In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of a new concept − ‘post-truth’ − which has infiltrated not only the political and media scene, but also everyday lexicon. So much so that the term was proclaimed ‘word of the year’ in 2016 by the respected Oxford Dictionary, its usage having increased by 2000% compared to the previous year. Two major events triggered this proliferation: the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

According to the Oxford dictionary, ‘post-truth’ refers to ‘circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. Whether or not the reality of the facts informs opinion is irrelevant; what matters is the impact of the statement and the effectiveness of the ‘make believe’. It could easily be argued that this is nothing new, and that the ability of political discourse to shape public opinion has frequently – and for a very long time – been based on feelings, emotions and passions rather than on appeals to judgement and reflection.

However, the dictionary adds a more interesting observation on this point: the notion to which the prefix ‘post’ is attached – namely truth – has become inessential, secondary or even irrelevant. The decisive rupture, if indeed there has been one, is that truth itself has become obsolete or irrelevant. It no longer has any effect on reality. In other words, ‘post-truth’ does not refer to the emer- gence of an era of generalised lying that has usurped one in which truth triumphed. Lies distort, truncate, conceal or deny the truth, but they do not abolish it entirely. They do not make it disappear as a normative reference. They do not eliminate the difference between truth and falsehood.

The same cannot be said of post-truth, which annihilates the very division between truth and falsehood, blurring reference points and boundaries and creating a climate of assumed indifference to truth. This phenomenon – or rather the conditions that facilitate it – has often been considered through the prism of fake news and its viral dissemination on the Internet and various social networks. No matter how hard journalists attempt to counter it with procedures for correcting and verifying information (fact-checking), the trend appears irresistible. And since 2016, the phenomenon has become even more widespread, as demonstrated by the mass dissemination of fake news by Bolsonaro during his Brazilian presidential election campaign, and the information warfare techniques used by Vladimir Putin’s regime, which involve spreading contradictory messages in all directions.

But the ‘post-truth’ issue merits consideration beyond the effects of the digital revolution and indeed the manipulation of information for political ends, although we do know that social networks (where the majority of 18–24 year-olds obtain their information) facilitate the proliferation of contradictory, openly misleading and often conspiratorial messages. Much of the time, this information is received from the perspective of someone who wants it to be true and for whom the ‘facts’ reinforce existing beliefs and prejudices. This is because the algorithms that select the information we consult propose a vision of the world that conforms to our expectations, which is not conducive to critical thinking and even less so to confronting positions that are different from or opposed to our own. Under these conditions, we have little chance of being exposed to real information that might stimulate or broaden our view of the world…

That said, since the term emerged on such a scale in the wake of two political events (the Brexit campaign and the election of Donald Trump), we are prompted to re-examine the phenomenon in the light of a well-established insight: truth and politics have never made good bedfellows and the conflict between the two has been seemingly unbridgeable since antiquity. Plato’s account of Socrates’ death is telling: the truth-loving philosopher is put to death by the democratic city, which is left to the mercy of an ignorant and uncontrollable mob. This account left a long-lasting intellectual legacy that has spread far and wide. To this we might add the charged expression ‘machiavellianism’ (or the adjective ‘machiavellian’). Although it has little to do with Machiavelli’s actual political ideas, it makes the association between power, lying and manipulation. It is in the essence of power to be evil and of politics to be malevolent: this perception, as we know, has become widespread in popular opinion.

Which begs the question: is ‘post-truth’ simply the latest incarnation of this tormented tale? Is it the contemporary enactment of this age-old conflict, in a form specific to our own time and place? There are a number of factors that might lend some credence to this idea, not least the fact that populism is reigniting the opposition between the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’: we already know that populism plays on resentment against the power of the ‘elite’ (those who ‘know’ or are supposed to ‘know’). Conversely, given that the ‘people’ are not enlightened enough to make rational decisions, we are inclined to defer to the power of experts… Today, this ‘epistemocratic’ or ‘epistocratic’ inclination makes economic and administrative ‘knowledge’ the template for a supposedly rational power that must inevitably be wielded over the masses, who are left to their blind and irrational passions. It is easy to see how this binary opposition facilitates a certain approach to the issue of ‘post-truth’: credulity and the erosion of truth references go hand in hand with distrust and the rejection of so-called ‘elitist’ governments.

In reality, ‘post-truth’ is not the continuation, albeit in renewed form, of this antagonism between the possession of truth and the exercise of power. For blurring the boundaries between truth and falsehood, by rendering truth inessential or meaningless, does not reconcile the idea that lies and manipulation are inherent in the exercise of power. Nor does it usher in an era in which lies ultimately triumph over truth. To analyse the nature of the phenomenon and its effects, we must refocus our gaze and deconstruct a number of assumptions and misconceptions about the relationship between politics and truth. In reality, the major problem with politics is not so much that of truth (whether rational or scientific) but of the shaping of public opinion and the exercise of a properly founded judgement, which implies a reappraisal of the ‘opinion’ (the doxa) stigmatised by Plato on the grounds that it contravenes the requirements of access to truth.

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