Post Truth

 Introduction:-🧐

It was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is 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".

What ?:-🤓

Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for "the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth" and the "circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth". Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry.

When?:-😳

Post truth was used by philosopher Joseph Heath to describe the 2014 Ontario election. The term became widespread during the campaigns for the 2016 presidential election in the United States and for the 2016 "Brexit" referendum on membership in the European Union in the United Kingdom.

Post truth video :-👀

A Brief History of post-truth:-🙄

Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that ‘we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world’. There is evidence of the phrase ‘post-truth’ being used before Tesich’s article, but apparently with the transparent meaning ‘after the truth was known’, and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.

Word of the year 2016:-😉

Oxford Dictionaries has deWord of the year 2016 Oxforddictionariesclared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months. It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Post-truth politics:-😲

political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of facts by relegating facts and expert opinions to be of secondary importance relative to appeal to emotion. While this has been described as a contemporary problem, some observers have described it as a long-standing part of political life that was less notable before the advent of the Internet and related social changes.

Art of the lie:-🤭

Politicians have always lied. Does it matter if they leave the truth behind entirely?

Mr Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics—a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power. And he is not alone. Members of Poland’s government assert that a previous president, who died in a plane crash, was assassinated by Russia. Turkish politicians claim the perpetrators of the recent bungled coup were acting on orders issued by the CIA. The successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union warned of the hordes of immigrants that would result from Turkey’s imminent accession to the union.If, like this newspaper, you believe that politics should be based on evidence, this is worrying. Strong democracies can draw on inbuilt defences against post-truth. Authoritarian countries are more vulnerable.

If, like this newspaper, you believe that politics should be based on evidence, this is worrying. Strong democracies can draw on inbuilt defences against post-truth. Authoritarian countries are more vulnerable.

Lord of the lies:-😤

That politicians sometimes peddle lies is not news: think of Ronald Reagan’s fib that his administration had not traded weapons with Iran in order to secure the release of hostages and to fund the efforts of rebels in Nicaragua. Dictators and democrats seeking to deflect blame for their own incompetence have always manipulated the truth; sore losers have always accused the other lot of lying.

But post-truth politics is more than just an invention of whingeing elites who have been outflanked. The term picks out the heart of what is new: that truth is not falsified, or contested, but of secondary importance. Once, the purpose of political lying was to create a false view of the world. The lies of men like Mr Trump do not work like that. They are not intended to convince the elites, whom their target voters neither trust nor like, but to reinforce prejudices.

Pro-Truthers stand and be counted:-😒

The truth has powerful forces on its side. Any politician who makes contradictory promises to different audiences will soon be exposed on Facebook or YouTube. If an official lies about attending a particular meeting or seeking a campaign donation, a trail of e-mails may catch him out.

Mr Trump loses in November, post-truth will seem less menacing, though he has been too successful for it to go away. The deeper worry is for countries like Russia and Turkey, where autocrats use the techniques of post-truth to silence opponents. Cast adrift on an ocean of lies, the people there will have nothing to cling to. For them the novelty of post-truth may lead back to old-fashioned oppression.

Post -Truth philosophy:-😱

We live with truth all around us and yet some people readily embrace lies. Everywhere you turn among the academics and pundits, we constantly are fed a stream of rhetoric about how we live in a “post-truth” world. Somehow, as the narrative goes, we have given up on the notion that words can mirror reality.

There is a term used in propositional logic called “truth value.” I think this term is important because it points to the root of what’s wrong today in our discourse, whether it’s a “debate” among pundits on a cable show, arguments with online outrage warriors or a spirited convers ation with relatives. When we have an opinion about a particular topic, we try to bolster that opinion with what we believe are facts. Once we point to these facts, we like to think that our opinion is somehow elevated to being correct. Without verifying those facts underpinning our viewpoint, one can find themselves defending a defenseless position.

This is more dangerous than if people simply expressed the beliefs that underly what they say. Thought soldiers will take up the banner of prejudice, pseudo-science, authoritarianism or worse, and still think they are right, while sharing with others specific terminology and turns of phrase that papers over what is really meant; instead, they believe they stand up for tolerance (think of so many people that say they desire that Nazis have “free speech”, but rarely, if ever, speak out in defense of the speech of the worst off), the best available scientific theories (flat-eartherism, anti-GMO or anti-global warming propaganda), and global justice (the talking-points about the internment of children being, for example, legitimated by the Bible). They’ll feel comfortable fighting for reactionary or unsupported values because every piece of rhetoric (rather than evidence) they encountered emotionally supported how they felt, not what they actually know. Furthermore, people that have failed to understand the disconnect between their underlying beliefs and the slogans they share will, naturally, unite with others who never cared about truth, people who were more geared towards winning an argument at all costs using whatever information (good or bad) that would win over the most converts

Truth does still matter, but for some, it remains only an idol. The argumentative value of that idol is priceless for those peddling propaganda. And sometimes, especially today, a person convinced that a lie is actually true can be more effective than the person selling the lie

Examples of post truth:-🤔

(1) Post truth in social media :-🤗

Due to the developments in information technologies in the last 20 years, social media is frequently used especially for mobile devices for news announcement and follow-up. This has led to a large increase in the number of information produced, too. Considering information/news sharing pages on social media around the world and sharing/posting too much information or news, there are many news sources that need to be verified after accessed. There is no accuracy filtering process in the dissemination of information on social media and therefore, unverifiable news can affect the masses in a very short time. Nowadays, it is important that users check the reality of such information in social media. In this study, it is tried to investigate how the post-truth concept which the Oxford Dictionary has chosen as the word of the year in 2016 in social media. By using keywords such as "post-truth", "fake/false news", "access to accurate information" and "the diffusion of social media use" in the literature of "Information and Records Management", "Management Information Systems" and "Media and Communication" in international databases and journals; content analysis was performed. At the end of the study, the implications of the institutions that developed various strategies to avoid such news and information were included.

(2) post truth connected with Narendra Modi politics:- 🤐

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at a rally at Latur in Maharashtra on April 9, dragging the Indian Army once again into the BJP's campaign for votes, certainly exploited the people's trust. Modi said ," I want to ask the first -time Voter,can your vote be dedicated to those soldiers who conducted the air strike on Balakot in Pakistan? Can your first vote be dedicated to those soldiers who were killed in Pulwama attack?"

Modi's Latur speech heralds the advent of post- truth politics in our country. Nobel laureate Harold Pinter once said that majority of politicians are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that Power. To maintain that Power, they consider it is essential that people remain in ignorance."what surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed,"Pinter said in his Nobel lecture at the swedish Academy , Stockholm, on December 7, 2005.

In post -Truth politics,facts and evidence do not matter. The demagogue employs language to keep thoughts at bay, tapping into the fragile but essential compact based on trust between the government  and the citizens . But , if trust goes, where does it lead us ? 

 No, doubt , Modi stopped low, for trust is essential in democracy. In our revolutionary age of communicative abundance ,at Some  point , the citizens will get to know that in the first instance Pulwama should not have happened , so that Balakot would not have become necessary. Put  differently , if Pulwama had been prevented , there would have been no martyrs, and no Balakot .

Conclusion:-🤫

Post- truth is not simply the opposite of truth. It has hybrid , recombinant qualities that mix in different ways and confuse it's recipients- a bricolage of old -fashioned lying , clever quips, boasting and wilful exaggerations. In has a sinister effect: it disorients and destabilised people , destroying their capacity to make judgement and turns them into playthings of power. That is why post-truth is regarded as the harbinger of a new totalitarianism.

🤨Thank you ,

🤗Dilip Barad sir

Words:-1907🤓