tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606/articlesPost-Truth Initiative – The Conversation2018-05-02T04:30:35Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/944102018-05-02T04:30:35Z2018-05-02T04:30:35ZLegal precedent based on false beliefs proves hard to overturn<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215727/original/file-20180420-75123-1owk2e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">False beliefs about language and speech underlie legal precedents that allow jurors to be “assisted" by unreliable transcripts of forensic audio.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Everett Collection/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em></p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Judges consider their profession to be among the most accountable of those whose opinions and actions shape our society. After all, every judicial decision is presented publicly, open to the scrutiny of critical colleagues ready to appeal to a higher court if any error is detected.</p>
<p>The outcome of a criminal appeal is life-changing for the appellant. But it also has significant ramifications for the rest of us. This is because opinions expressed by judges in appeal courts gain the status of legal authority, used as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent">precedents</a> to guide judgments in subsequent trials.</p>
<p>This development of the law has many advantages. By ensuring consistency in trial outcomes, it contributes to fairness in the justice system. It allows practices of law and law enforcement agencies to be standardised, in confidence that rulings about admission of evidence will be applied in similar ways in similar cases.</p>
<p>However, it does have disadvantages. One troubling example is provided by the development of practices for admitting <a href="http://forensictranscription.com.au/">covert recordings</a> as evidence in court.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-mondegreens-how-a-simple-mishearing-can-lead-to-wrongful-conviction-78466">The dark side of mondegreens: how a simple mishearing can lead to wrongful conviction</a>
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<p>While lawyers may pounce on judges’ legal errors, <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-who-will-push-ahead-on-validating-forensic-science-disciplines-76198">errors of scientific fact are less likely to be detected</a>. Indeed, scientific errors in an appeal ruling are liable to be propagated under the mantle of legal authority <a href="http://netk.net.au/MOJHome.asp">from judgment to judgment down the years</a>. </p>
<p>This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the mantle of legal authority applies not just to the substantive decision that is the focus of the appeal, but to comments judges make in explaining their decision.</p>
<h2>What’s the problem with covert recordings?</h2>
<p>Covert recordings are conversations captured by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device">secret listening devices</a>. During the 1980s, increasing use of covert recordings in criminal trials raised a number of procedural problems for the law. One related to recordings featuring foreign languages. </p>
<p>It can be hard for a jury to follow examination and cross-examination of translators presenting competing opinions about speakers’ meanings. One judge decided to help by allowing translations to be provided in written form. </p>
<p>This may seem, from today’s perspective, like simple common sense. But it actually marked a significant departure from the long legal tradition that juries should hear all testimony orally. </p>
<p>That’s why the decision was appealed all the way to the High Court of Australia. It was ultimately upheld in a <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/HCA/1987/58.html">landmark judgment called <em>Butera</em></a>, back in 1987.</p>
<p>There is no reason to question the substantive decision in this particular 30-year-old case. What does raise concern is the commentary explaining the judges’ decision.</p>
<p>Among <a href="http://netk.net.au/Forensic/Forensic34.pdf">other anomalies</a>, the High Court judges called written translations “transcripts”. The effect of this is that their judgment has been taken to apply to English as well as non-English recordings. They also endorsed a range of emerging practices regarding who could create transcripts, and how they should be evaluated.</p>
<h2>What’s wrong with that?</h2>
<p>The judges in the <em>Butera</em> case, reasonably enough, based their comments on common knowledge shared by all educated people. The problem is, with language and speech, educated common knowledge includes many beliefs that linguistic science has shown to be false (collectively dubbed “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_linguistics">folk linguistics</a>”). </p>
<p>Some of the judges’ comments embodied these kinds of false beliefs. As a result, they created legal authority for a range of practices that <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/aafs-talk-14-feb-2018/">turn out to be highly problematic</a>. </p>
<p>These include, <a href="http://netk.net.au/Forensic/Forensic34.pdf">among others</a>, allowing juries listening to indistinct covert recordings to be “assisted” by a transcript prepared by detectives investigating the case. That may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but, like the practice of allowing <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-eyewitnesses-give-false-evidence-and-how-we-can-stop-them-67254">eye witnesses</a> to identify perpetrators, it has been shown to create <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/case-study">actual and potential injustice</a>. That’s because the power of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-mondegreens-how-a-simple-mishearing-can-lead-to-wrongful-conviction-78466">“priming” means errors in police transcripts are surprisingly unlikely to be detected</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covert-recordings-as-evidence-in-court-the-return-of-police-verballing-14072">Covert recordings as evidence in court: the return of police ‘verballing’?</a>
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<h2>Solution isn’t as obvious as it seems</h2>
<p>The solution might seem clear: inform the judiciary that there has been a misunderstanding and let them fix it up. Turns out, <a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-or-lies-overturning-wrongful-convictions-20430">it’s not that simple</a>. </p>
<p>The recommended fix is for a new appeal case to create a better precedent. Unfortunately, in the matter of transcripts, <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/two-new-papers/">it hasn’t worked like that</a>. </p>
<p>Some time ago, an appeal court found a detective’s transcript to be misleading, and quashed the conviction based on it. But that was seen as a mere aberration, so the judgment is not cited as a precedent. Legal authority for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/covert-recordings-as-evidence-in-court-the-return-of-police-verballing-14072">concept that detectives’ transcripts “assist” juries</a> remains undented. Indeed, that very detective still provides transcripts for juries, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00450618.2017.1340523">never questioned about his track record</a>.</p>
<p>So getting a new precedent is hard. And even if it happened, it wouldn’t be enough. After 30 years, practices based on <em>Butera</em> have become <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/two-new-papers/">entwined with other precedents and embedded in every corner of law and law enforcement</a>.</p>
<h2>Conflict or collaboration?</h2>
<p>For some, this story might evoke criticism of the law for denying scientific facts. But there’s a bit more to it.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/post-truth-politics-and-why-the-antidote-isnt-simply-fact-checking-and-truth-87364">Countering false beliefs isn’t just a matter of telling true facts</a>. To help the law avoid false beliefs about science, scientists need to avoid false beliefs about the law, which operates under <a href="http://dl4a.org/uploads/pdf/026376.pdf">conditions and constraints</a> very different from those of the laboratory. </p>
<p>That’s why Australian linguists have offered a <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/a-call-to-action/">Call to Action</a>, seeking dialogue and collaboration with the judiciary. Though the solution is not immediately clear to either party, together we can figure one out. </p>
<p>After all, <a href="https://theconversation.com/navigating-the-post-truth-debate-some-key-co-ordinates-77000">facts – true, false or otherwise – are embedded in language</a>. When it comes to sorting out problems involving language, collaboration between lawyers and linguists <a href="http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/current-justices/frenchcj/frenchcj_29Aug2015.pdf">can create good results</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Fraser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Not all false beliefs arise from malicious misinformation. Some legal precedents rest on the status of everyday ‘common knowledge’, since shown to be false, but embedded in our law nonetheless.Helen Fraser, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873642018-03-23T02:47:14Z2018-03-23T02:47:14ZPost-truth politics and why the antidote isn’t simply ‘fact-checking’ and truth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198936/original/file-20171213-10621-1fs8079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump posts a link to his very own 'Real News Update' on Facebook.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/">Donald J. Trump/Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a>as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>It is also part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney.</em></p>
<p><em>This essay is much longer than most Conversation articles, so will take some time to read. Enjoy!</em></p>
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<p>We live in an unfinished revolutionary age of communicative abundance. Networked digital machines and information flows are slowly but surely shaping practically every institution in which we live our daily lives. </p>
<p>For the first time in history, thanks to built-in cheap microprocessors, these algorithmic devices and information systems integrate texts, sounds and images in compact, easily storable, reproducible and portable digital form. </p>
<p>Communicative abundance enables messages to be sent and received through multiple user points, in chosen time, real or delayed, within global networks that are affordable and accessible to billions of people.</p>
<p>My book <a href="http://www.johnkeane.net/portfolio_page/democracy-and-media-decadence/">Democracy and Media Decadence</a> probed the contours of this revolution. It showed why new information platforms, robust muckraking and cross-border publics are among the exciting social and political trends of our time. It proposed that the unfinished revolution is dogged by politically threatening contradictions and decadent counter-trends. The drift toward a world of “post-truth” politics is among these troubling trends.</p>
<p>What exactly is meant by the term post-truth? Paradoxically, post-truth is among the most-talked-about yet least-well-defined meme words of our time. Most observers in the English-speaking world cite the 2016 Word of the Year Oxford English Dictionaries <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016">entry</a>: post-truth is the public burial of “objective facts” by an avalanche of media “appeals to emotion and personal belief”.</p>
<p>In China and in the Spanish-speaking world, respectively, commonplace talk of <em>hòu zhēnxiāng</em> and <em>posverdad</em> pushes in this direction. The <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/wort-des-jahres-2016-postfaktisch-gekuert-a-1125124.html">popularity of the German <em>postfaktisch</em></a> (post-factual) usage captures much the same meaning. Selected as word of the year by the German language society Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS), it refers to the growing tendency of “political and social discussions” to be dominated by “emotions instead of facts”. </p>
<p>The GfdS adds:</p>
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<p>Ever greater sections of the population are ready to ignore facts, and even to accept obvious lies willingly. Not the claim to truth, but the expression of the ‘felt truth’ leads to success in the ‘post-factual age’.</p>
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<h2>Post-truth communication</h2>
<p>A catchword that has gone viral so quickly surely deserves careful attention and crisper definition, especially if we are not to be thrown off balance by a global phenomenon that sets out to do precisely that. </p>
<p>We can say that “post-truth” is not simply the opposite of truth, however that is defined; it is more complicated. It is better described as an omnibus term, a word for communication comprising a salmagundi or assemblage of different but interconnected phenomena. </p>
<p>Its troubling potency in public life flows from its hybrid qualities, its combination of different elements in ways that defy expectations and confuse its recipients.</p>
<p>Post-truth has recombinant qualities. For a start, it is a type of communication that includes old-fashioned lying, where speakers say things about themselves and their world that are at odds with impressions and convictions that they harbour in their mind’s eye. </p>
<p>Liars attempt alchemy: when someone tells lies they wilfully say things they “know” not to be true, for effect. An example is when Donald Trump claims there was never a <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/trumps-dubious-drought-claims/">drought in California</a>, or that during his inauguration the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-us-president-false-claims-inauguration-white-house-sean-spicer-kellyanen-conway-press-a7541171.html">weather cleared</a>, when actually light rain fell throughout his address.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The truth is it stopped immediately, it was amazing.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>Post-truth also includes forms of public discourse commonly called bullshit. It comprises communication that displaces and nullifies concerns about veracity. Bullshit is hot air talk, verbal excrement that lacks nutrient. It is shooting off at the mouth, backed by the presumption that it is acceptable to others in the conversation.</p>
<p>Post-truth depends as well on buffoonery, bits and pieces of colourful communication designed to attract and distract public attention and to interrupt the background noise of conventional politics and public life. The bric-a-brac component of post-truth includes nonsense moments, jokes and boasting. It embraces clever quips, pedantry and wilful exaggerations (like Marine Le Pen’s description of the European Union as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/marine-le-pen-nigel-farage-britain-france-leave-eu-front-national">a huge prison</a>”).</p>
<p>There is plenty of rough speech. The contrast with the honey words and smiles of Bill Clinton, Felipe González, Tony Blair and other politicians from yesteryear is striking. The grotesquerie comes in abundance. Geert Wilders specialises in causing trouble, as when he dubs mosques “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/17/dutch-greenleft-party-populism-rightwing-jesse-klaver">palaces of hatred</a>”.</p>
<p>Disturbingly, there’s abundant talk of the importance of “truth”, by which is usually meant utterances whose veracity is self-confirming, thus proving that truth can attract rogues. There is dog-whistling. There is plain bad taste, as when a newly elected president enters the Houston Astrodome, crammed with traumatised homeless people who have narrowly survived a hurricane, and says: “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16222404/trump-crowd-hurricane-harvey-victims">Thanks for coming</a>.”</p>
<p>Hair-splitting and wilfully setting things aside are common. The Israeli consul-general in New York, Dani Dayan, does this well, but the genius of evasion is surely <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkY5seB0nFM">Zoltán Kovács</a>, the Orbán government’s spokesman. When subjected to forensic questioning by reporters about Hungary’s imprisonment and brutal maltreatment of refugees and operations by vigilante citizens’ “hunter patrol” border forces, he likes to say:</p>
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<p>What you are trying to portray here is non-existent, a gross simplification. Next question. </p>
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<p>And that’s that.</p>
<h2>Engineered silence</h2>
<p>The silencing is not incidental. Post-truth performances feed on their production of silence. They remind us, in the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aGn7zu22oloC&pg=PA77&dq=Man+and+people++stupendous+reality+that+is+language&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwie9rbb1bjZAhVFmZQKHZvaAs8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Man%20and%20people%20%20stupendous%20reality%20that%20is%20language&f=false">words of Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset</a>, that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the stupendous reality that is language cannot be understood unless we begin by observing that speech consists above all in silences.</p>
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<p>The proponents of post-truth communication relish things unsaid. Their bluff and bluster is designed not only to attract public attention. </p>
<p>It simultaneously hides from public attention things (such as growing inequalities of wealth, the militarisation of democracy and the accelerating death of non-human species) that it doesn’t want others to notice, or that potentially arouse suspicions of the style and substance of post-truth politics. </p>
<p>This engendered silence is not just the aftermath or “leftover” of post-truth communication. Every moment of post-truth communication using words backed by signs and text is actively shaped by what is unsaid, or what is not sayable. </p>
<p>The communicative performances of the post-truth champions are thus the marginalia of silence: mere foam and waves on its deep waters. </p>
<p>That is why the current hyper-concentration of journalists and other public commentators on “breaking news” stories about “fake news”, “alternative facts” and missing “evidence” is so potentially misleading. </p>
<p>Their fetish of breaking news turns them unwittingly into the poodles of post-truth and its silence about things less immediate and less obvious, deeper institutional trends, “slower” events marked by punctuated rhythms.</p>
<h2>Vaudeville and gaslighting</h2>
<p>Treating post-truth as a species of pugnacious politics dressed in a coat of many colours, as a bricolage of lies, bullshit, buffoonery and silence, helps us grasp its vaudeville quality. </p>
<p>When thought of as a public performance led by a cast of politicians, journalists, public relations agencies, think tanks and other players, post-truth is an updated, state-of-the-art political equivalent of early 20th-century vaudeville performances. </p>
<p>Old-fashioned vaudeville featured strongmen and singers, dancers and drummers, minstrels and magicians, acrobats and athletes, comedians and circus animals. It was a show. Post-truth is equally a show. Directed against conventional styles of performance, it is an orchestrated public spectacle designed to invite and entertain millions of people.</p>
<p>But post-truth is much more than entertainment, or the “<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/edit/boor.html">art of contrivance</a>” or the “<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/society-spectacle">dictatorship of illusion</a>” mediated by the production and passive consumption of commodities. </p>
<p>While the genealogy of post-truth is partly traceable to the world of corporate advertising and market-driven entertainment, it has thoroughly political qualities. In the hands of the powerful, or those bent on climbing the ladders of power over others, the post-truth phenomenon functions as a new weapon of political manipulation. </p>
<p>Post-truth is not only about winning votes, siding with friends, or dealing with political foes. It has more sinister effects. It is a gaslighting exercise.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Strange drama of a captive sweetheart!’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Drawn from George Cukor’s award-winning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_(1944_film)">Gaslight</a>, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, the term gaslighting is here defined as a weapon of the will to power. It is the organised effort by public figures to mess with citizens’ identities, to deploy lies, bullshit, buffoonery and silence for the purpose of sowing seeds of doubt and confusion among subjects. </p>
<p>Gaslighting is typically a preferred tactic of narcissistic and aggressive personalities bent on doing whatever it takes to gain and maintain a position of advantage over others. </p>
<p>Their point is to disorient and destabilise people. They want to harness people’s self-doubts, ruin their capacity for seeing the world ironically, destroy their capacity for making judgements, in order to drive them durably into submission.</p>
<p>When (for instance) gaslighters say something, only later to say that they never said such a thing and that they would never have never dreamed of saying such a thing, their aim is gradually to turn citizens into mere playthings of power.</p>
<p>When that happens, the victims of gaslighting no longer trust their own judgements. They buy into the tactics of the manipulator. Not knowing what to believe, they give up, shrug their shoulders and fall by default under the spell of the gaslighter.</p>
<p>Consider the double act of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his former right-hand gaslighter, Ernesto Abella, in the sequence of events triggered by the murder (in November 2016) of Rolando Espinosa, the elected mayor of Albuera, an island community some 575 kilometres from Manila. </p>
<p>When asked by journalists to explain what had happened, Duterte reportedly <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/war-on-drugs-philippine-president-duterte-warns-mayors-will-be-shot-20170112-gtpzsr.html">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was killed in a very [questionable way], but I don’t care. The policemen said he resisted arrest. Then I will stick with the story of the police because [they are] under me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Espinosa was in fact shot in detention, inside a police cell.</p>
<p>Duterte continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I might go down in history as the butcher. It’s up to you. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And then: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since I have nothing to show, I just use extrajudicial killing. [That’s because] I have no credentials to boast about.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The intended meaning of these utterances (to put things mildly) was oracular, so mystifyingly opaque that they served as the cue for Abella to strut his stuff: to go on air and to say that this or that never happened, that Duterte never said what people heard him say, that Bisaya-speaking Duterte got lost in translation when speaking in Tagalog, to affirm at Malacañang press conferences that his intentions are good and that he is utterly sincere, whereas his enemies are wilful dissemblers, fools and toads. </p>
<p>Abella insisted he provided not “crumbs”, but “meat, deboned”. Armed with his favourite phrases, “let’s just say” and “let’s put it this way”, he described his job as “completing the sentences” of his leader, to “impart his true intentions”. </p>
<p>In this murder case, Abella <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/861267/abella-kill-order-just-dutertes-messaging-style">said</a>, “it is … a matter of the leadership style and the messaging style of the president”. He added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is his messaging style to underline his intention. He is serious about it [the drug menace]. However, it’s just meant to underline his seriousness in making sure that nobody is corrupt and involved in criminality.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What makes post-truth different from the past?</h2>
<p>The meandering rhetoric is designed to bewitch and beguile, which is why the critics of post-truth are sounding alarms and issuing stern warnings about the dangerous charms of the vaudeville show of political mendacity, nonsense, buffoonery and silence. </p>
<p>They emphasise that political lying and bad manners spiced with talk of “fake news” and “alternative facts” are sinister, a frontal challenge to the basic democratic norms of open and plural communication among citizens. </p>
<p>Complaints against post-truth are often robust, loud and couched in high moral tones. Post-truth is said to be the beginning of the end of politics as we’ve known it in existing democracies. </p>
<p>There is talk of an emergent “post-truth era”. More than a few critics warn that the spread of post-truth is the harbinger of a new “totalitarianism”. Others speak of populist dictatorship or “fascism-lite” government.</p>
<p>The descriptors are questionable, and display little understanding of the historical originality of the present drift towards government by gaslighting. Politics as the art of evasion, befuddlement and engineered public silence isn’t new. Lying in politics is an ancient art. Think of Plato’s noble lie, or Machiavelli’s recommendation that a successful prince must be “<a href="http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince18.htm">a great pretender and dissembler</a>”, or Harry Truman’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=F_m5LlaJvZcC&q=no-good+lying+bastard#v=snippet&q=no-good%20lying%20bastard&f=false">description of Richard Nixon</a> as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lying in politics isn’t new, but digital media decadence is.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Cizauskas/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some things don’t change. Still, there are several things that are unusual about the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/10/opinions/donald-trump-is-gaslighting-america-ghitis/">gaslighting</a> trends of our time. Each is bound up with the unfinished communications revolution.</p>
<p>The digital merging and melding of text, sound and image, the advent of cheap copying and the growing ease of networked information spreading across vast distances in real time are powerful drivers of post-truth decadence. </p>
<p>New techniques and tools of communication are its condition of possibility; they enable its production, rapid circulation and absorption into the body politics of democracies, and well beyond. </p>
<p>Think of photoshopped materials and mashups, web applications and pages that recycle content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. Trump’s first campaign <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/04/donald-trump/donald-trumps-first-tv-ad-shows-migrants-southern-/">advertisement</a> showed migrants allegedly crossing the Mexican border; in fact, it was an image of migrants crossing from Morocco to Melilla in North Africa. </p>
<p>Then consider impostor news sites (using URLs such as abc.com.co) and fantasy news sites, such as <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/the-strangest-fake-news-empire?utm_term=.cyXWR7EMr#.igVXGQ6WR">WTOE 5 News</a>, which created the “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Trump for President” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161115024211/http:/wtoe5news.com/us-election/pope-francis-shocks-world-endorses-donald-trump-for-president-releases-statement/">story</a>, built using such tools as <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/clone-zone-tricks-internet-users">Clone Zone</a> and <a href="https://nowthisnews.com/">NowThis</a>.</p>
<p>Ponder shareable made-up news platforms (<a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/">Macedonian teenagers</a> making money, Christian fundamentalists peddling the Spirit), meme launch pads (Twitter and Facebook) and parody accounts (<a href="https://www.theonion.com/">The Onion</a>, “America’s Finest News Source”). </p>
<p>There are also the devoted fanzine platforms that specialise in hailing heroes and trolling opponents, the platforms that sit for the first time in the White House press briefing room, platforms such as <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/">Gateway Pundit</a>, <a href="http://www.oann.com/">One American News Network</a>, <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/">Newsmax</a>, <a href="http://www.lifezette.com/">LifeZette</a> and the <a href="http://dailycaller.com/">Daily Caller</a>.</p>
<p>Some say none of this is new. From the outset, they insist, daily newspapers printed gossip, rumours and lies. <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.html">Orson Welles</a> proved that radio could produce scams. Television was a state weapon for mass-producing fabricated illusions; and so on. </p>
<p>But the sceptics underestimate the multiple ways in which, in matters of truth and post-truth, the communications revolution is marked by novel dynamics that are producing novel effects. </p>
<p>Most obviously, the digital communications revolution tends to undermine space-time barriers so that the raw material of lies, bullshit, buffoonery and silence produced by gaslighters develops long global legs. </p>
<p>Post-truth spreads; it knows no borders. So, for instance, many Muslims living in countries as far apart as Britain, Pakistan and Indonesia understand that they are among the targets of the project of attacking “fake news” and making America great again.</p>
<p>There’s something else that’s new: post-truth discourse penetrates so deeply into our daily lives that what is commonly called the private sphere ceases to be private. It’s no longer a safe haven or a zone of counter-balance, in the way (say) it functioned as the point of resistance against total power in the age of the typewriter or in George Orwell’s 1984, where Winston was still able to retreat to a corner table to scribble, out of sight of Big Brother. </p>
<p>The colonisation of daily life by the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-someone-watching-you-online-the-security-risks-of-the-internet-of-things-55701">Internet of Things</a>, digital robots that collect and spread information, guarantees that the geographic footprint of post-truth is vast and potentially total.</p>
<p>There’s yet another novelty of our period: the production and diffusion of post-truth communication by populist leaders, political parties and governments. The historical record shows that our times are no exception to the old rule that populism is a recurrent <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pathologies-of-populism-82593">autoimmune disease</a> of democracy. </p>
<p>The present-day political irruption of populism is fuelled by the institutional decay of electoral democracy, combined with growing public dissatisfaction with politicians, political parties and “politics”.</p>
<p>Reinforced by the failure of democratic institutions to respond effectively to anti-democratic challenges such as the growing influence of cross-border corporate power, worsening social inequality and the dark money poisoning of elections, the decadence is proving to be a lavish gift to leaders, parties and governments peddling the mantra of “the sovereign people”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary and oversized vaudeville character.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EU2017EE Estonian Presidency Follow/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Populist figures otherwise as different as Viktor Orbán, Norbert Hofer and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are oversized vaudeville characters. They are merchants of post-truth, exploiters of trust and confidence artists who take advantage of the communications revolution. </p>
<p>They stir up multimedia excitement by calling for a public revolt by millions of people who feel annoyed, powerless and no longer “held” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott">D.W. Winnicott</a>) in the arms of society: people who are so frustrated or humiliated that they are willing to lash out in support of demagogues promising them dignity and a better future.</p>
<p>Some people fall for the promises not because they “naturally” crave leaders, or yield to the inherited “<a href="https://thefunambulist.net/history/foucault-episode-2-do-not-become-emamored-of-power">fascism in us all</a>”. Among the strangest and most puzzling features of the post-truth phenomenon is the way it attracts people into voluntary servitude because it raises their hopes and expectations of betterment.</p>
<h2>Truth is the answer? Don’t believe it</h2>
<p>The most surprising long-term effect of communicative abundance and the spread of post-truth is arguably their reinforcement of the modern questioning and rejection of arrogant beliefs in truth. </p>
<p>The possibility that post-truth politics is party to the “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-farewell-to-truth/9780231153096">farewell to truth</a>” is poorly understood, especially by critics of post-truth, who invariably rally to the cause of what they casually call truth.</p>
<p>Although the term is usually left undefined, their attachment to truth helps explain why many academics, journalists and public commentators typically accuse the “postmodernism” of recent decades of being the unwitting accomplice or active foot servant of post-truth politics.</p>
<p>They are convinced that the “relativism” of the postmodernists unhelpfully adds to the confusion surrounding “truth” based on “evidence” and “facts”. What is now urgently needed, they say, is the recovery of truth.</p>
<p>But what is truth? Truth is the antidote to post-truth, they reply. It is observable. Truth is saying or writing or visualising, somehow depicting things that correspond to “reality”.</p>
<p>The champions of truth understood as adequation sometimes cite the Polish-American mathematician <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tarski-truth/">Alfred Tarski</a>, who famously put things this way: the proposition that “snow is white” (“p”) is true if and only if snow is white (“p is true if and only if p”). It’s seeing language as a conveyor belt, as a medium for recording a “reality” that is external to the observer. </p>
<p>Tough versions of the orthodoxy insist that evidence is evidence, reality is real and “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_fact">brute facts</a>” exist independently of anyone’s attitude toward them.</p>
<p>It’s not only philosophers who speak in this fashion. Journalists, lawyers, more than a few academics, plenty of environmental activists and data scientists are in the truth trade. </p>
<p>Believers in truth, a word that is usually left undefined, they have a habit of supposing that reality is all around them, out there, within arm’s reach or just beyond arm’s length, graspable and catchable through redescription, for instance in the form of data. </p>
<p>Such conceptions of “<a href="https://scienceobjectivity.weebly.com/max-weber-and-objectivity-in-the-social-sciences.html">objectivity</a>” fail to rethink the whole idea of truth as a necessary condition of ridding the world of post-truth decadence. Their failure to cast doubt simultaneously upon both post-truth and truth, to see them as partners rather than as opponents, ignores the need for a new geography and history of truth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Truth comes at a price. But if you’re lucky it’s 60% off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The New York Times</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Truth varies through space and time</h2>
<p>The geography of truth highlights the spatial dimensions of truth-seeking and attempts to live the truth. What counts as truth varies from place to place. </p>
<p>The French Renaissance writer Montaigne famously said that what is truth on one side of the Pyrenees is falsehood on the other side. Foucault repeats the point in his account of the birth of truth-telling (<em>le dire vrai</em>) within clinics and prisons. </p>
<p>Scholarly studies of the way cities (Escuela de Salamanca, Chicago School of Economics, Copenhagen School) have shaped what counts as knowledge push in the same direction.</p>
<p>The geography of truth equally matters within any given society, at any given time. The Pitjantjatjara peoples of central Australia still today use a family of terms like <em>mula</em> and <em>mula-mulani</em> and <em>mulapa</em> to refer to a “true story” that is inscribed with both connotations of “a long time” and calls for agreement between story tellers and listeners. </p>
<p>When Pitjantjatjara peoples speak of truth, they understand they are engaged in efforts to convince others of the rightness of their tradition. They recognise what mainstream white society usually forgets: that truth and trust are twins. </p>
<p>A new geography of truth would also note that there are spaces of life that either have little or nothing to do with truth, or where references to truth are simply out of place (Bertolt Brecht once remarked that if someone stood up in front of a group of strikers and said 2+2=4 they would no doubt be jeered), or where telling the truth has dangerous consequences, as when a Rohingya father lies to a Myanmar army patrol hunting women to rape by telling them on his doorstep he has no daughters.</p>
<p>What counts as truth varies not only through space but also through time. Truth has a controversial history; truth has never straightforwardly been truth. There is a history of truth that shows that what counts as truth varies through time, but also (the corollary) that what is today taken as truth has not always been so. </p>
<p>Ancient Greek understandings of truth as <em>aletheia</em>, a difficult word variously translated as “disclosure” or “un-concealedness”, are evidently different than Christian understandings of “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) and the imperative to tell the truth, shame the devil. </p>
<p>The early modern European period was marked by bitter struggles over the meaning of religious “truth”, calls for religious toleration and the deployment, by believers in truth, of such tactics of deception as occultism, the Catholic doctrine of mental reservation and Protestant casuistry. </p>
<p>The public controversies about truth among Christians encompassed Luther’s explosive, influential attack on popery as the sole interpreter of scripture in <a href="http://www.intratext.com/ixt/ENG0081/">An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate</a> (1520). They extended to <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195144945.001.0001/acprof-9780195144949">Lessing’s recommendation</a> that we should thank God that we don’t know the truth (“<em>Sage jeder, was ihm Wahrheit dünkt, und die Wahrheit selbst sei Gott empfohlen</em>” [“Let each person say what s/he deems truth, and let truth itself be commended unto God”]); and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-read-tocquevilles-democracy-in-america-40802">Tocqueville’s observation</a> that the modern democratic revolution powerfully calls into question so-called public truths about the “natural” inferiority of slaves and women.</p>
<h2>Democracy doubts both post-truth and ‘the truth’</h2>
<p>The public sense that truth claims are contestable and mutable interpretations is undoubtedly bolstered by the multi-media communications revolution, and by the advent of new forms of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-origins-of-monitory-democracy-9752">monitory democracy</a> featuring a plethora of mediated platforms where power is publicly interrogated and chastened.</p>
<p>Monitory democracy promotes the growth of public spaces where uncertainty, doubt, scepticism, irony and modesty in the face of arbitrary power are nurtured. </p>
<p>Wittgenstein’s recommendation that saying “I know” should be banned so that people would be required to say “I believe I know” makes good sense under these conditions. We could say that post-truth politics is the dark and messy side of an unfinished quantum shift in support of the pluralisation of people’s lived perceptions of the world.</p>
<p>Yes, talk of truth is not disappearing, or dead. Just as unbelievers continue to say “Lord help us” and “Jesus Christ”, and despite Copernicus people still speak of the setting sun, so the language of truth lives on in people’s lives.</p>
<p>Yet nowadays tropes like “<a href="http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/">We hold these truths to be self-evident</a>” arouse public suspicions. The truth is out that truth has many faces. </p>
<p>What counts as “truthful information” is less and less understood by wise citizens as “hard facts” or as indisputable “evidence” or as chunks of “reality” to be mined from television and radio programs, or from newspapers, digital platforms and “expert” authorities. </p>
<p>In the age of communicative abundance and monitory democracy, “reality” is multiple and mutable. “Reality”, including the lies and buffoonery and other forms of gaslighting peddled by the powerful, comes to be understood as always “reported reality”, as “reality” produced by some for others – in other words, as messages that are shaped and reshaped and reshaped again in the process of transmission and reception.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"881281755017355264"}"></div></p>
<p>This disenchantment of truth has everything to do with democracy. Considered as a universal norm liberated from metaphysical foundations, as a whole way of life committed to the defence of complex equality, freedom and difference, democracy in monitory form is the guardian of a plurality of lived interpretations of life. </p>
<p>The radical originality of monitory democracy is its defiant insistence that peoples’ lives are never simply given, that all things human are built on the shifting sands of space-time, and that no person or group, no matter how much “truth” or power they presently enjoy or want to claim, can be trusted permanently, in any given context, to govern other people’s lives.</p>
<p>Democracy is thus the best human weapon so far invented for guarding against the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow">illusions of certainty</a>” and breaking up truth-camouflaged monopolies of power, wherever they operate. Democracy is not a True and Right norm. Just the reverse: the norm of monitory democracy is aware of its own and others’ limits, knows that it doesn’t know everything, and understands that democracy has no meta-historical guarantees. That is why it does not suffer truth-telling dogmatists and fools gladly. </p>
<p>Democracy is a living reminder that truths are never self-evident, and that what counts as truth is a matter of interpretation. Recognising that in political life “<a href="https://idanlandau.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/arendt-truth-and-politics.pdf">truth has a despotic character</a>”, democracy stands for a world beyond truth and post-truth. </p>
<p>This is not because all women and men are “naturally” created equal. Rather, it’s because democracy supposes that no man or woman is good enough to claim they know the truth and to rule permanently over their fellows and the earthly habitats in which they dwell.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The theme of truth, post-truth and the unfinished communications revolution is further explored in a recently published thepaper.cn interview, <a href="http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1910750">The Revival of Truth Isn’t the Remedy for Post-Truth</a> (available only in Chinese).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane received funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The best defence against post-truth politics is not ‘the truth’. Democracy should resist the political tyranny of claims to some immutable truth as a basis for governing the lives of others.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/876062017-11-16T22:26:42Z2017-11-16T22:26:42ZA Robert De Niro Theory of Post-Truth: ‘Are you talking to me?’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194971/original/file-20171116-17112-19pygv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro's character, Travis Bickle, inhabits his own crazy paradigm, yet ultimately events frame him as a hero in the eyes of others too.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxoczOXRi4">YouTube </a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em></p>
<p><em>Over two days from November 20, the Post-Truth Initiative will host a series of events, including an evening <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/aec_events/sydney-ideas-truth-evidence-and-reason-who-can-we-believe/">question and answer session</a> on the 20th with invited guests from around the world. The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Many of the commentaries on post-truth have attempted to locate the sources of it. Where does post-truth discourse come from, and who is responsible for producing it?</p>
<p>Looked at this way, post-truth will never be found. It does not exist there. There is nothing new about politicians and the powerful telling lies, spinning, producing propaganda, dissembling, or bullshitting. Machiavellianism became a common term of political discourse precisely because it embodies Machiavelli’s belief that all leaders might, at some point, need to lie.</p>
<p>Lying is not an aberration in politics. Political theorist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strauss-leo/">Leo Strauss</a>, developing a concept first outlined by Plato, coined the term “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie#Leo_Strauss">noble lie</a>” to refer to an untruth knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda.</p>
<p>Questions about the agents of post-truth, and attempts to locate the sources of political bullshit, are just not grasping what is new and specific about post-truth. If we look for post-truth in the realm of the production of disinformation, we will not find it. This is why so many are sceptical that the concept of post-truth represents anything new. Not all haystacks contain needles.</p>
<p>So where is post-truth located, and how did we get here? Post-truth resides not in the realm of the production, but in the realm of reception. If lies, dissembling, spinning, propaganda and the creation of bullshit have always been part and parcel of politics, then what has changed is how publics respond to them. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth">Oxford Dictionary definition</a> of post-truth makes this clear; post-truth refers to “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.</p>
<h2>The problem with ‘objective facts’</h2>
<p>While this definition captures the essence of the problem, most academics, particularly those working in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS), will immediately identify one glaring problem with it. This is the concept of “objective facts”. Anyone with an awareness of the work of Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, or Ludwig Wittgenstein will know that facts are always contestable. </p>
<p>If they weren’t, public debate on complex policy issues would be easy. We could simply identify the objective facts and build policy on them.</p>
<p>Facts are social constructions. If there were no humans, no human societies and no human languages, there would be no facts. Facts are a particular kind of socially constructed entity. </p>
<p>Facts express a relationship between what we claim and what exists. We construct facts to convey information about the world. </p>
<p>But this does not mean we can just make up any facts we please. What makes something a fact is that it captures some features of the world to which it refers. The validity of our facts is dependent, in part, on their relationship to the world they describe. Something that fails accurately to describe something, or some state of affairs, is not a fact.</p>
<h2>Enter ‘alternative facts’…</h2>
<p>What about “alternative facts”? The idea is not as far-fetched as it seems. Kuhn’s <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/484164a">The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</a> is one of the most influential academic texts on the history of science. Kuhn’s concept of paradigms has seeped into public debate. But Kuhn’s notion of scientific “progress” occurring through a change in paradigm not only legitimates alternative facts it depends on them. </p>
<p>Each paradigm, according to Kuhn, has its own facts. Facts in one paradigm are not recognised as facts by adherents of alternative paradigms. Kuhn went so far as to argue that scientists from different paradigms lived in different worlds.</p>
<p>Facts, Kuhn argued, are always relative to the overarching paradigm. As such, Donald Trump and his supporters might claim to be simply occupying a different paradigm. </p>
<p>One can derive a similar position from Foucault’s notion of regimes of truth. Truth, according to Foucault, is relative to the regime in which it is embedded. And regimes of truth differ across time and place.</p>
<p>Or one can approach this via Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games”: unless one understands the rules of the game one is unable to take part. Transposed into contemporary political debate, the left and right each have their own paradigm, regime, truth, or language game.</p>
<p>Even if we do not accept Kuhn’s notion of paradigms, Kellyanne Conway could have meant, as she later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/03/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts-mistake-oscars">tried to claim</a>, that the Trump administration simply had a different perspective on the status of the facts, and a differing view of what facts matter. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VSrEEDQgFc8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kellyanne Conway explains that White House press secretary Sean Spicer offered “alternative facts”.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Admitting the role of academia</h2>
<p>Again, most academics will recognise the validity of this idea. There are always multiple perspectives on complex issues. The facts, as we constantly remind our students, don’t speak for themselves. Which facts are relevant, and what to make of them, is always a matter of interpretation.</p>
<p>Thus, post-truth finds intellectual legitimation in the necessary and critical approach to the construction of knowledge that is taken as a given in academia. Academics necessarily, and rightly, take a sceptical attitude to all truth claims. </p>
<p>We encourage students to express their opinion. We teach them that alternative views are to be valued. Nietzschean perspectivism is the default position of most academics, and we are loath to reach definitive conclusions particularly in ethical and political matters. Indeed, the University of Sydney now implores students to “<a href="https://twitter.com/sjw_nonsense/status/906155654154412032">unlearn truth</a>”.</p>
<p>This idea is not as outrageous as it might sound, although taken literally the consequences of “unlearning truth”, as we are discovering with post-truth politics, could be disastrous. But understood another way, “unlearning truth” is entirely consistent with an Enlightenment ethos.</p>
<p>Kant’s call to arms in the service of Enlightenment was <em>Sapere Aude</em>; dare to know. This was a call for humanity to overthrow its reliance on the church, the monarchy and other sources of authority as providing the secure grounds for knowledge claims. Take nothing at face value, and reason for oneself.</p>
<p>The Enlightenment also promoted the idea of inalienable human rights possessed by every individual and revived the ancient Greek concept of democracy; one person one vote; everyone has their say on political matters. In this context, it is possible to view post-truth discourse as the radicalisation of the Enlightenment. Specifically, in the realm of knowledge production, it is the democratisation of epistemology.</p>
<p>While democracy might be a political principle worth defending, there is a tension between it and the democratisation of epistemology. Democracy needs a population sufficiently well educated to be able to sift through the arguments and reach informed judgements.</p>
<p>This was the great hope of Enlightenment liberalism, particularly in relation to the provision of education. Increased access to education would bring progress and peace. A highly educated populace would make democracy function better.</p>
<h2>Confronting the post-truth paradox</h2>
<p>Despite the fact that by any standards Western populations are better educated than in Kant’s time, we seem to be regressing rather than progressing in terms of democratic practice. This is the post-truth paradox. The more educated societies have become, the more dysfunctional democracy seems to be. The supposed positive link between democracy, education and knowledge appears to be broken.</p>
<p>How can we explain this paradox, and can we do anything about it? Although many have been quick to blame postmodernism for the emergence of post-truth, the problem is much broader than that and infects most of the humanities, arts and social sciences. Postmodernism is only the most radical version of the idea that we should value, and allow a voice to, all opinions. </p>
<p>The political impulse behind this is admirable. Few academics are so arrogant to claim that they possess the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Allowing others, particularly marginalised others, to express “their truth” is seen as progressive.</p>
<p>Although many academics will not embrace the extremes of postmodernism, the ethos behind that approach is understandable to most. This explains why what seems to many outside of the academy to be a lunatic fringe has become so influential within the academy. Foucault, for example, is one of the most <a href="https://philosophyinatimeoferror.com/2016/07/05/most-cited-philosophers-and-others/">cited authors in HASS subjects</a>.</p>
<p>To be clear, I am not arguing that Trump and others in his administration have read the likes of Kuhn, Foucault and Wittgenstein. The problem is worse than that. It is a structural issue. </p>
<p>Increased access to education has suffused these ideas throughout the social field. Few people who have attended universities in HASS subjects in the last 30 years could have escaped exposure to these ideas. The incipient relativism that is the logical endpoint of them is now deeply ingrained in Western societies.</p>
<p>Of course, academics are not the only source of post-truth. But in an important way, they have contributed to it. When measuring our impact on society we only have two options. Either we have some impact, or we do not. </p>
<p>For some time now, those working in HASS subjects have been concerned to demonstrate how their research and teaching matters in practical ways to society. There is a logic to this, as governments increasingly seek to validate funding for HASS subjects on the basis of their supposed <a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/research-impact-principles-and-framework">impact</a> on society.</p>
<p>As the supposed guardians of truth, knowledge and the commitment to science, universities cannot have it both ways. If academics make a difference and publics no longer seem to care about facts, truth and reason, then we cannot be absolved of all responsibility for this situation. Indeed, if we do deny our responsibility, we as good as admit that have we little impact on society.</p>
<h2>What can we do about this?</h2>
<p>If universities are the social institutions whose function is to produce and protect knowledge and truth, and if those same institutions are, in part, the source of post-truth, what can we do about it?</p>
<p>First we need to recover our intellectual nerve. We need to situate critical approaches to the production of knowledge in context. We need to go beyond simply introducing students to critique and explore with them the validity of arguments. We need to be prepared to say that some perspectives are better than others, and explain why.</p>
<p>An embracing of multiple perspectives should not lead us to conclude that all perspectives are equally valid. And if they are not all equally valid we need sound epistemological reasons to choose one over the other. In short, we need to re-examine and reinvigorate the Enlightenment impulse.</p>
<p>Second, we need to recover our commitment to objective truth. George Orwell has been much cited as a prescient figure in understanding post-truth. Orwell believed: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” </p>
<p>Yet the concept of “objective truth” has not merely faded out of the world; it has been sent into exile. Few academics embrace the concept today.</p>
<p>This well-founded scepticism towards “objective truth” comes from the confusion between an ontological belief in the existence of objective truth, and an epistemological claim to know it. The two are not synonymous. We can retain our critical stance to epistemological claims about objective truth only by insisting on its status as something that exists but which no one possesses.</p>
<p>As Orwell knew only too well, if the concept of objective truth is moved into the dustbin of history there can be no lies. And if there are no lies there can be no justice, no rights and no wrongs. The concept of “objective truth” is what makes claims about social justice possible.</p>
<p>The irony, of course, is that most academics will claim to be doing just this. After all, most academics will have no problem in declaring climate change to be human-produced, that women remain disadvantaged in many areas of life, that poverty is real, and that racism is founded on false beliefs.</p>
<p>The issue is not that we all make these universal truth claims; it is that in embracing epistemological positions that tend towards relativism, we have denied ourselves a secure ground on which to defend them. In which case, these truth claims appear as nothing other than opinions, perspectives, or expressions of the identity we most value. And if academics cannot ground their truth claims on something other than opinions, perspectives or identity, then how can we expect anyone else to do so?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Wight does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Orwell knew only too well, if the concept of objective truth is moved into the dustbin of history there can be no lies. And if there are no lies there can be no justice, no rights and no wrongs.Colin Wight, Professor of International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/856712017-10-25T03:21:45Z2017-10-25T03:21:45ZAdani’s post-truth push for the Carmichael mine<p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em></p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a>and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“Post-truth”, 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”, was the Oxford Dictionary’s <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016">2016 Word of the Year</a>, selected as a hallmark of the times in the US and UK. (Macquarie Dictionary chose “fake news” as its <a href="https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/news/view/article/431/">2016 Word of the Year</a>.) </p>
<p>Yet post-truth politics and “<a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/arts/word-of-the-year-truthiness/article701949/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&">truthiness</a>”, a term Stephen Colbert <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/18/colbert-report-10-best-moments">coined in 2005</a>, are not solely British and American phenomena. “Truthiness” is rampant in Australia too. The debate about the proposed Adani Carmichael mine in central Queensland shows how truthiness has become part of Australian political discourse.</p>
<p>How can a coal mine be subject to a regime of “truthiness”? A decision to build a greenfield megamine would appear to come down to the facts, with the known harms weighed against the potential benefits. Yet we can identify three distinct traits in official discourses around the Adani mine that show truthiness at work.</p>
<h2>Appeal to emotion and ‘gut feelings’</h2>
<p>First, “truthiness” replaces a reliance on facts with appeals to emotion and a logic of “gut feelings”.</p>
<p>One of the champions of this form of logic is Tony Abbott. As prime minister, he faced criticism from environmentalists after opening a coal mine and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coal-is-good-for-humanity-says-tony-abbott-at-mine-opening-20141013-115bgs.html">declaring</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Earlier in 2014, he had <a href="http://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-23528">said</a> that “it is our destiny in this country to bring affordable energy to the world”.</p>
<p>In addition to the feel-good narrative of coal as national saviour, politicians have argued that Australia’s coal will help the world solve environmental problems, rather than making them worse. </p>
<p>An excellent example of this reasoning comes again from the former prime minister on his visit to India in September 2014. There, echoing the Adani chief executive, Abbott <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;orderBy=date-eFirst;page=0;query=Dataset%3Apressrel%20Decade%3A%222010s%22%20Year%3A%222014%22%20Month%3A%2209%22%20adani%20OtherSource_Phrase%3A%22prime%20minister%22;rec=1;re">argued</a> that the Carmichael mine could improve Indian living standards and cut carbon emissions by providing “clean coal”. </p>
<p>Using this same emotional logic, the government later <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2Fc3d90ba0-0cf0-40f5-b619-9d3ed6ad10bf%2F0099%22">told parliament</a> that opening the southern hemisphere’s largest coalmine would actually cut carbon pollution.</p>
<h2>Create doubt about facts – or make them up</h2>
<p>A second component of “truthiness” is the practice of deliberately presenting empirical facts as debatable, uncertain or political – or simply lying. The best examples of lying are the claims of the mine’s benefits to Queensland and Australia.</p>
<p>Most common are references to the number of jobs the Carmichael mine will provide to the Queensland economy, where the employment situation is portrayed as desperate. </p>
<p>For instance, Queensland federal MP Michelle Landry <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2Fc737e440-6de7-4ab7-a383-e9cc80648ecf%2F0198%22">claimed</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Adani Carmichael coalmine offers up to 10,000 new jobs, mainly in Queensland; A$20 billion of investment in Australia; and power, to build the living standards of 100 million people in India.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In fact, Jerome Fahrer, who prepared an economic assessment of the Carmichael mine for Adani, <a href="http://envlaw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/carmichael43A.pdf">admitted in court</a> that it will create an average of 1,464 direct and indirect jobs over the life of the project. Yet virtually every mine supporter has since 2014 repeated an <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/fact-check-will-adanis-coal-mine-really-boost-employment-by-10000-jobs/news-story/903c1932738b1d1a1763c74e45f4d7c7">incorrect figure of 10,000 new jobs</a>. They include the <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jWlDdY7NGqAJ:www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/adani-mine-has-huge-economic-benefits-for-australia-turnbull-says/news-story/76322acfc4bed6073f1f4b6c2001676d+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au">prime minister</a>, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/17/george-brandis-vigilante-green-groups-destroying-thousands-of-mining-jobs">attorney-general</a> and federal and state Liberal and National Party MPs.</p>
<p>Another prominent tactic used to cast unwanted facts as debatable or doubtful is to generate oxymorons that promote contradictory messages. </p>
<p>Mining corporations in Australia – and globally – use the term “sustainable mining” to describe projects that provide jobs. Politicians have adopted this; Anthony Lynham, Queensland’s minister for natural resources and mines, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/mar/17/indigenous-opponents-of-adanis-carmichael-mine-to-intensity-court-battle">declared</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This government strongly supports the sustainable development of the Galilee Basin for the jobs and economic development that it will provide for regional Queensland.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps the most pernicious oxymoron used by mine supporters is “clean coal”. To counter the claim that Galilee Basin coal is “clean”, The Australia Institute <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/sites/defualt/files/P303%20Coal%20hard%20facts_0.pdf">cites estimates</a> by Adani and India’s <a href="https://www.coal.nic.in/sites/upload_files/coal/files/coalupload/provisional1314_0.pdf">Ministry of Coal</a> that it “is only 10% above the average quality of domestic Indian thermal coal in terms of energy content”. This is because “the ash content of Carmichael coal is estimated to be 26% – more than double the average of 12% for Australian thermal coal”. </p>
<p>The institute also notes that transporting the coal inevitably creates extra pollution.</p>
<h2>Smear without evidence</h2>
<p>Third, to construct truthiness, statements that are not scientific, logical or fact-based have proliferated in the political debate about the Adani mine. Politicians have constantly reframed the term “activist” to connote an enemy of both the mine and the national interest. MPs have called members of green groups <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjcp4uIxPbWAhUCopQKHS_FArgQFggmMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.couriermail.com.au%2Fnews%2Fqueensland%2Fecoactivists-hold-up-34-billion-worth-of-queensland-projects%2Fnews-story%2F44195381295203d8c14ba7f8edbb3216&usg=AOvVaw0UGv8n1ssyyHkld7O0JK4u">economic saboteurs</a>, “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-20/bradley-vigilante-litigants-didnt-stop-the-carmichael-mine/6708414">vigilantes</a>”, “<a href="http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/news/protestors-set-up-camp-to-disrupt-adani-carmichael-coal-mine-project/news-story/3e4dff5f41b9712596653c52d9c0a4f8">terrorists</a>” and “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwinvJ_oxfbWAhVErJQKHXsxA5kQFgg9MAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnational-affairs%2Findigenous%2Fgreens-antiadani-groups-hijacking-interests-of-aboriginal-people%2Fnews-story%2F1c46d4e50b1a3434ddc688ab11e0d502&usg=AOvVaw2zoIFikN1zUwWeOB4HknvV">extremists</a>”.</p>
<p>This narrative casts environmentalists not only as economic enemies of Australia, but opposition to the mine as a form of terrorism. In parliament, Queensland LNP MP George Christensen described legal action to stop the mine as “an act of ecoterrorism”. He <a href="http://www.openaustralia.org.au/debates/?id=2016-02-08.8.2">continued</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Their lies, misinformation, slander and the frivolous legal action attacking a company for the sake of furthering an ideological cause can only be described as terrorism if you look at the criminal code.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The accusations of “eco-terrorism” and “sabotage” had no foundation in fact whatsoever. These claims were not linked to actual illegal activities by environmental groups opposed to the mine.</p>
<p>Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk summarised perhaps the most pernicious claim by mine proponents when she <a href="http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/hansard/2016/2016_04_19_WEEKLY.pdf">told parliament</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Queensland taxpayers will not be funding any infrastructure for this project. Stringent conditions will be enforced to safeguard landholders’ and traditional owners’ interests.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To keep Queensland taxpayers from funding the mine’s infrastructure, the burden will fall instead on Australian taxpayers via the Commonwealth government’s proposed <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-1-billion-loan-to-adani-is-ripe-for-a-high-court-challenge-85077">$1 billion loan</a> from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to Adani. This will fund rail lines from the mine to the coast.</p>
<p>Nor have the rights of the traditional owners of the mine site been respected or upheld. The state and federal governments and courts have <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/further-legal-action-planned-against-carmichael-coal-mine/8100326">denied all legal challenges</a> from the Aboriginal people most affected by it.</p>
<p>The primary purpose of dissecting the arguments in favour of the Carmichael mine is to demonstrate the complexity of “truthiness” regimes. None of these discursive forms – gut feelings, spin and the politicisation of unwanted facts, or even outright lies – are enough on their own. Rather, these strategies overlap, intersect and reinforce each other.</p>
<p>The effect is to create an overarching “truthiness” regime that presents new megamines as desirable, inevitable and essential to maintain Australia’s national destiny. In response, a more complex and multi-pronged approach will be needed to convince the voting public that coal mining is not good for Australia, its economy, or the globe.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are telltale signs when regard for the facts of the matter is sacrificed to ‘truthiness’ to win a political debate.Benedetta Brevini, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media, University of SydneyTerry Woronov, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/830392017-08-31T20:27:42Z2017-08-31T20:27:42ZHow I came to know that I am a closet climate denier<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183578/original/file-20170828-17154-1asx2tb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">So large are the nation's daily greenhouse gas emissions that if yours is a typical Australian lifestyle you're contributing disproportionately to climate change.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonquilt/12813779003/in/photolist-kwiY5c-eL4BMM-eL4BSg-eL4uB6-bnciRk-8rou28-EWNpQ-eBH8eR-3WfNZ9-eBGT2X-kwiPYx-eBHnuM-eBGcMn-V4dG1M-VfVx8T-TYmKxw-Fjb8h-eL4uvP-eL4BPH-eL4BLz-Vicwuq-cMaAqy-6PqKBE-eLfYRE-8rouSH-eL4uxc-61j5rr-eLfYMo-cMaAhf-cMaAau-6pUmA-hcPgXB-EWNpU-V1rTHY-EWNpS-TYoAbb-dWEC4-V1rTch-V4f55V-3TCE5k-V4f7RX-eL4BQD-8vabg4-TYoVFU-7qddHN-V1rY7C-TYoRvu-z2uxM-V1rMoJ-TYmJXJ">Carbon Visuals/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>What we believe and how we act don’t always stack up. Recently, in considering what it means to live in a post-truth world, I had cause to examine my understanding of how the world works and my actions on sustainability. </p>
<p>I realised I was, in effect, almost as much a climate denier as those who profess to be. Here’s how.</p>
<p><strong>1.1 A way of understanding how the world works</strong></p>
<p>I take a <a href="http://asc-cybernetics.org/index_old.htm">cybernetic</a> view of the world. For me this means a holistic systems perspective based on circularity and feedback with a <a href="http://www.cybertech-engineering.ch/research/references/Maturana1988/maturana-h-1987-tree-of-knowledge-bkmrk.pdf">biological/evolutionary</a> slant.</p>
<p>As I understand it, we learn and change as we bump up against the milieu we inhabit, which changes as we bump into it. </p>
<p>Our ontogeny – our life history since conception – determines what we contribute to that milieu, and the life histories of others determine what they take from it.</p>
<p><strong>1.2 Sustainability</strong></p>
<p>Now to the messages that we – the <a href="http://www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au/index.html">Integrated Sustainability Analysis</a> (ISA) group at the University of Sydney – strive to communicate to the world. </p>
<p>Using input-output analysis, we put <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b06162">numbers</a> to trends in emissions. We communicate on <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11145.html">environmental</a> and <a href="http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811041358">social sustainability</a> through books, journals and conferences, showing how complex <a href="https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/the-sustainability-practitioners-guide-to-multiregional-inputoutput-analysis?category_id=common-ground-publishing">supply chains</a> snake around the world.</p>
<p>We suggest that once producers, consumers and global corporations know the damage that is being done they will <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916310382">take action</a> to stop it. Meanwhile, we discuss the motivations of climate deniers and wonder what we can do to change things.</p>
<p><strong>1.3 The big collision</strong></p>
<p>This is where I bump into my understanding of the world. What messages do people take from what we contribute to the milieu? Are they changed by the sustainability messages we try to communicate?</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/101/">Dan Kahan and colleagues</a> from the Yale Law School suggest that perception of risk from climate change depends on our cultural worldview: we dismiss risk if accepting it would mean social upheaval. Survival within the group, they say, trumps lifestyle change.</p>
<p>This fits with my understanding of how our ontogeny determines our survival needs and how our perception of survival within the group influences our actions. It also fits with my view about <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-1428-6_829">how people learn</a> – we pick up from the surrounding milieu what fits with our views and ignore the rest.</p>
<p>I nodded along with Kahan, aligning myself with those trying to tell others of the risk. Until I realised there were two problems in such a position.</p>
<h2>Problem one</h2>
<p>The first problem is that my behaviour is little different from that of Kahan’s subjects. I live in Australia, which has the <a href="http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-incomes-in-the-world.html">fifth-highest gross national income</a> per capita. We also have the <a href="http://www.garnautreview.org.au/pdf/Garnaut_Chapter7.pdf">highest per-capita emissions in the OECD</a>.</p>
<p>While I minimise waste and do my recycling, it would take a lifestyle upheaval to drop my household emissions to the <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/222a/f36ffe5b22c6f70fd28d4a63aade0c707439.pdf">sustainable share</a> suggested by people like <a href="http://uchicagogate.com/2015/11/06/try-to-do-the-most-good-you-can-an-interview-with-peter-singer/">Peter Singer</a>. So, I behave as though the call to act on climate change in an equitable way does not apply to me.</p>
<p>I am not alone in understanding the issues, being concerned about the consequences, and yet failing to act. It’s known as the “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916502034003004">knowledge, concern, action paradox</a>”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/investors-should-swipe-at-companies-not-trump-20170606-gwm18w.html">Julien Vincent</a>, writing about investors who ostensibly support the Paris Agreement yet fail to act, refers to this as a “much subtler, but no less damaging, form of denial”. He cites a case of Santos investors, aware of the consequences, professing concern, yet choosing to vote against a resolution that would have committed the company to conduct a 2°C scenario analysis.</p>
<p>It would seem that knowing the truth and professing concern about climate change are the easy parts. They cost nothing and allow us to claim the kudos that accrues to taking up such a position. </p>
<p>However, knowing the truth and professing concern without taking action is somewhat disingenuous. At worst it is living a lie, akin to being a closet climate denier.</p>
<p>So, even when recognising this truth/action/denial dilemma, why don’t we act? George Marshall, in his book <a href="http://climateconviction.org/">Don’t Even Think About It</a>, provides an insight. He discusses our evolutionary origins, our perception of threats, including climate change, and our instincts to protect family and tribe.</p>
<p>This resonates with my take on cybernetics, which suggests I live the way I do because I need to survive in my physical, economic, social and cultural environment; and because in a different era it would have given my offspring the best chance of survival.</p>
<p>It doesn’t let me off the hook – I still need to take action to lower my emissions – but it reminds me I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. I’m as much a part of the system as anyone else.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, my cybernetic take on life says that whatever we put into the milieu matters. So even though very few of us living in high-income countries can reduce our emissions to an equitable share, whatever actions we take to reduce them contribute to the world of tomorrow, next week, next year. They change the milieu, which changes the possibilities for change.</p>
<h2>Problem two</h2>
<p>Putting myself outside the system leads to the second problem, which is contingent on the first and means that if I can’t change my own actions I can’t expect to change those of others. </p>
<p>For while I shout about climate change, hoping others will hear what I say and act on it, in so many ways I communicate that I’m not acting on it myself.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://archive.is/CZOkK">online survey</a> showed that a researcher’s perceived carbon footprint affected her/his credibility and influenced the participants’ intentions to change their energy consumption.</p>
<p>If I know the figures, accept the science and yet continue to lead my rich nation lifestyle, I’m fair game as an excuse, conscious or not, for the deniers to continue their climate-indifferent lifestyles.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean sharing our research is a waste of time. It provides valuable information about the social, economic and environmental effects of doing business; again, it changes the milieu. But it’s highly unlikely that people will read it and change what they do, which is a far more complex process.</p>
<h2>Changing attitudes and action</h2>
<p>Much research has been devoted to the question of how, and how not, to influence people’s responses to the threats posed by climate change.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/1470539096335621">Michael Mann</a> is wary of scare campaigns as a motivating force. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308958235_Overcoming_societal_addictions_What_can_we_learn_from_individual_therapies">Bob Costanza</a> and colleagues suggest that scare campaigns from scientists and activists alike are not the answer to weaning us off our addiction to an unsustainable lifestyle.</p>
<p>There’s research to suggest that enlisting the help of a trusted community member might be an effective <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378011000173">alternative</a>. Having an advocate present benefits of a low-carbon lifestyle, framed around community issues like energy security rather than climate change, has had some success.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/people-around-the-world-will-act-on-climate-change-to-create-a-better-society-study-48174">Such an approach</a> could help provide a way to take action for people who know about the science but whose <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378011000173">political affiliations and values</a> position them at the climate denial end of the spectrum, regardless of their knowledge.</p>
<p>However, it may not help those of us whose political affiliations and values are aligned with acting on climate change, yet still find it hard to act. </p>
<p>Probably more pertinent to our case is research showing that our actions on climate change are circumscribed not only by the political and cultural contexts that we inhabit but also by the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21582041.2012.692484">infrastructure</a> provided by them. That’s because this infrastructure forms the milieu that enfolds our lives.</p>
<h2>So, where to from here?</h2>
<p>If this is the case, then resolution to my first problem might require a significant change to the web of edifices that support my lifestyle. It would take a climate-friendly government with a narrative that normalises action on climate change to make it easy for me to survive in the group and live a low-carbon lifestyle.</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=ant_facpub">Sweden</a> provides an example of what this could look like. For many countries, though, a shift in the national narrative might seem impossible. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183587/original/file-20170828-17139-wggdsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Sweden, a rare example of a rich nation with low emissions, Hammarby in Stockholm is a model of environmentally friendly city development.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://imagebank.sweden.se/hammarby+sj%25C3%25B6stad/stockholm,%20central+sweden/hammarby+sj%25C3%25B6stad%252C+stockholm/146">Ola Ericson/imagebank.sweden.se</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are examples of dramatic change to a seemingly inviolable narrative, but they come with a “be careful what you wish for” label.</p>
<p>Recently, we’ve seen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/30/the-us-sanders-campaigners-lending-corybn-hand-bernie-momentum">Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy?CMP=share_btn_link">Nigel Farage</a> and Donald Trump make spectacular changes to the political landscape. They illustrate the power of engaging at the community level, discussing local issues (albeit sometimes with the help of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy?CMP=share_btn_link">big data</a>), portraying empathy and swearing commitment to local solutions.</p>
<p>These leaders have changed the discourse. A cybernetic take on the process might say that their acts of communication triggered a lifetime of connotations in their hearers. The hearers interpreted the message through the prism of their ontogeny, feeding back into the mix their personal understandings, amplifying the message and influencing others by their own communications. </p>
<p>This is a process that works for good or ill, depending where you stand. So a world leader with climate credentials and sufficient clout to make the low-carbon lifestyle message sound mainstream could change the world’s trajectory.</p>
<p>However, ranged against the wisdom of waiting for such a one is the ominous presence of big data companies with the capacity to help manipulate individuals as well as whole communities; uber-wealthy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RsYr_iQUs6QC&oi=fnd&pg=PA144&dq=exxonmobil+climate+change+denial&ots=r6KA5anb6A&sig=sinlME2S4T4i5Oe9DFbegjhCkA4#v=onepage&q=exxonmobil%20climate%20change%20denial&f=false">individuals and groups</a> with the ability to influence leaders and world politics; and the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/3/4/470/2669331/Modeling-sustainability-population-inequality">top 10%</a> of global income earners who are responsible for almost as much greenhouse gas emissions as the rest of us together.</p>
<p>All are acting out of their own survival instincts and are unlikely to succumb to any amount of persuasive argument from a climate-conscious leader.</p>
<p>So how else to change the milieu to support more of us in achieving a more sustainable lifestyle? Nobel prize-winning economist <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/green-from-the-grassroots">Elinor Ostrom</a>’s view is that the planet’s salvation lies with communities everywhere bypassing governments and taking action themselves. In 2012 she wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… evolutionary policymaking is already happening organically. In the absence of effective national and international legislation to curb greenhouse gases, a growing number of city leaders are acting to protect their citizens and economies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those <a href="https://www.compactofmayors.org/">mayors</a> defying Trump’s exit from the Paris Agreement come to mind as examples.</p>
<p>Ostrom suggests that supporting <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/8/715/htm">distributed leadership</a> is the answer. And, to bring us back to cybernetics, management cybernetics guru <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer">Stafford Beer</a> did exactly that. </p>
<p>Beer took <a href="https://www.panarchy.org/ashby/variety.1956.html">Ashby’s law of requisite variety</a> and revolutionised the way business management operated. Ashby’s law tells us that only variety (or complexity) can control variety. That leaves 90% of the global population to bring together the system variety required to influence – Ashby says “control” – the very wealthy high-emissions minority.</p>
<p>So, I’m backing distributed leadership to overcome my own inability to cut my emissions further. Investing in the work of organisations that can act will be my proxy. </p>
<p>This may look like a slow haul to change the milieu so that action on climate change becomes normal life, but I’m counting on the snowballing power of amplification to make it happen sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>The complexity of the 90% will eventually trump that of the 10%, by which time my second problem should be irrelevant.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83039/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joy Murray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It would take a lifestyle upheaval to drop most Australians’ household emissions to a sustainable level. Even many of us who urge equitable action on climate change act as if this doesn’t apply to us.Joy Murray, Senior Research Fellow in Integrated Sustainability Analysis, School of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/818222017-08-14T03:27:19Z2017-08-14T03:27:19ZThe Madhouse Effect: this is how climate denial in Australia and the US compares<p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/about/">Michael Mann</a> is well known for his classic “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-hockey-stick-and-the-climate-wars/9780231152549">hockey stick</a>” work on global warming, for the attacks he has long endured from climate denialists, and for the good fight of communicating the environmental and political realities of climate change. </p>
<p>Mann’s work, including his recent book <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-madhouse-effect/9780231177863">The Madhouse Effect</a>, has helped me, as a dual US-Australian citizen, think about the similarities and differences between the US and Australia as we respond to what has been called the <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566600.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199566600-e-10">climate change denial machine</a>.</p>
<p>In both countries, the denialists and distortionists have undermined public knowledge, public policy, new economic development opportunities, and the very value of the environment. Climate policy is being built upon alternative facts, fake news, outright lies, PR spin and industry-written talking points.</p>
<p>From the carbon industry <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-new-books-show-theres-still-no-goodbye-to-messy-climate-politics-80957">capture of the two major parties</a>, to the Abbott-Turnbull government <a href="https://theconversation.com/ultra-super-clean-coal-power-weve-heard-it-before-71468">parroting industry talking points</a>, to coal industry <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">lobbyists as government energy advisers</a>, to the outright idiotic <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-nations-malcolm-roberts-is-in-denial-about-the-facts-of-climate-change-63581">conspiracy pronouncements</a> of senators funded and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/dec/15/one-nation-senator-joins-new-world-order-of-climate-change-denial">advised by the US-based denial machine</a>, the Madhouse Effect is in full force in Australia.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-coal-plants-wouldnt-be-clean-and-would-cost-billions-in-taxpayer-subsidies-72362">New coal plants wouldn’t be clean, and would cost billions in taxpayer subsidies</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>How we can expose and counter this denialist machine? To partly lay out the task, I will discuss three points of contrast between the US and Australia.</p>
<h2>Political culture</h2>
<p>There is a key difference between the two countries’ political cultures. As much as the denialists have determined Australian energy and climate policy, they have not been as successful, yet, at undermining deep-seeded respect in Australian culture for the common good, for science, for expertise and knowledge.</p>
<p>I left the US at the start of 2011. Living in Arizona, I had experienced the full weight of the racism, the white nationalism, the anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-fact atmosphere that has since spread all the way to the White House. </p>
<p>I used to tell people I left because Arizona had simply become anti-enlightenment. Folks really didn’t get it, until now, when it is the attitude that rules the country.</p>
<p>Shortly after I arrived in Australia, the then-prime minister, Tony Abbott, led an attack on the work of economist Ross Garnaut. Abbott slammed Garnaut’s 2011 <a href="http://www.garnautreview.org.au/">report</a> as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate-report-an-assault-on-democracy-says-abbott/news-story/095c330b7317e707fef3e933d7a8b4a3">anti-democratic</a>. The report had simply pointed out the cost of climate inaction and the viability of putting a price on carbon. </p>
<p>Later, Abbott doubled down and dismissed the quality of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/think-again-on-carbon-tax-abbott-tells-economists/2779488">Australian economists</a> as a whole. Other denialists went further – Garnaut was called a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/garnaut-an-eco-fascist-says-monckton/news-story/3f21e222e0be2d9f4668bca8ad8a96a3">fascist</a> and was subject to the kind of attacks Mann is well familiar with.</p>
<p>Surprisingly to me, a good part of the public seemed appalled by Abbott’s trashing of an academic. This was seen an attack not just on a carbon price, or a policy recommendation, but on science and knowledge as a whole.</p>
<p>And there was the chief scientist on TV, defending the academy – and that’s when I learned Australia actually had a chief scientist, to whom the media paid attention. This is not something we had in Arizona.</p>
<p>Abbott wound up backing down from the worst of the criticism. The whole series of events illustrated to me, a new Australian, that there is a strong cultural norm here that supports science, that respects expertise and that understands that real knowledge should be used to inform good policy in the public interest.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a one-time event. Last year, when the government <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110-climate-scientist-jobs/">fired climate scientists</a> at CSIRO, there was another huge public backlash. The government had to step back a bit, both on the actual science to be done and the radical agenda change away from science for the public good.</p>
<p>And again, when the government wanted to support the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-consensus-centre-what-are-the-costs-and-benefits-to-uwa-40808">dubious work of Bjorn Lomborg</a>, that caused an outcry from both the university sector and the public. Even though the government wound up paying more than A$600,000 on what The Australian called his “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/govt-funded-lomborgs-vanity-book-senate-estimates/news-story/c910a37727718a081b303897238a3913">vanity book project</a>”, they couldn’t import him and plant him at any Australian university.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-consensus-centre-what-are-the-costs-and-benefits-to-uwa-40808">The Australian Consensus Centre: what are the costs and benefits to UWA?</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>As Mann says, the main issue in implementing good, sound climate policy is no longer simply the science. The main issue is the cultural understanding of, and respect for the role of science in informing political decisions. </p>
<p>That’s not to say there are no attacks on science – clearly, these continue (such as the recent <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/bom-faces-storm-over-weather-data-inaccuracies/news-story/375538d5c05310727b6a4154f841cfe2">challenges to normal Bureau of Meteorology practices</a>). But, overall, climate denialists and their enablers are outnumbered outliers in Australia, rather the norm.</p>
<h2>The power of the carbon industry</h2>
<p>My second point of comparison is not quite as positive. </p>
<p>The problem in Australia is less a culture turning against the Enlightenment, and more the direct political power and influence of the carbon industry. This is most evident not just in our poor emissions and climate policies, but also in the fact the Australian government is hell-bent on sabotaging an entire industrial sector.</p>
<p>I honestly do not understand how the sabotage of the renewables industry in Australia – an all-out attack on a clearly promising and innovative sector – is not treated as a form of industrial treason. </p>
<p>We have had a set of politicians, under the influence of a dying industry, undermining one of the most promising areas of our own economy. They do so for the sole benefit of carbon diggers, at the expense of the rest of Australia, of the next generation and of the planet.</p>
<p>And the justification for this is all based on falsehoods and lies, straight from the PR team of the carbon industry. We hear arguments for energy security, energy poverty and clean coal; we hear that renewables undermine the reliability of the grid. It’s all absolute <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-origins-of-environmental-bullshit-80955">bullshit</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-origins-of-environmental-bullshit-80955">On the origins of environmental bullshit</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>But, again, even here I think there is some hope. We have seen, over the last few years, an incredible coalition grow – one focused on the end of carbon mining, on protecting communities, on creating real jobs, and on supporting renewables. </p>
<p>Once-unthinkable coalitions of farmers and Aboriginal communities are fighting new mines, new attacks on sacred and fertile land and water. </p>
<p>We have intensive household investment in rooftop solar – and as the feed-in tariffs are undermined, those folks will increasingly invest in battery storage. And we’re finally seeing <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-solar-panel-and-battery-revolution-how-will-your-state-measure-up-76866">states move in this direction</a>, with increasing development of utility-scale renewable and storage projects. As hard as the federal government and its allies resist, renewables are growing and the public supports this – even conservative voters. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"832064537717141504"}"></div></p>
<p>This industry will be the innovator, the job creator, the future of this country’s energy system. That is a movement – a transformation – that now seems inevitable even in the face of the carbon industry, its political allies and their outright attacks on innovation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-solar-panel-and-battery-revolution-how-will-your-state-measure-up-76866">The solar panel and battery revolution: how will your state measure up?</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Impacts and adaptation</h2>
<p>There is one other important point to make in comparing the US and Australia – and maybe it is the most dire.</p>
<p>All of this talk, about the science, about the power of the denialist machine, about post-truth and the sabotage of renewables, is all about one side of the climate issue: emissions.</p>
<p>The other side, which is crucial to us here in Australia, is how we adapt to the climate change the denialist machine has baked into our future. This nice stable period of the last 10,000 years, the Holocene, in which humanity has evolved, built our cities, our infrastructure, our supply chains, the expectations of our everyday lives – is over. </p>
<p>Climate change means change, and Australia is already facing it in more severe ways than the US.</p>
<p>So adaptation is the next battle, and it must be just. We know who benefits from denialism and the sabotage of renewables. And it is pretty straightforward who will be harmed most if we don’t plan for coming change. We know <a href="https://theconversation.com/hospitals-feel-the-heat-too-from-extreme-weather-and-its-health-impacts-70997">who dies in heatwaves</a>, for example – the poor, the elderly, those who live alone, those without resources.</p>
<p>This is happening right here. The Rockefeller-funded <a href="http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/263975/2016-503932-Report-Resilient-Sydney-PRA-FINAL-ISSUED.pdf">Resilient Sydney</a> project found that the number one chronic stress is increasing health services demand, which is crucial to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-people-can-best-make-the-transition-to-cool-future-cities-80683">resilience in Western Sydney during heatwaves</a>. If we don’t attend to that, vulnerable people will continue to die every time it heats up.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-people-can-best-make-the-transition-to-cool-future-cities-80683">How people can best make the transition to cool future cities</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Australia needs to face up to adaptation planning on a large scale – rather than <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2017-budget-has-axed-research-to-help-australia-adapt-to-climate-change-77477">cut funds to the good work</a> already being done. We need to focus on giving those most vulnerable to climate change a fair go by looking after their needs first. </p>
<p>One promising step is that the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a>, with colleagues in <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/research/centres/planetary-health-initiative.html">Planetary Health</a> and Public Health at the University of Sydney, are establishing a new research hub for NSW OEH on the Health and Social Impacts of Climate Change. </p>
<p>We have also partnered with <a href="http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/vision/towards-2030/resilient-sydney">Resilient Sydney</a> to examine the actual experience of <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/news/sei-researchers-win-grant-to-study-urban-vulnerability-and-resilience/">communities in shock events</a> – the impacts on people and how policy responses can be improved. This work is all about adapting to the complex impacts of climate change in fair and just ways.</p>
<p>Overall, then, yes, Australia has industry-led denialists creating a madhouse effect, just as Mann writes about in the US. </p>
<p>But my hope is that we can use our broad political culture of respect for science and for the fair go to resist denialism and the coal profiteers, to implement a post-carbon energy transformation, and adapt fairly and justly to the inevitable changes the denial industry has locked in here.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Michael Mann is taking part in a panel discussion, <a href="https://sydneyscience.com.au/2017/event/madhouse-effect/">The Madhouse Effect: What is Stopping Action on Climate Change?</a>, from 6.30-8pm on Wednesday, August 16, as part of the Sydney Science Festival. This article is an edited and revised version of comments given in response to Mann’s February 8 talk on The Madhouse Effect, organised by the University of Sydney’s <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a>.</em></p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rfjBM_BB-ic?wmode=transparent&start=2008" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Michael Mann’s talk about The Madhouse Effect, and the response by David Schlosberg.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81822/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Schlosberg has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council to study adaptation planning. </span></em></p>While climate denialism impedes policymaking in both the US and Australia, there are key differences in their political and public cultures.David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics and Co-Director Sydney Environment Institute, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/809552017-07-25T04:06:44Z2017-07-25T04:06:44ZOn the origins of environmental bullshit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179388/original/file-20170724-29742-97dbbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children play in the DDT fog left by the 'fog truck' in a New Jersey neighbourhood. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Silk/LIFE 1948</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I grew up in the Long Island suburbs of New York and have vivid memories of running behind the “fog trucks”. These trucks went through the neighbourhoods spraying DDT for mosquito control until it was banned in 1972. </p>
<p>I didn’t know it until much later, but that experience, and exposure, was extended due to the pesticide industry’s lies and tactics – what is now labelled “post-truth”.</p>
<p>Rachel Carson published <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring">Silent Spring</a> in 1962. It was a beautifully written, if distressing, bit of what we today call “research translation”. The “silent spring” was the impact of DDT as songbird species were killed off. </p>
<p>Carson tried to expose the chemical industry’s disinformation. For doing so, she was roundly and untruthfully attacked as a communist and an opponent of progress. Silent Spring was one of the most popular and vetted overviews of environmental science of all time. Yet lies and bullshit prevented a decent policy response for a decade.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X4nTCGUjfGA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Back in the day DDT was used with nearly no restrictions. From American Experience/PBS.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And the lies won’t go away. In 2007, one of the think-tanks responsible for climate science misinformation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, <a href="https://cei.org/content/rethinking-rachel-carson-legacy">began reiterating</a> one of the main refuted claims about Carson. She was said to be responsible for millions of deaths due to the ban on DDT to control mosquitoes that spread malaria.</p>
<p>The reality is that while DDT was banned for agriculture in the US – and spraying on kids in suburban neighbourhoods – it was never banned for anti-malarial use. Even now. But the political right and the dirtiest chemical industry players in all of industrial capitalism have long painted environmentalists as killers – of people, progress and jobs.</p>
<p>It’s a carefully manufactured campaign of lies and disinformation. As a result, many people believe Carson is a flat-out mass murderer – not a hero who beautifully blended care for human health and nonhuman nature in one of the most <a href="https://theconversation.com/50th-anniversary-of-silent-spring-synthetic-chemicals-cause-the-decline-of-bees-6599">important and challenging books</a> of the 20th century.</p>
<h2>Lies and smears have a long history</h2>
<p>This anti-environmentalist tactic of countering critiques of industrial impacts on the planet with lies, obfuscation and defamation has a long history. It goes back at least to establishment attacks on the US municipal housekeeping movement in the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th century. </p>
<p>The urban environmental movement probably began in the 1880s with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Health_Protective_Association">Ladies Health Protective Association</a> in New York, the <a href="http://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/city-beautiful-movement/">City Beautiful movement</a>, <a href="https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/when-the-white-wings-cleaned-up-new-york/">Waring’s White Wings city cleaners</a>, and more. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 1913 municipal housekeeping poster shows many home duties related to government, but the movement’s members were smeared as unworthy women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14595707898/in/photolist-nPgLg4-ePj6sJ-eP7Gwn-ejfwjN-ej9Mna-ejfw3m-ej9MLB-ej9MTM-owibDN-ejfwqw-eP7Gfp-8f2zkg-jokS3X-ePj6XW-eP7GoF-ejfwtJ-jokQjg-b6Qx4X-3jVx3d-AbbEC8-oy3nmP-oeHTrF-ovLbgD-owfUB4-oeLPsb-oddr9x-ovFPaC-ovKfoK-ows1Zj-ow2ATo-tnqtHy-tDz2PP-rYEZRM-rYngn1">Internet Archive Book Images/flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0ALrHHbsoHcC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=municipal+housekeeping&source=bl&ots=a07rFgxNMS&sig=dqKkuyuClVRr6_WCnR17qh-XOwY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAsd7Yi6PVAhUGspQKHRBuCI4Q6AEIZDAL#v=onepage&q=municipal%20housekeeping&f=false">Municipal housekeeping</a> in particular was primarily a women’s movement to clean up cities. This eventually led to the development of formal offices of public health and public planning in local governments. </p>
<p>The opposition – from meatpackers to fertiliser makers to the waste industry – labelled these women bad housekeepers. They argued that the only reason women wanted to “mother” and keep house in the community was because they were so bad at such things at home – that municipal housekeeping was only a movement against domestic housekeeping. </p>
<p>In other words, they were not real women and were unconcerned with anyone but themselves.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the polluting industries were at the heart of such bullshit attacks. And in both this example from the early 20th century and the Carson example from the 1960s, industry used a very gendered attack as part of the post-truth campaign.</p>
<p>The theme of industrial lies covering environmental damage continued in the 1980s in the Pacific Northwest timber wars. Once again, environmentalists were scapegoated for the loss of timber jobs.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Efforts to protect the spotted owl were blamed for the loss of jobs due to timber industry automation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfsregion5/3699675982">USFS/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These job losses were primarily due to automation. But the controversy over the endangered spotted owl allowed the timber industry to create another narrative – that environmentalists cared about birds more than jobs, that they wouldn’t be happy until the economy was devastated, and that all of the changes that harmed timber workers were due to environmental regulation – not the industry itself.</p>
<p>The attack on science ramped up then as well. When scientists declared that each pair of owls needed a certain exclusive range, and so protecting them from extinction would entail preserving whole forests, the industry-captured Forest Service simply shrank the recommendation. </p>
<p>The very real environmental science was dismissed. Subsequent policy was based in fantasy, wishful thinking and the lies of the industry. The <a href="https://islandpress.org/book/the-wisdom-of-the-spotted-owl">timber wars</a> were another example of science on the one hand and industry lies – supported by government – on the other.</p>
<p>The history of climate change denialism since the 1980s has really been the culmination of the attack on environmental science. </p>
<p>It has been based on the production of lies developed by the fossil fuel industry through industry-funded conservative think-tanks, laundered through conservative foundations, spun and repeated by right-wing media outlets, and adopted as ideology by the Republican Party. Its representatives are supported by even more industry and conservative funding of elections, or face opposition from others if they don’t comply.</p>
<p>This is, as <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566600.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199566600-e-10">Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright</a> have written, a well-funded, highly complex and relatively co-ordinated denial machine. It includes “contrarian scientists, fossil fuel corporations, conservative think tanks, and various front groups”, along with “amateur climate bloggers … public relations firms, astroturf groups, conservative media and pundits, and conservative politicians”.</p>
<p>The goal is simple and clear: no regulation on industry, and what environmental sociologist Robert Brulle calls the “<a href="https://drexel.edu/%7E/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx">institutionalisation of delay</a>” on climate policy. The tools are simple as well: lies, obfuscation, defamation and the creation of an image of scientific uncertainty. </p>
<p>What is the current <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/115th-congress-climate-denier-caucus-65fb825b3963">state of affairs</a> after 30 years of this climate denial machine? </p>
<p>In the US, at least 180 congressional members and senators are declared climate deniers. They’ve received more than US$82 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and its partners.</p>
<p>This is a long, complicated and well-trod story told, among others, by Naomi Oreskes in <a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/">Merchants of Doubt</a>, and by Michael Mann in <a href="http://www.michaelmann.net/books/madhouse-effect">The Madhouse Effect</a>. It has been going on a long time. </p>
<p>The history is important, as a problematic front-page story in The New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html">How GOP Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science</a>, illustrates. The report includes an explanatory sentence that is jaw-dropping for its misunderstanding and reshaping of the issue:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favouring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over co-operation and conciliation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So it was “big political money” – not the industry, not the Koch brothers’ campaign, not an all-out effort to shift public opinion, just “political money”. Democratic hubris becomes a central reason for Republicans believing in fake science. The argument is that this was a reaction to President Barack Obama’s regulatory approach in his second term, as if denialism didn’t exist before 2012. </p>
<p>And then there’s the idea that this is a bipartisan problem – of extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric – rather than one the anti-environmental right created.</p>
<p>Brulle took to Twitter to criticise the story – primarily the <a href="https://twitter.com/RBrulle/status/871078004142821376">short timeframe</a>. Clearly, climate obfuscation doesn’t start in 2008, when The New York Times story starts. The climate change denial machine has been up and running since at least 1988, 20 years longer than the story suggests. </p>
<p>Brulle was also livid that a story on the social aspects of climate discourse <a href="https://twitter.com/RBrulle/status/871147077732098048">did not cite a single expert</a>. This was despite there being hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and books on the denial machine.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"871078004142821376"}"></div></p>
<p>So even the major media refuse to clearly expose the undermining of real environmental science, and the creation of lies and bribes to distort public policymaking. But this work is out there. It’s really the thorough work done on the climate denial machine that lays out the methodology of the development of environmental distortions, lies and post-truth discourse.</p>
<p>And, again, this is the core example of the evolution of environmental bullshit: a long history of industry creation of lies; conservative funding of think-tanks, front groups and the echo chamber; the development of an ideological imperative of denialism; and then the necessity of completely groundless bullshit to shore up the lies. It’s all there.</p>
<p>This methodology has clearly been used here in Australia. <a href="http://www.readfearn.com/">Graham Redfearn</a>, writing for the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/">desmog blog</a> and The Guardian, has done amazing and thorough work on the denial machines in the US and Australia – and their links. In Australia, a clear link exists between climate denialism and the coal industry. </p>
<p>Many on the right, including the current and past prime ministers, parrot the lies and PR language of the industry – energy poverty, coal is cheap, clean coal is possible, 10,000 jobs, etc. It’s a tale as old as tobacco, lead, timber wars and DDT. It’s as old as industries that know their products do public harm, but lie to keep them in use.</p>
<p>The point here is simply to acknowledge what many have argued about the whole idea of “post-truth” – it’s not anything new, but just more of the same. </p>
<p>Environmentalists have long seen the propagation of lies, piles of bullshit, the dismissal of science, and the creation of mythologies as a consistent core of corporate misbehaviour – and, unfortunately, conservative ideology.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Schlosberg has received funding from the Australian Research Council for work on climate change and just adaptation. </span></em></p>The undermining of environmental science, and the creation of lies and bribes to distort public policymaking, is as old as industries that know their products do harm, but lie to keep them in use.David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics and Co-Director Sydney Environment Institute, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782562017-06-30T03:43:49Z2017-06-30T03:43:49ZGrowing food in the post-truth era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173909/original/file-20170615-22797-1o9q86j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critics fear the merger of agricultural giants Bayer and Monsanto will drive an increase in use of pesticides.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/agrilifetoday/16929844842/in/photolist-rN2T3A-8DXsx1-9MgfGd-7TiZ1v-8DXhCU-9zwKsJ-8Zqd7z-cdx66W-eg2HUM-f4x9f4-7TnhMw-7TngnU-9n7zac-9Mdr7Z-4HJkxG-4MtZUF-7TnfAo-4HDXgM-fDx8fH-4SD8sy-a2AY4x-9Mdt24-4HgvNC-8PfXpg-4Sy8Lv-4Momau-nZcxJD-4SCmjG-cYVa8A-9KBLmm-8wTEQi-4StvM3-4SCmnS-9MgdN5-6mtHKD-8aothc-6bH8UH-4StvGy-8vNsza-4Mu41V-mV1z39-5UzgMr-Df1fp5-pFE5TJ-4SCmgf-9MgewL-9MghJ7-8aWBAw-kmjRKg-4StvNA">AgriLife Today/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The global food system has been operating in post-truth mode for decades. Having constructed food scarcity as a justification for a <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/green-revolution/">second Green Revolution</a>, Big Agriculture now employs its unethical marketing tactics to selling farmers “climate-smart” agriculture in the form of soils, seeds and chemicals.</p>
<p>The cover of Monsanto’s 2016 annual report, <a href="http://www.monsanto.com/investors/publishingimages/annual%20report%202016/2016_monsanto_annual_report.pdf">A Limitless Perspective</a>, presents a vista of galaxies worthy of a George Lucas production. The brightest star is an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-12/basf-syngenta-said-among-bidders-for-bayer-monsanto-disposals">A$88 billion merger with German chemical company Bayer</a>, to be finalised this year.</p>
<p>Critics have described this as a “<a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/manufacturing/bayer-monsanto-merger-an-88b-marriage-made-in-hell/news-story/23e17cf89cbf1a98a6c413410a6afd25">marriage made in hell</a>”. They fear the new mega-corporation will impose even more pesticides and genetically modified seeds on the world’s farmers.</p>
<p>Monsanto’s oft-stated aim is to <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/capture-smear-contaminate-the-politics-of-gmos/5459021">“consolidate the entire food chain”</a>. That means a corporatised food regime that concentrates knowledge and power in the hands of a few.</p>
<p>This cedes control of food security to profit-making companies. The democratic governance of food and agriculture policy is under threat.</p>
<h2>The myth of scarcity</h2>
<p>Framing market opportunities as moral imperatives, the agribusiness narrative is to “<a href="https://static.ewg.org/reports/2016/feeding_the_world/EWG_FeedingTheWorld.pdf?_ga=2.136434672.1539845188.1496713081-816214048.1496713081">feed the world</a>”. That’s while making exorbitant profits at the expense of small-scale farmers and consumer health.</p>
<p>The rhetoric of scarcity is hollow; <a href="http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/est/Investment/Agriculture_at_a_Crossroads_Global_Report_IAASTD.pdf">excess production</a> is the problem. The food industry is a major contributor to overproduction, food insecurity and environmental degradation.</p>
<p>This includes the production of up to one-third of <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708">global greenhouse gas emissions</a>, when fertiliser production, food storage, and packaging are included.</p>
<p>Yet “Big Ag” is committed to raising output, intensification of farming, mass processing, mass marketing, homogeneity of product, monocultures, and chemical and pharmaceutical solutions.</p>
<p>The post-truth claim that the powerful US agribusiness lobby uses to justify these practices is that America’s farmers <a href="https://static.ewg.org/reports/2016/feeding_the_world/EWG_FeedingTheWorld.pdf?_ga=2.136434672.1539845188.1496713081-816214048.1496713081">must double grain and meat production</a> to meet the needs of a global population of 9 billion by 2050.</p>
<p>In reality, the surplus, heavily subsidised production of the US grain-livestock complex makes little contribution to ending global hunger and malnutrition. Some <a href="https://static.ewg.org/reports/2016/feeding_the_world/EWG_FeedingTheWorld.pdf?_ga=2.136434%20672.1539845188.1496713081-816214048.1496713081">90% of US exports</a> go to countries where people can afford to buy food.</p>
<h2>The corporate capture of climate change</h2>
<p>Ironically, a new enemy within threatens Big Ag’s market opportunities. </p>
<p>When US President Donald Trump met his election commitments by stepping out of the Paris Agreement on June 2, 2017, he stepped on some big toes. Following Trump’s election, Monsanto and Du Pont had joined more than 360 US-based multinationals in signing a letter to Trump demanding action on climate change: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Implementing the Paris Agreement will enable and encourage businesses and investors to turn the billions of dollars in existing low-carbon investments into the trillions of dollars the world needs to bring clean energy and prosperity to all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The altruism of these motives is questionable, given the profits to be made in the corporate capture of climate change. The low-carbon economy is big business.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.adm.com/en-US/company/Pages/overview.aspx">Archer Daniels Midland</a>, which bills itself as “supermarket to the world”, is investing in carbon capture and sequestration projects with the aim of reducing emissions and storing them underground.</p>
<p>Bayer is <a href="https://www.cropscience.bayer.com/en/crop-compendium/key-crops/oilseeds">developing</a> stress-tolerant oilseeds, maize and wheat varieties that will cope with extreme weather.</p>
<p>Global Swiss agro corp Syngenta’s <a href="http://www4.syngenta.com/what-we-do/the-good-growth-plan">Good Growth Plan</a> assures us the private sector can deliver on “the promise of sustainable and inclusive development” while mitigating the effects of climate change.</p>
<h2>If you tell the same story five times, it’s true …</h2>
<p>Rising global temperatures will bring new varieties of pests and disease, and a new twist on the time-worn post-truth spin that pesticides are the solution to feeding a fast-growing population. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173913/original/file-20170615-21345-7oggf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The
pesticide business is huge, despite the increasingly well-documented evidence of the harm it does.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jz909/1450513463/">jetsandzeppelins/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a report in March this year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/017/85/PDF/G1701785.pdf">publicly dismissed</a> this claim. The report cites evidence that pesticides cause 200,000 deaths a year.</p>
<p>In the report, the UN special rapporteur for the right to food, Hilal Elvar, says global corporations manufacturing pesticides are guilty of “systematic denial of harms” and “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics”.</p>
<p>She condemns lobbying practices that have “obstructed reforms and paralysed pesticide restrictions”. Companies infiltrate federal regulatory agencies via “revolving doors” and “cultivate strategic public-private partnerships that call into question their culpability or help bolster the companies’ credibility”.</p>
<p>This credibility is propped up by networks of academics and regulators recruited as consultants. In accepting corporate funding and signing confidentiality agreements, scientists sacrifice autonomy and are co-opted into disinformation campaigns that support Big Ag agendas, at the cost of their ethics.</p>
<p>For example, when bee scientist James Cresswell presented findings that linked Syngenta pesticides to colony collapse, he was pressured “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/business/scientists-loved-and-loathed-by-syngenta-an-agrochemical-giant.html?_r=1">to consider new data and a different approach</a>” in his industry-sponsored research. The “Faustian bargain” he had made cost him dearly.</p>
<p>Some are brave enough to call out post-truth claims. Angelika Hilbeck found toxins in genetically modified corn killed lacewing bugs as well as pests. Scientists like her are <a href="https://geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/angelika-hilbeck-ecologist-claims-agri-corporations-stalk-claiming-gmos-dangerous/">labelled</a> “ideological researchers” and part of the “extremist organic movement”.</p>
<h2>World views collide</h2>
<p>This frank dismissal of alternative production systems represents a collision between competing frames, stakes and forms of expertise in food and agriculture policy.</p>
<p>Big Ag relies on the myth that large-scale, conventional agriculture generates higher yields and is more efficient than small-scale, family farms. Yet the latter produce <a href="http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/hlpe/hlpe_documents/HLPE_Reports/HLPE-Report-%206_Investing_in_smallholder_agriculture.pdf">more than three-quarters of the world’s food</a>.</p>
<p>Concerns about the lack of sustainability and resilience of industrial farming practices has led to critical questions about the way we produce food. Notably, in 2008 the Internal Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) recognised the need for changes in “<a href="http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/est/Investment/Agriculture_at_a_Crossroads_Global_Report_IAASTD.pdf">paradigms and values</a>” to include alternative, agro-ecological production systems.</p>
<p>A multi-year study involving 44 scientists from more than 60 countries, the IAASTD considers the political conditions that contribute to food insecurity. This includes damaging structural adjustment policies and unfair international trade agreements.</p>
<p>The findings highlight how poverty rates, levels of education, knowledge of nutrition, war and conflict marginalise those most vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition. Importantly, the report emphasises that critical communities, by raising questions of ownership and control of technologies, play a vital role in food systems governance.</p>
<p>These include the global peasant farmers’ movement <a href="https://viacampesina.org/en/index.php">La Via Campesina</a>, which openly rejects climate-smart rhetoric as <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/blog/whats-%20wrong-with-%20climate-smart-%20agriculture/">promotion of an agribusiness agenda</a>.</p>
<p>Promoting the concept of food sovereignty, La Via Campesina denies simplistic linkages between population growth, climate change, conflict, and resource scarcity. We are reminded that technological solutions are not neutral. The <a href="https://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290">2007 Nyeleni Declaration</a> of the Forum for Food Sovereignty asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agricultural systems.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These farmers are the vanguard of resistance to Big Ag’s efforts to further intensify agricultural production at the expense of people and environments.
We have a responsibility to join them in challenging the logic of an industrial food system that is about growth at all costs.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alana Mann is affiliated with the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance.</span></em></p>The global food system has been operating in post-truth mode for decades.Alana Mann, Chair of Department, Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/775632017-05-30T05:01:01Z2017-05-30T05:01:01ZTrump demands a post-post-truth response<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170078/original/file-20170519-12237-1fvde5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We cannot stand outside the fray, but instead must engage in the ‘post-truth’ debates about politics and knowledge.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricricciardi/33093276772/">Richard Ricardi/Flickr </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Is Donald Trump post-truth, post-modern or simply preposterous? What started as an academic contretemps erupted into a media spasm, and escalated into political warfare, has now reached impeachable levels of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trump-could-be-removed-from-office-under-the-us-constitution-77983">high crimes and misdemeanours</a>.</p>
<p>How did we get here? The question of truth first became weaponised in the culture wars of the 2016 US presidential campaign. The Oxford Dictionaries fired the shot heard around the infosphere when it announced its <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016">Word of the Year</a> was “post-truth”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Oxford Dictionaries took pains to distinguish the word from a particular event or assertion (like post-war or truthiness) to better identify the character of an age (like post-national or post-racial). Among all the “posts” mentioned in the lengthy press release, “post-modern” never gets a nod. </p>
<p>Perhaps the editors were sensitive to the <a href="http://sk.sagepub.com/books/consumer-culture-and-postmodernism-2e/n1.xml">definition of post-modern</a> provided by its lesser-known rival, the <a href="https://thepointmag.com/2010/examined-life/the-updated-dictionary-of-received-ideas">(Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This word has no meaning; use it as often as possible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No matter. Where semioticians fear to tread, pundits and academics rushed in, linking post-truth to post-modernists, post-positivists, post-structuralists or any other “postie” who bore the cursed sign of relativism.</p>
<h2>Playing the philosophical blame game</h2>
<p>I witnessed more than a few scholars making these links at the 2017 annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Baltimore. The meeting came just weeks after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-muslim-executive-order-trump.html">Trump’s executive order</a> limiting entry from seven Muslim-majority countries into the US. </p>
<p>Trump’s post-truth directive ignored the alternative facts that the terrorists in the recent rash of attacks had come from countries not on the list; that extensive vetting was already in place; and that an American was a thousand times more likely to be killed by a criminal than a terrorist. </p>
<p>It was no small irony that the protests and debates swirling around Trump helped make this ISA meeting one of the best. Among many noteworthy moments, the distinguished scholar roundtable for <a href="http://politicalscience.jhu.edu/directory/william-connolly/">William E. Connolly</a> did a good demo job on the post-truth/modern mash-up. </p>
<p>Political scientists who live by the causal code were faulted for being overly casual about the means of transmission by which post-modern ideas suddenly came to infect Trump, his fellow travellers and the political habitus. Since Trump does not seem to read continental philosophy – or books in general – Steve Bannon, his éminence grise (who looks greyer as his eminence diminishes), took most of the blame. </p>
<p>But the best evidence dug up by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html?_r=0">paper of record</a> was a 2014 speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in which he lauds Italian proto-fascist Julius Evola. </p>
<p>Since Evola shares with Nietzsche a critique of modernity, this clearly makes Bannon a fellow post-modernist/truthist. No matter that Bannon cites pre-modernist sources like Sun Tzu and the Bible as his texts of choice for the civilisational battle (with fellow holy crusader Vlad Putin) to save “the Judeo-Christian West”. </p>
<p>Connolly et al summarily dismissed the charge of relativism as “untimely” – and silly. </p>
<p>Relativism, Nietzsche’s “<a href="http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html">breath of empty space</a>”, is not some malignant creation of post-truth philosophers or politicians; it presents as a historical condition of diverse origins, beginning with the death of God and other adjudicators and executors of a universal or transcendental truth. This might constitute a repudiation of philosophical realism (based on a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/">correspondence theory of the truth</a>), but Nietzsche did not reject physical realism (based on empirical facts) or political realism (based on contestable judgments). </p>
<p>Indeed, Nietzsche scorned the “<a href="http://www.lexido.com/EBOOK_TEXTS/TWILIGHT_OF_THE_IDOLS_.aspx?S=11">coward before reality</a> … [who] flees into the ideal”. He openly expressed his preference for realists such as Thucydides and Machiavelli over the likes of Plato and Hegel. </p>
<p>Continental philosophers influenced by Nietzsche (Heidegger and Schmitt notwithstanding) were less concerned with the dangers of relativism than with metaphysical truths deemed above and beyond human critique. </p>
<p>One would think, if thinking clearly, that the epistemic as well as political certitudes preceding and engendering two world wars, the Cold War, the global “war on terror” and the war on Islam were more pernicious than the cosmopolitanism, subjectivism and relativism that putatively taint all things post-truth/modern.</p>
<h2>Beware easy post-truth finger-pointing</h2>
<p>The takeaway from the roundtable was that the identification of a historical or social condition should not be confused with endorsement of an epistemological or political doctrine.</p>
<p>Tarring the post-truthist/modernist with the claim “all is permitted” or “there is no truth” makes for a nice sound bite but does violence to a sophisticated argument for subjecting all truth-claims to more rigorous forms of verification. Invoking a transcendental, universal or objective authority to resolve contradicting stories or disputable facts is not sufficient. </p>
<p>Such certainty is ahistorical: the “<a href="http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/">self-evident truths</a>” of America’s founding fathers, based on first principles of natural law and sanctified by heavenly commandments, can, fortunately for humanity, prove to be untrue; otherwise slaves would still be slaves, women would not have the vote, etc. </p>
<p>What is notably missing from the narcissism of Trump and solipsism of his fellow Truthers is any sense of ethical responsibility towards ways of seeing or being in the world that differ from their own. An ethics that begins in response to relativism necessarily entails a mutual recognition – rather than the eradication or assimilation – of difference and otherness. </p>
<p>This kind of ethics cannot be delivered by command from above or by invocation of universal principles; it emerges as a condition of co-existence among those who differ on such matters as the truth. </p>
<p>Other post-truth/modern encounters on ISA panels, at hotel bars and even a few street-side produced new questions. Why were so many scholars, who put a premium on material or structural explanations for global events, now eager to infer such power upon ideas, especially when they emanated from a marginal school of thought like post-modernism?</p>
<p>Why were so many of these same scholars willing to accept “slam-dunk” facts about war crimes and WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq War? To form unholy alliances in support of invasions that spawned many second- and third-order global crises, including the rise of ISIS and the nationalist fevers that fanned Trump’s victory? </p>
<p>If, as the exculpatory refrain goes, they only knew then what they know now. But a purblind adherence to rationalism and positive evidence that excludes affective or cognitive preferences keeps us from knowing the truth, both then and now. </p>
<p>How much history is needed, from Vietnam to Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Iraq War, to show that “fake news”, “alternative facts” and “post-truths” weren’t born of continental philosophy? That disproving a lie is no substitute for creating a counter-narrative? That more than sweet reason is needed to unmask false consciousness? </p>
<p>By the end of the ISA meeting, a kind of déjà vu had set in: had we not witnessed this conflation before, of diagnosis and disease? Where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation">Baudrillard’s precession of simulation</a> was deemed responsible for the Gulf War; <a href="https://revisesociology.com/2016/09/21/foucault-surveillance-crime-control/">Foucault’s critical regard of surveillance</a> for the rise of Big Brother; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time%E2%80%93space_compression">Virilio’s elevation of pace over space</a> for the erosion of the sovereign state; and <a href="http://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.html">Derrida’s insistence that nothing exists outside the text</a> for everything else – except Nazism, which was Nietzsche’s fault.</p>
<h2>A duty to re-enter the fray</h2>
<p>Et voilà, it came to me on the long flight back to Australia. Post-truthists/modernists must re-enter the political fray, not only because they are best equipped to counter the simulations, surveillance, speed and signs of Trump and his followers. </p>
<p>We need to embrace rather than run from the “post-truth” debate because ideas, discourses and methods might not define the truth but they do matter in politics. </p>
<p>We need to challenge the political science “quants” whose polls got it so wrong, giving Bernie Sanders supporters and other independents the excuse to maintain political purity by not voting.</p>
<p>We need to challenge the neoliberals whose promotion of the idea of globalisation helped produce the economic inequalities and cultural resentments that “primed the pump”, as Trump would say, for his victory. </p>
<p>Most importantly, we must repudiate the petty narcissism of attacking those closest on the political as well as epistemic spectrum, and form a real popular front against the faux populism of Trump and the neofundamentalism of Mike Pence that is likely to follow Trump’s fall from power.</p>
<p>We must, in other words, become post-post-truth. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article draws on the author’s opening comments from the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/ciss/global_forum/index.shtml">Global Forum on Peace and Security under Uncertainty</a>, which is sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. A short video about the global forum is available on the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/ciss/">Centre for International Security Studies (CISS) website</a> and below. Full panel recordings will be available on the <a href="https://projectqsydney.com/">Project Q website</a>.</em></p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/219448613" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The CISS Global Forum: Peace and Security Under Uncertainty.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Der Derian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pundits have been keen to link post-truth to post-modernists, post-positivists or any other ‘postie’. They should turn their energy to forming a real popular front against Trump’s faux populism.James Der Derian, Michael Hintze Chair of International Security, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770002017-05-15T03:46:05Z2017-05-15T03:46:05ZNavigating the post-truth debate: some key co-ordinates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168940/original/file-20170511-32620-1kjf1yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Public anxiety about the post-truth era inspired a New York Times advertising campaign.
</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the first in a series from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em></p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em> </p>
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<p>Lies, bullshit, propaganda and conspiracy theories show no signs of going away soon, yet post-truth discourse may be one of the most pressing problems of our time. Humans have the capacity to wield unprecedented forms of power, not just over other people, as in acts of law and war, but over other forms of life, and ultimately over the environment that affords our own stability and survival.</p>
<p>If we want to make good decisions, those decisions had better be based on reality, and not on delusion, fantasy, or falsehood. Weakening the link between evidence and decisions not only threatens the quality of policymaking, it threatens the entire enterprise of scientific research, whose business is to find out the facts such that we may make well-informed decisions.</p>
<p>What exactly is post-truth discourse? How and why is it happening? And what can or should we do about it? </p>
<p>Beneath simple labels like post-truth, alternative facts and fake news, there is a complex set of issues. Any debate about the post-truth problem needs some common co-ordinates. Following are seven key reference points.</p>
<h2>1. When we talk about facts, we are talking about statements</h2>
<p>A fact is something that can be communicated in the form of a statement, where that statement happens to be true. Before you raise deep philosophical questions of what is truth, just think of everyday cases that present little challenge to our intuitions. </p>
<p>Suppose you reach for a bottle of water to quench your thirst, and I warn you: “That’s vodka!” It should not be hard to find out if my statement is true: just sip it and see. Many other statements are straightforward in this way: for example, My house is number 9 on my street; I have two thumbs; ice melts in the summer sun. </p>
<p>Not all claims to fact are easy to verify (like whether a certain foreign leader possesses weapons of mass destruction), and some are probably impossible (like whether ours is the only planet with intelligent life). And facts must be distinguished from opinions, the truth of which cannot be settled independently (like whether chocolate tastes better than vanilla).</p>
<p>But when we talk about facts, we are talking about the statements that describe or assert those facts, and not always the facts themselves. This means that a lot of the time, when people talk about truth, they are focusing on the statements people have made, and not on the facts those statements might describe.</p>
<h2>2. Statements are socially constructed</h2>
<p>Because we access facts through statements, which are acts of communication, facts are effectively always social in nature. Many scholars say facts are socially constructed. This is true in three ways.</p>
<p>First, facts are always presented in a particular frame. A statement of fact will always come from a person who has chosen to make just this statement and not other statements, and who has chosen to use certain words, and not others, to do it. </p>
<p>Intentionally or not, a person will always emphasise certain things and leave other things in the background. In addition, the language used – whether it is English, Arabic or Zulu – is itself a socially and historically constructed system, with its own in-built patterns of framing and emphasis.</p>
<p>Second, facts are never discovered or described in a cultural or political vacuum. Statements of fact are always a product of their context and time, and of the interests and perspectives of particular people.</p>
<p>Third, there is a specific class of facts that are only true because of human beliefs. An example is “That car belongs to me”. This statement of ownership is true only in terms of certain social rights and duties that are created by social institutions. </p>
<p>If I own the car, then, for example, I have the right to decide who can drive it and when, and the duty to pay the fine if caught by a traffic camera.</p>
<p>Many people agree that facts can be socially constructed in at least these ways. But it is important to note that none of these senses threaten the idea that there is a brute reality beyond our statements. No matter how I construct or frame the statement, no matter the language used, or the context of use, ice will melt in the summer sun.</p>
<h2>3. Our beliefs are strong but unreliable</h2>
<p>For a statement to be a fact it has to be true. Believing that it is true does not make it so. Yet we tend to show great confidence in our beliefs – both when these are based in our first-hand experience, and when these are based on what others say, as long as we trust or identify with those others. But even our most confident beliefs may not correspond with reality.</p>
<p>The fallibility of human memory is especially disturbing, as psychologist <a href="http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/loftus/">Elizabeth Loftus</a> and <a href="https://sydney.edu.au/science/psychology/lab/notguilty/?page_id=22">many others</a> have long shown.</p>
<p>The ways in which we talk about experiences after the fact – for example, during police interviews following a crime – can result in inaccurate or false memories. Whether by accident or intention, the mere suggestion that a particular event might have happened can result in a person firmly believing that it is true.</p>
<p>Another common source of false beliefs comes from our flawed human patterns of reasoning. Human cognition is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias">not a paragon of cool reason</a>. For example, a confirmation bias in human reasoning leads us to readily accept evidence that supports our beliefs, and yet reject or ignore equally good evidence that goes against it. Many other biases can lead us to embrace beliefs that are false, and thus in turn to make false statements.</p>
<h2>4. Not all untruths are lies</h2>
<p>Telling the truth is usually a simple matter. We have a belief, then we use words to convey that belief to someone else: for example, it’s vodka in the bottle, not water. </p>
<p>If our belief is true (it really is vodka), then our statement is true. If our belief is mistaken (it’s actually just water), then we are saying something that is false, but this is not the same as lying or bullshitting.</p>
<p>The liar intentionally misleads others by saying something they know is false. The bullshitter says things without knowing or caring <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit">whether they are true or false</a>. The method of psychological bullying known as <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/10/opinions/donald-trump-is-gaslighting-america-ghitis/">gaslighting</a> uses lying and bullshitting to <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/podcast-post-truth-unfinished-communications-revolution/">disturb others’ grip on reality</a>.</p>
<p>These distinctions show people can make false statements for a range of reasons. The status of any such statement depends on the intentions of the speaker. Do they make the statement in good faith? Do they intend to deceive? Or do they simply not care?</p>
<h2>5. Just stating a fact won’t make people believe it</h2>
<p>Whatever your motivation, if you want people to accept a statement, then it is not enough that your statements be true. Politicians and PR merchants have long known that what we need is narrative.</p>
<p>The human mind is <a href="http://jonathangottschall.com/storytelling-animal">predisposed to be drawn into stories</a>, and so a message that is clothed in a narrative arc, with a sympathetic protagonist and the tension of action, is more likely to persuade. </p>
<p>While scientists are trained to state the facts, many people observe with dismay the seeming hopelessness of bare statements in the face of compelling stories. </p>
<p>As a result, scientists are cottoning on to the fact that a statement is nothing <a href="https://theconversation.com/alan-alda-on-the-art-of-science-communication-i-want-to-tell-you-a-story-55769">without a story to drive it</a>. The truth is, facts do not speak for themselves.</p>
<h2>6. Statements are reasons</h2>
<p>Regardless of whether the speaker is a liar or a bullshitter, a yarn-spinner or simply mistaken, a false statement is a dangerous one. This is because it can then stand as a reason for further actions and statements.</p>
<p>One of the main reasons we make statements at all is to motivate or justify our decisions and actions.</p>
<p>When I say “It’s nearly midnight”, I am not just stating a fact, I am supplying a reason for action. When I warn you “That’s vodka!”, I’m not just saying it, I’m giving you a reason not to take a big swig. </p>
<p>Or when the Bush administration stated in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they were not just asserting a state of affairs, they were giving a reason why they should invade Iraq. It did stand as a reason, even though later the statement turned out to be false, as many people expected it would be.</p>
<p>By accepting or endorsing a statement, we effectively accept or endorse its consequences. So it is not surprising that the primary goal of making a statement is <a href="https://www.edge.org/conversation/hugo_mercier-the-argumentative-%20theory">to get people to accept it</a>, and not necessarily to establish that it is true. </p>
<p>In some settings – for example, in an idealised form of scientific discourse — the way to get people to accept a statement is precisely that: to establish that it is true. But truth is just one possible criterion for accepting statements and their consequences.</p>
<p>Other criteria follow people’s cognitive biases and cultural or personal preferences, play on their emotions, or appeal to their identity politics. These are some of the ways in which “alternative facts” are given currency in public discourse today.</p>
<p>When facts are at issue, the stakes are really about what would follow from people accepting a certain statement. This is why we have to take claims to fact seriously; not because truth should be protected in principle, but because we must live with what would follow from treating a statement as valid. </p>
<p>The battle over whether climate change is real is not ultimately about the truth of any given statement. It is a battle over what, if anything, is to be done.</p>
<h2>7. Political power can always interfere</h2>
<p>Giving reasons for action can become mere ritual if you happen to have the political power that allows you to do what you want anyway. The most extreme, brazen forms of political power do not bother with giving reasons at all. </p>
<p>But these extreme forms work by means of violence, and violence is based in hard facts. Bullets, shackles and prison walls do their work without any interest in your ideology or beliefs, guilt or innocence.</p>
<p>Political power can be used to suppress or outlaw statements of fact, to remove them from public discourse, and thus to remove their possible consequences from society. Political power can even render certain kinds of facts untrue. Social facts like ownership and membership are based in rights and duties, and can be revoked by those who control social institutions. </p>
<p>But there are limits to what political power can do. As much as we might wish it were possible, suppressing statements of brute fact – that ice melts in the summer sun, for instance – will never stop them from being true.</p>
<h2>The quest for answers</h2>
<p>The debate about rational discourse continues. </p>
<p>Is the problem new or old? Can we solve it, or are we doomed to grapple with falsity at every turn? Is the problem transformed by the scale of today’s communications? Is the solution a political one or a cultural one?</p>
<p>There is much to learn, and much to talk about, but meanwhile my hunch remains: facts will kill us before we kill them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77000/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Enfield receives research funding from the University of Sydney.</span></em></p>Beneath simple labels like post-truth, alternative facts and fake news is a complex set of issues. Any debate about the problems needs to start from some common points of reference.Nick Enfield, Professor and Chair of Linguistics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.