Fake news

By Deauwand Myers

Fake news was used thousands of years ago for propaganda, fear-mongering, populism, and political opportunism. It's nothing new.

James Madison, the fourth president of America, and by any objective measure a political intellectual, was keen on a voting public who could critically think about issues of the day in a rational fashion, given said public had ready access to quality information and dispassionate facts.

Like many luminaries of his time, Madison greatly valued an informed and educated citizenry. In "Federalist 63," he wrote, "A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance...people...must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

During the early years of the American Republic, fake news flourished. In 1800, so rife was the press (the political press in particular) with disinformation, heresay, and outright libel, that Thomas Jefferson commented (in the usual flowery and overdramatic parlance of the day), "I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & the mendacious spirit of those who write for them."

Yes, both Madison and Jefferson were owners of the enslaved, and at least with Jefferson, a pedophilic rapist to boot. Ironically, particularly with Jefferson, they both felt slavery was an evil and should be abolished at some point.

Many things can be true at once, especially about people. Madison and Jefferson were both intelligent and, at least in their theories, deeply moral. Theoretical morality and high intelligence will never extricate them from the indelible practice of enslaving other human beings for profit.

Yet, the sociopolitical wisdom and vigor of both men point to a truth today's American Republicans and conservatives won't admit: the increasingly powerful echo chamber of the right-wing media environment is toxic, fascist, racist, and very much anathema to the original intent the Founders of American democracy envisioned in a free press.

This echo chamber has increasingly become more divorced from reality, and the far-right, statistically, is much more susceptible to fake news than any other voting bloc. All of this is exceedingly corrosive to a free, fair, and thriving democracy.

The burst of fake news in recent years via POPS (privately owned public spaces) has re-shaped not only American politics but caused political strife and mass murder in some African countries and Cambodia (Myanmar), for example. Freedom movements, like the "Arab Spring" in such countries as Egypt, were also aided by social media. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring and movements following it were brutally crushed by political leaders in places like Egypt and later, Turkey.

There are several reasons fake news, particularly on the right, is so effective in driving public sentiment ― at least on the right. Conservatives, in poll after poll, (as researched by scholars of fake news, "agnotologists,") dislike facts that don't align with their political ideology. They are not, by and large, information agnostics. Facts don't lead them to new conclusions. Instead, they find, what Kellyanne Conway (former chief advisor to former President Trump) so infamously said, "alternative facts," simply lies that fit their point of view.

This is why QAnon (please never look this up, but basically a massive online group of conspiracy theorists who believe in things so outlandish I will not write them here), and birtherism (that Obama was a Manchurian candidate, born in Africa, and a secret, America-hating Muslim) get so much traction on the far right. Hyper-wealthy Jewish people control the world inside an international cabal; there's a great international conspiracy to eliminate white people throughout North America and Europe (the so-called "Great Replacement"); Trump won the 2020 election; I think you get the point.

This is laughable, until it turns deadly, as it did in the failed coup of ethno-fascists and white supremacists supporting and believing Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen from him on January 6th, 2021. President Obama received more death threats in office than any other president in American history.

Of course, a lot of this is just plain old white supremacy and xenophobia, fair enough. But regardless, the lack of trust by nearly half of American society in facts and data and science has real world implications insofar as public policy, like women's reproductive rights, fighting climate change, or ameliorating poverty. As written in George Tyler's "Billionaire Democracy," Trump and too many conservatives writ large utilize "tactics used...by the tobacco industry anxious to obfuscate that tobacco use causes cancer: All facts are preliminary; studies are merely anecdotal or statistical manipulations; experts disagreed ... it's unsettled science."

Sound familiar? For some reason, wealthy democracies, especially, but not exclusively like America, are going through this inflection point where facts are not immutable or objective. This is why so many prominent, conservative public figures have died from COVID-19. No wonder aliens never visit Earth.

Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.