Post-Truth:The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back

Our Review

It isn’t very often that I chose to read non-fiction books but Post-Truth grabbed my attention. If the results of Brexit and the American Election left you shocked and dismayed then this is the ideal book for you.

Matthew d’Ancona is an award winning political columnist and that shows in his humorous and in-depth analysis of modern politics.

“Welcome to the Post-Truth era – a time in which the art of the lie is shaking the very foundations of democracy.”

In Post-Truth Matthew d’Ancona talks about his surprise when Trump won the American election and the lack of surprise his two teenage sons had felt when they learnt the result. It got him thinking about why this was and this book is a result of that.

“Inescapably, Trump stalks the pages of this book like an orange panther. But he is not its prime subject. Nor is this a book about the Far Right, or any particular ideology. It is quite straight forward to imagine a Left-Wing counterpart to Trump surging into power on a wave of falsehood and phony populism. The problem lies deeper.”

In Post-Truth, he discusses why truth telling the truth is losing importance in modern politics and what is behind the talk of ‘Fake News’ and ‘Post-Truth.’

“As we shall see, the pressures bearing down upon truth today are more complex, dispersed and insidious. But they are also more unsettling precisely because they do not emanate from an identifiable Big Brother or Goebbels or Izvestia. There is no single statue to bring crashing to the ground.

This is another reason why it is so important to see Trump as a consequence rather than cause.”

According to d’Ancona 2016 was the year of post-truth. Post-truth society is defined by “political and intellectual combat, in which democratic orthodoxies and institutions are being shaken to their foundations by a wave of ugly populism.

Rationality is threatened by emotion, diversity by nativism, liberty by a drift towards autocracy. More than ever, the practice of politics is perceived as a zero-sum gamer rather than a contest between ideas. Science is treated with suspicion and, sometimes, open contempt.”

He discusses the ways in which the internet has had the less than desirable effect of making it easier for lies and rumours to be classed as facts and for people’s emotions and personal beliefs to take precedence over the truth.

In Post-Truth d’Ancona discusses this phenomenon and what we can do to combat the flow of Post-Truth and Fake News.

Our Final Rating...

Sun, 11th June 2017