Skeptic March 2020

ARTICLE

40 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 25 number 1 2020

Some people deny facts and truth. Others deny that

facts and truth are in any danger. Both are wrong.

In his recent essay^1 titled “Why We Are Not Living

in a Post-Truth Era” (Skeptic,Vol. 24, No. 3),

Steven Pinker argues not only that we are not living

in a post-truth era, but that the very idea of post-

truth is something of a contradiction in terms. He

begins with a glib argument borrowed from a

philosopher’s response to relativism:

Consider the statement “We are living in a post-

truth era.” Is it true? If so, it cannot be true.

That is, to say we are living in a post-truth era is it-

self to make a truth claim...which demonstrates

that truth must matter after all.

But who said that it didn’t?^2 The idea of post-

truth has often been misunderstood, by Pinker and

others,^3 to reduce to one of several straw men:

(1) that truth doesn’t matter,

(2) that no one really cares about truth

anymore,

(3) that no one can find the truth,

(4) and that if we were actually living in

a post-truth era, we should just give up.

Instead, the claim that we live in a post-truth

era is properly based on the idea that truth today is

under threat. Our society has an infection that

needs to be treated, even if it is not quite yet life-

threatening. Isn’t it therefore possible that claims 1-

4 above are false, yet we should still take the idea of

post-truth seriously?

We live in a time when far too many people—

especially those in positions of power—lie about or

ignore reality, and seem to pay no political price for

it. In my book Post-Truth(MIT Press, 2018), I define

post-truth as the “political subordination of reality.” It

is a tactic in the authoritarian toolbox, whereby dis-

information is used not simply to convince someone

that a falsehood is true, but to so overwhelm the in-

formation stream with fakery that it can cause the

citizenry to give up on the idea of facts and truth all

together. As Jason Stanley points out in his outstand-

ing book How Propaganda Works, propaganda is not

meant to convince you, but to show you who’s boss.

A true authoritarian does not need your cognitive

consent. Instead, their message is: “I am so powerful

Why We Are Living

in a Post-Truth Era

B Y L E E M C I N T Y R E

Illustration by Izhar Cohen