The Post-Truth Era
Sept 25, 2016
IN Philosophical Darwinism, the historian Peter Munz explains that knowledge is not solely a matter of truth, but also one of social cohesion. When it comes to securing community bonds, he suggests, truth can sometimes be a hindrance.
Furthermore, it doesn’t even matter very much if a society believes in something - the importance of prayer or the intercession of a personal God, for example - that would on the face of it hold back its scientific and technological development. After all, such beliefs create the required social glue, the martial spirit, the esprit de corps that allow an ostensibly backward or superstitious community to blow a more advanced civilisation to smithereens, sell its children to slavery and steal its resources.
Munz’s theories seem more relevant than ever in the context of the “post-factual” politics of Trump and Putin. The author Peter Pomerantsev, who spent years working in the Russian media, said on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House last week:
“Politicians have always lied, but now they don’t seem to care whether they are seen to be telling the truth or not.”
In his book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Pomerantsev describes Russia as a “post-modern dictatorship” that goes to considerable trouble to create the Potemkin trappings of a democracy. Political advisors create fake opposition parties that are deliberately focused on marginal issues. Generic criticism of the regime is permitted, as long as no proper investigations into the specifics of government corruption are conducted. Satirists are tolerated and even encouraged, but investigative journalists will be destroyed.
The Putin regime is purely about power, and truth rarely comes into it. So what if the security forces are discovered planting bombs in tower blocks? It does nothing to undermine the master narrative that terrorism emerges from Russia’s dark Islamic fringes. Conspiracy theories are thickened with more conspiracy theories. No one believes anything and the public snaps back into their core prejudices, whatever the evidence shows.
The same thing happened with Brexit, and the same thing appears to be happening with Donald Trump. Supporters don’t care whether the facts are true or not: they are happy to be in possession of a barrage (or perhaps a farage) of factoids they can deploy not so much to keep the truth at bay, but to reinforce the crumbling facade of their own community beliefs.
What do Middle England and Middle America have in common? There are beleaguered white working class communities worried by inexorable demographic shifts, worried that their cultures are being obliterated by falling birth rates and the decline of traditional economies. Those that feel in crisis want to hear the language of crisis from their politicians. Make America Great Again. Take Britain Back from the Eurocrats. What I am trying to ascertain is the sense that something similar also drives Putinism - that there is a ragtag Poujadist army desperately searching for evidence that they are being overwhelmed by shadowy Islamic hordes from the Caucasus who are hell-bent on destroying the traditional culture and values of Russia.
Yesterday, the British Labour Party voted in even bigger numbers and with an even wider majority in favour of Jeremy Corbyn. As a liberal leftist with cosmopolitan leanings, one cannot help but smile. The party - its grassroots reinvigorated by idealistic youth - has risen up in opposition to the cynical triangulators and accommodationists who have dominated the political scene for decades. But how is Corbyn even supposed to appeal to to the impoverished and embittered lumpenproletariats in Sunderland, Burnley or South Wales? By any sensible reckoning, Corbyn is even less equipped to win a general election than his wonkish and otherworldly predecessor, Ed Miliband. The one consolation for the Corbynistas is that Blairite white knights like Ed’s brother, David, seem to be swimming even more frantically against the tide of public opinion.
Uberliberal Jonathan Friedland wrote in the Guardian that it was the duty of all right-thinking Americans to hold their nose and vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming presidential elections, just to keep Trump out. The message is becoming increasingly panic-stricken. The liberals are losing control of the message. They cannot inspire or enthuse. Clinton’s presidential campaign is sounding ominously like the Brexit referendum debates. It is not enough to accuse your opponents of lying, even when they are. Truth is no longer a sufficient or even necessary precondition of victory.
