is the
whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger
of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying
of groups, nations, or classes, or denied and distorted, often carefully
covered up by reams of falsehoods or simply allowed to fall into oblivion.”
She goes on,
"There always comes the point beyond which lying becomes
counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies
are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between
truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive. Truth or falsehood—it does
not matter which anymore, if your life depends on your acting as though you
trusted; truth that can be relied on disappears entirely from public life, and
with it the chief stabilizing factor in the ever-changing affairs of men.”
10.Lee McIntyre points out in his pathbreaking work about post truth that
[quote]‘’It is defined as ‘relating to or
denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping
public opinion that appeals to emotion and personal belief’. Harold Pinter
in his Nobel Prize in Literature lecture in 2005 spoke on “Art, Truth and Politics” and
argued, “The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to
us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that
power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance,
that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives.
What surrounds us, therefore, is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.”
He says that many regimes now wage a war with truth
at a much more higher level than all of his colleagues. It is in nature of
their political realm to be at war with their historical legacy also which is
just an inconvenient truth in all forms. This method also shares a deep
correlation with fascist Nazi regime of Hitler whose Propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels famously said- If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” and “The bigger the
lie, the more it will be believed.”
11.According to the Washington Post, the US President had spoken 2,140 lies in public life after becoming the
President of USA. Post 2014, the new trend of shaping public opinion by
twisting factual history has begun. Likewise, fake news has gained more ground
in Indian society and politics than ever.
Apart from history, the current political arena is
itself a big living example of establishments solely standing on misplaced facts,
fudged data, broken promises and false claims.
‘’The concept of post-truth- which is apparently true, becomes more important
than the truth itself. We need to demarcate between fact and opinion. Today,
unfortunately, opinion is taking an upper hand when it comes to reaching people
in one shot. The fundamental aim of the ruling establishment remains to control
how people think, what they talk by indoctrination and brainwashing.I must say, our history is under anachronism of the worst order.’’[source:internet
quote]
11. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote of the 2021 storming of the United States
Capitol:
‘’Post-truth is pre-fascism... When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the
wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about
some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them
to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that
are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and
fictions... Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth.’’
12.And so it is with
post-truth politics. Mechanisms which seemingly
would have afforded protection against public lying have failed. Audio and
video recordings of crimes are quickly dismissed by claiming that they are
fabricated. Perhaps never before has it been so difficult to retain any meaningful
notion of truth in the public space. This is the contemporary condition
which has been to a large extent caused as much by media and technology as by a
fall in standards of public probity.George Orwell nailed it when he said
‘’In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary
act.’’
Ack: WIKIPAEDIA,Lee McIntyre and
oter research works,internet posts,press reports.
