Accepting post-truth world is accepting blatant deception

Post-truth politics is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.– Wikipedia

I am aghast, revolted, massively pissed off at the spread of this odious concept, this acceptance of deception and bald-faced lying, this whole idea of a post-truth world. And for first time in a long time, I can’t choose how to approach the story about it.

So I will go for the simple route. Throughout the US presidential campaign, right from the party primaries, I noticed the rise in the frequency with which the term “post truth” was being used in the reporting, mainly in reference to Donald Trump’s regular and deep forays into the land of falsehood.

In one talk show on Citizen TV, I also heard Prof Edward Kisiangani use it in his analysis. That’s when I realised it had entered local, common discourse. As a linguist, I know that one way to disarm a dangerous idea is to give it a non-threatening euphemism. But the coin did not fully drop until I read the Rand Corporation’s “Russian Firehose of Falsehood Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It”, a widely circulated paper properly analysing how Russia used fake news to influence the US election. That is when I realised that this was not a harmless bit of Orwellian fibbing, this was a whole new world.

The dictionary would define the post-truth era as an age when objective facts are less influential than appeals to emotion and personal belief in shaping public opinion. It’s the age of lies, the biggest of which was that Trump was a champion of the working man, that is until he formed a Cabinet of filthy rich, old, post-senile (ha!) white men. The Republicans told Americans that ISIS was started by Barack Obama. Some believed them based not on facts, but their personal dislike for Mr Obama.

EMERGING CULTURE

I know how devastatingly vulnerable our society is to this emerging culture of untruth and incitement. I have been watching with some concern the rising number of Kenyans who say that they get their “news” from social media. I presume that news is a general category which encompasses fake news.

My question is, what you get from social media, is it news based on objective fact, or is it fake news, an appeal to your emotions and prejudices? Not to say that fake news is the preserve of social media; it is to be found everywhere but perhaps not with the same preponderance. We need to make a distinction between fake news and inaccurate news; fake news is created for the purpose of deception, there is a cynical motive to it. Inaccurate news is in many cases a question of honest error. The fake news industry in Kenya – the large group of people dedicated to generating false information with the intention of deceiving the public, destroying the reputations of public figures, blackmailing regulators, undermining rivals and revenge activities – is massive. And it is supported by a frightened business and political elite who pour millions of shillings into it every month. Politicians have hired huge armies of fake news operatives to protect themselves from them and to run disinformation campaigns against rivals.

ILLEGAL EXTENSION

Well-heeled lawyers have in their pay these fake news artists whom they use as an illegal extension of trial strategy. So if a wealthy company has a legal problem, these armies of liars are unleashed to terrify the person causing that problem in the hope that they can be softened or otherwise have their reputation destroyed. Now, commentators exercising conscience, even when they tell society uncomfortable or unpleasant truth, deserve every protection. Journalists who make honest mistakes in the pursuit of rule-based and well-intentioned stories deserved every protection. Fake news practitioners deserve no such protection at all: they are paid to publish what they know to be untrue to achieve ends that they know to be unfair, illegal or both.

The last election was about Mutahi Ngunyi’s tyranny of numbers. This one will be about the tyranny of fake news. Unless we take pre-emptive measures, politicians will be vanquished, the mighty will fall and our society could be crushed by the purveyors of falsehood. Remember how we squeeze/push in a crowded matatu to make room for another passenger? We have squeezed for the devil who has taken his seat. We should have had the courage never to leave the age of truth.

I think we must refuse to be intimidated, call the devil by his name and cut off his head. A willingness to believe everything you read on your phone is stupid beyond imagination. A man who made a name for himself by putting the private parts he claimed to be of society figures on the Internet now presents himself as the conscience of society. Does that process? You can live in the post-truth age if you want; I shall fight my way back to the light.

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