History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis [1 ed.] 0367333244, 9780367333249

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History in a Post-­Truth World

History in a Post-­ Truth World: Theory and Praxis explores one of the most significant paradigm shifts in public discourse. A  post-­truth environment that appeals primarily to emotion, elevates personal belief, and devalues expert opinion has important implications far beyond Brexit or the election of Donald Trump and has a profound impact on how history is produced and consumed. Post-­truth history is not merely a synonym for lies. This book argues that indifference to historicity by both the purveyor and the recipient, contempt for expert opinion that contradicts it, and ideological motivation are its key characteristics. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this work explores some of the following questions: What exactly is post-­truth history? Does it represent a new phenomenon? Does the historian have a special role to play in preserving public memory from ‘alternative facts’? Do academics more generally have an obligation to combat fake news and fake history both in universities and on social media? How has a ‘post-­truth culture’ impacted professional and popular historical discourse? Looking at theoretical dimensions and case studies from around the world, this book explores the violent potential of post-­truth history and calls on readers to resist. Marius Gudonis is a PhD candidate at Collegium Civitas University, Poland. Benjamin T. Jones is a lecturer in history at Central Queensland University and a foundation fellow of the Australian Studies Institute.

Routledge Approaches to History

The Aesthetics of History Alun Munslow Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History Edited by Silvia Cavicchioli and Luigi Provero The Enlightenment and the Fate of Knowledge Martin L. Davies Information and Power in History: Towards a Global Approach Edited by Ida Nijenhuis, Marijke van Faassen, Ronald Sluijter, Joris Gijsenbergh and Wim de Jong In Praise of Historical Anthropology Perspectives, Methods, and Applications to the Study of Power and Colonialism Alexandre Coello de la Rosa and Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste Far-­Right Revisionism and the End of History Alt/Histories Edited by Louie Dean Valencia-­García Africa, Empire and World Disorder Selected Essays A.G. Hopkins History in a Post-­Truth World Theory and Praxis Edited by Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-­Approaches-­to-­History/book-­series/RSHISTHRY

History in a Post-­Truth World Theory and Praxis Edited by Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Foreword by Henry Rousso

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Gudonis, Marius, 1974– editor, author. | Jones, Benjamin T., 1982– editor, author. Title: History in a post-truth world : theory and praxis / edited by Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones. Description: First edition. | New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge approaches to history ; 39 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020020461 (print) | LCCN 2020020462 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367333249 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429319204 (ebook) | ISBN 9781000198201 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781000198218 (mobi) | ISBN 9781000198225 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Historiography—History—21st century. | Historiography—Philosophy. | History—Study and teaching. Classification: LCC D16.8 .H62526 2021 (print) | LCC D16.8 (ebook) | DDC 907.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020461 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020462 ISBN: 978-­0-­367-­33324-­9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­0-­429-­31920-­4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to the countless millions who have suffered discrimination, violence, and death because the embers of hatred were stoked by historical disinformation.

First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. – Martin Niemöller Lutheran pastor, Dachau prisoner, and opponent of Nazi terror

Contents

List of Figuresx List of Tablesxi Forewordxii HENRY ROUSSO

Acknowledgementsxvi   1 Who Controls the Past?

1

MARIUS GUDONIS AND BENJAMIN T. JONES

PART 1

What Is Post-­Truth? Theoretical Considerations31   2 Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust and Critical Source Assessment

33

JĘDRZEJ CZEREP

  3 Post-­Truth and Consequences

47

ADAM CHMIELEWSKI

  4 The Post-­Truth Condition and Social Distribution of Knowledge: On Some Dilemmas with Post-­Truth Uses

66

RAFAŁ PAWEŁ WIERZCHOSŁAWSKI

PART 2

Case Studies of Post-­Truth85   5 Pinkersonian Post-­Truth: History, Ideology, and Postmodernism ADRIAN WESOŁOWSKI

87

viii  Contents   6 Denying the Stolen Generations: What Happens to Indigenous History in a Post-­Truth World?

103

BENJAMIN T. JONES

  7 The Oldest Post-­Truth? The Rise of Antisemitism in the United States and Beyond

121

GERALD J. STEINACHER

  8 Post-­Truth and the Construction of Representations of the Past: The Theory of the Two Demons and the Case of Argentina

142

DANIEL FEIERSTEIN

  9 The Post-­Truth Environment: Indian Politics and History Education

159

BASABI KHAN BANERJEE AND GEORG STÖBER

10 Business as Usual: Feminist History in a Post-­Truth World

183

ALANA PIPER AND ANA STEVENSON

11 ‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’: Myths About Moriori and Denials of Indigeneity in New Zealand

199

ANDRÉ BRETT

PART 3

The Truth About “Post-­Truth”: Evaluation and Response219 12 Trump, Fascism, and Historians in the Post-­Truth Era

221

BEN MERCER

13 Decolonising Historiography in South Africa: Reflecting on ‘Post-­Truth’ Relevance 25 Years Since Mandela

235

JUNE BAM-­H UTCHISON

14 Museums as Critical Spaces for Alterity in a Post-­Truth World

251

ANDREA GALLARDO OCAMPO AND MIGUEL A. HÍJAR-­C HIAPA

15 Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth: How Do Genocide Scholars Respond to Denial? MARIUS GUDONIS

266

Contents ix 16 Essence of Post-­Truth History and Ways to Respond

290

MARIUS GUDONIS AND BENJAMIN T. JONES

List of Contributors308 Index311

Figures

1.1 1.2 9.1 14.1

14.2

14.3

16.1 16.2

Plaque commemorating K.L. Warschau, Warsaw. 10 Meme depicting ‘white Irish slaves’. 12 Structure of Indian School Education. 165 Original boxcar used to transport Jews and other Holocaust victims during World War II at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico City, Mexico. Courtesy of Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. 255 Welcome artwork of the temporary exhibition Feminicidios en México: ¡Ya Basta! at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico City, Mexico (January– August 2017). Courtesy of Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. 260 Cartography of Feminicide at the temporary exhibition Feminicidios en México: ¡Ya Basta! at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico City, Mexico (January– August 2017).261 Donald Trump meme denigrating Republicans. 294 Menachem Begin meme promoting Jewish racial supremacism.295

Tables

15.1 Basic information about each sample 15.2 ‘A professional academic (employed in a relevant discipline) has an obligation to respond in some way to instances of genocide denial’ 15.3 ‘It is best not to react to manifestations of genocide denial’ 15.4 ‘Have you ever publicly condemned an instance of genocide denial?’ 15.5 ‘Do you discuss history on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter)?’ 15.6 ‘Professional academics (employed in a relevant discipline) should debate with genocide deniers in public media (radio, TV, Internet)’ 15.7 ‘Professional academics (employed in a relevant discipline) should debunk genocide denial in popular media (press, radio, TV, Internet)’ 15.8 ‘Should professional academics (employed in a relevant discipline) help in creating historically accurate computer games that feature the Holocaust or other genocides?’ 15.9 ‘The academic culture in my country discourages extracurricular activity that opposes genocide denial’ 15.10 ‘An academic’s typical professional workload in my country makes it difficult to participate in activity that opposes genocide denial’ 15.11 ‘Public activity that opposes genocide denial entails a high risk of harassment from denialist groups in my country’ 16.1 ‘Post-­truth is a new historical phenomenon’ 16.2 ‘The current climate of post-­truth has exacerbated genocide denial’

269 270 270 271 272 273 276

278 279 280 280 291 299

Foreword

I began my career as a historian of the Second World War and the Shoah in the second half of the 1970s. At the time, the field remained largely unexplored, and there were numerous obstacles in the way: difficult access to public archives; an academic world sceptical of history considered too close to home; and since 1945, a reluctance from a part of society to see the veil being lifted on largely repressed episodes such as collaboration with the Nazis or antisemitism.1 At the same time, though, one of the major problems that arose, and whose implications were not immediately understood, was the publicity given to arguments denying the genocide of the Jews. In France, this started in 1978, when Robert Faurisson – one of the first to deny the existence of gas chambers on the basis of supposed ‘scientific’ studies – aroused probably as much outrage as curiosity. However, it quickly turned out that as improbable as these arguments were in the eyes of any person endowed with common sense and good faith, they struck a chord with a minority fringe of the population, essentially far-­right circles. Right from the start, a dilemma arose over the question of whether or not to respond to these counterfeiters and, if so, how. All available methods were used to counter this falsehood: methodical refutation, which is what the historian Pierre Vidal-­Naquet undertook;2 scientific disqualification, which I myself endeavoured by creating the concept of ‘negationism’3 to distinguish it from ‘revisionism’ (the latter having been misleadingly appropriated by Holocaust deniers);4 and criminalisation with the 1990 Gayssot Law and similar legislation across Europe. The fact that this phenomenon, at first affecting a tiny minority, developed in the context of public remembrance of the Shoah, in the 1980s, might have initially led one to believe that it was only an opportunistic reaction: the deniers took advantage of the multiplication of testimonies and controversies surrounding the Nazi past to sell their contraband. They were also able to benefit from the general climate calling into question the ‘official’ history of the Second World War, which my generation helped constitute. It was only partly true that denialist discourse was

Foreword xiii linked to the exceptional character of the genocide of the Jews  – the former, after all, was hardly an isolated phenomenon. It had already appeared, in other forms, with the negation of Turkish responsibility for the genocide of the Armenians in 1915, and it was going to happen again with the negation of the crimes committed during the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Worse was to come: we would soon realise that negationism not only was a consequence, a latter stage, of mass crimes – and therefore a phenomenon, despite everything, circumscribed – but would also constitute in the following decades a discursive modality, a mode of representation of the past and perception of the present, affecting all areas of knowledge and information. The history of negationism is perhaps one of the possible genealogies of the ‘post-­truth’ that is the subject of this book, but it is not the only one. And here lies the salutary character of this book’s enterprise. Not only do the authors, in their diversity of approaches, offer a historical, sociological, and philosophical perspective to this phenomenon, as dangerous as it is elusive, but they broaden the contours of reflection and ask a number of questions essential to the understanding of our time. Is this a new phenomenon? The question is important to alleviate the feeling of helplessness that can arise from the increasing denial of established facts or the construction of ‘alternative facts’ for political and ideological ends. But the response is all but simple. In many ways, ‘post-­truth’ or ‘fake history’ are obviously old phenomena. If these are defined by the primacy of ideology and emotion over reason, then this can only be a staggering regression, a return to the time when historiography was subject to the dogma of faith and the constraints of power. The philosophy of history that emerged in the 18th century and the progressive constitution of an autonomous historical discipline in the 19th century provided, among other intellectual movements in Europe, the conditions for relative emancipation from the Church and the monarch. Today, those people – be they populist, nationalist, or ‘revolutionary’ – who promote a historical or journalistic account seemingly ‘liberated’ from experts and the constraint of verified facts, and subject to the imperatives of engagement (commitment) to the nation, to the people, to an ethnic group, or to a religion, can only produce once again, deliberately or not, the conditions for new forms of domination. As a historian, my thoughts immediately turn to this warning from the famous French historian Lucien Febvre, articulated in the aftermath of the First World War, when he and his colleagues from opposing sides had thrown themselves headlong into the patriotic fight to denounce the enemy, leading to the abdication of their shared creed of ‘historical objectivity’: A history that is of service is a servile history. As professors of the French University of Strasbourg [once again a French territory

xiv  Foreword following the Versailles Treaty], we are not the newly arrived missionaries of an official national gospel, however beautiful, however grand, however well-­intentioned it may appear. We do not bring to Strasbourg, in the folds of our academic robes, stocks of antidotes skillfully concocted to destroy the last effects of the historico-­ providential pharmacopeia of our predecessors; nor do we bring counterevidence, dressed up and decked out in French disguise, of that helmeted and armor-­plated truth with the phony airs of Bellona or Germania, the one true goddess of what was in times past an official temple and is at present a free center for research. As for Truth, we do not bring it back a captive in our baggage train. We seek it, we will seek it to our dying day.5 It is no coincidence that the promotion of alternative truths, past or present, have become the recent weapons of illiberal politicians and remain a favourite weapon for old dictatorships, especially communist ones. Yet one should not deny the perverse effects that a fight against this new form of obscurantism can produce. The struggle against negationism has dragged contemporary history back into the field of purely factual history, which was going to be abandoned in favour of a more reflexive and conceptual discipline. The same is for contemporary journalism that is today frantically fact-­checking in response to ‘fakes news’. The danger here is to allow oneself to be dragged onto the opponent’s field: the time spent on checking ridiculous rumours when it does not promote the phenomenon we want to curb or denounce nonetheless equates to time and money wasted not making reliable history and reliable news. ‘Reliable history’? ‘Reliable news’? Is it not just naïve to believe that truths exist and that all news is not equal? Perhaps, but I deeply believe that, whatever the degree of sophistication of a historical analysis, whatever the degree of dialectic reasoning that the researcher or the journalist can reach, whatever the reluctance to use this notion of truth, no historian, journalist, or researcher can do their job if they do not accept that the latter is, if not a dogma, at least a horizon. In this sense, the real issue regarding falsifications of history or news is not so much whether to oppose them with true history or news – which obviously still needs to be done – but to reflect on the new conditions of scientific or media production. The novelty of ‘post-­truth’ lies not so much in the dissemination of falsehood as in the nature of the public space in which falsehood and rumour are deployed today. Journalists who have to produce news texts instantly cannot, by definition, escape such a space. They will also not be able to escape reflection on the boundary of their profession, on the need to oust ephemeral pseudo-­journalists who confuse the crafting of news stories with a tap on their smartphone and on the illusion that there is something to be said about a fictitious equality that turns everyone into news reporters for everyone else. As for researchers, and in

Foreword xv particular historians, they must reinvent their presence in public debate by simultaneously refusing to go on the battlefield of the adversary – for example, the media fist fight with charlatans who have no obligation to meet standards of rigour and sincerity – and refusing to retreat into an ivory tower that, in any case, has not existed for a long time. History is apparently a fight, but it is not a fight for the real truth, even less for my truth, but for the perpetuation of a particular shared space in which the conditions to write a history or news story remains transparent and accessible to all. Henry Rousso

Notes 1. The hyphenated version of ‘anti-­Semitism’ that still remains common is not only absurd – no such thing as ‘Semitism’ exists that one could feasibly oppose, unlike ‘Communism’ in anti-­Communism or ‘Fascism’ in anti-­Fascism – but also dangerous in that it effectively minimises the gravity of the phenomenon by falsely suggesting a benign disapproval of nondescript ‘Semites’. Antisemitism is an ideology and should be identified as such. 2. Vidal-­Naquet, Les Assassins de la mémoire. 3. The concept of negationism – understood broadly as the ideologically motivated distortion of the historical record – and more specifically as the denial, minimisation, or trivialisation of the Holocaust – has become a common term in French and many other languages. In English, however, the phenomenon is usually referred to as ‘denial’, in particular ‘genocide/Holocaust denial’. 4. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome. 5. Originally published in Lucien Febvre, “L’histoire dans le monde en ruines” (inaugural lecture). English translation quoted in Rousso, The Latest Catastrophe, 66–67.

Bibliography Febvre, Lucien. “L’histoire dans le monde en ruines” (Inaugural Lecture). Revue de synthèse historique 30, no. 88 (1920). Rousso, Henry. The Latest Catastrophe: History, the Present, the Contemporary. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. ———. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Vidal-­Naquet, Pierre. Les Assassins de la mémoire: “Un Eichmann de papier” et autres essais sur le révisionnisme. Paris: La Découverte, 1987.

Acknowledgements

The origins of this book lie in a chance email exchange between the editors that began on 7 March  2018 on the subject of whether genocide denial could be considered an example of contemporary post-­truth. Having noticed that the public debate on post-­truth was restricted largely to the field of electoral politics, in particular the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency, we began reflecting on how the climate of post-­truth had affected popular history. From this emerged an international symposium at Collegium Civitas University entitled History in a Post-­Truth World, which took place in the Palace of Culture and Science (Warsaw, Poland) on 14 September 2018. The quality of the presentations from a variety of scholarly perspectives confirmed that a collective volume on the subject would contribute something new to the ongoing debate. We thank Stanisław Mocek (rector) and Jadwiga Koralewicz (president) of the university for hosting the symposium, which has proven to be a fertile ground for many of the ideas explored in this book. At Routledge, we thank Max Novick for his advice, patience, and encouragement in guiding this work through the publication process. Our sincere thanks also to our copyeditor Ryan Dunlop. On a personal level, Benjamin T. Jones thanks his colleagues at Central Queensland University, in particular Michael Danahar and Bill Blayney, for consistently supporting his research agenda. He also thanks his wife Katrina and daughter Rosalie for their love and companionship during the often-­lonely writing process. Marius Gudonis thanks his parents, Eva Gudonis and Ronald Smith, for their endless encouragement throughout this period.

1 Who Controls the Past? Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones

On 15 March 2019, a right-­wing extremist opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people. The author, a self-­ described racist, fascist, and ethno-­nationalist, penned a lengthy manifesto to explain his attack.1 The editors of this volume do not reproduce it lightly. It is appropriate that his name and words are not widely spread by the media or on the Internet. In a volume such as this, however, concerned with the impact of a post-­truth world, it is important to acknowledge the potential consequences of abusing history. Taking its name, The Great Replacement, from a white nationalist conspiracy theory, the manifesto states that If you lose, history will write you as monsters, regardless of your tactics. Win first, write the narrative later. Victors write the history and the writers of history control the cultural climate of the present time. . . . Win first, write the story later.2 These are the words of a killer. They present a dystopian vision of a world where truth is subservient to ideology and where history is a tool of propaganda. For those who do not welcome such an outcome, it is important to understand how history is constructed and consider what defences can be formed against the intrusion of post-­truth. In a climate of acute scepticism, historians must consider how their work is presented and consumed. Is ‘real history’ possible in an era of ‘fake news’? Can it be interpreted as something better than footnoted fiction?

False History as a Prelude to Genocide That dangerous words contribute to murderous acts should come as no surprise. Genocides throughout history have been preceded by campaigns of propaganda that dehumanise future victims.3 False history has always played a particularly important role in the propagandistic scapegoating of ethnic, religious, or political groups. Yet we appear to have exceedingly short memories even for the most horrendous of atrocities. Adolf Hitler

2  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones certainly had this in mind when, having described his plans of extermination to military chiefs on 22 August 1939, he asked rhetorically, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’4 The Nazi era may well be the best documented example of state-­level top-­down disinformation of history that, at the very least, contributed to the ‘moral exclusion’ of Jews and others, making the Holocaust thinkable and feasible in the minds of those who took part. As soon as the Nazis took power in 1933, the dissemination of a racialist-­nationalist and fallacious history – one in which Nazi educationalists specifically sought emotional, irrational, and anti-­intellectual content, not dissimilar to today’s definition of post-­truth5 – was prioritised.6 History textbooks for all ages aimed to inculcate the tenets of social Darwinism and Germanic racial superiority, eschatologically, and teleologically,7 which included historical claims that ranged from the preposterous (Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln were supposedly of German descent)8 to the iniquitous (Jews were considered worthless, immoral, racial parasites, who spread bubonic plague, exploited the poor through usury, caused the ignominy of the Weimar Republic, and spread anti-­German universalist philosophies like Marxism and freemasonry).9 Most German historians who survived the massive 15% purge of Germany’s entire teaching staff during the 1930s and 1940s either openly and enthusiastically supported Nazism or hid passively behind a veil of supposed political neutrality and positivist scientific objectivity; dissent and active resistance was, bar a few individuals, nonexistent.10 The mournful experience of German Nazi-­era historians, some of whom worked directly for new Nazi pseudo-­historical institutes such as the Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands and the Deutsche Archiv für Landes-­und Volksforschung and others for institutions and projects that were directly associated with genocidal policies in Eastern Europe, most notoriously the Cracow-­based Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for the German Colonisation of the East),11 surely testifies in favour of academic activism today that opposes post-­truth history. Indeed, the empirical evidence in Chapter 15 suggests that few academics today would countenance such academic neutrality. Historical disinformation as a prelude to genocide is not a peculiar Nazi aberration: it has also been observed in Rwanda, Serbia, and most recently Myanmar. At three times the death rate of German gas chambers, the Rwandan genocide, where about 10% of the national population – 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus – were slaughtered in just one hundred days in 1994, became the fastest killing operation in human history.12 The seeds of the fratricidal violence, however, were sown during the Belgian colonial occupation from 1922 to 1962, when influential Catholic missionaries such as Bishop Léon-­Paul Classe and Archbishop André Perraudin created a public discourse that essentialised the supposed racial differences between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi, explicitly

Who Controls the Past? 3 favouring the latter.13 Hutu–Tutsi relations, imperfect though they were, remained relatively peaceful until the advent of European colonialism.14 Later, the colonial and ecclesiastical authorities – partly for strategic reasons to counter protestant inroads and partly motivated by ideology  – effectively racialised Rwandan society by introducing ethnic identity cards and censuses and introducing discriminatory policies that reserved the best education and employment for Tutsis.15 In the late 1950s, this was confounded by an unprecedented wave of polemic publications distorting the history of Hutu–Tutsi relations as an enduring precolonial phenomenon of racial stratification dominated by ‘the racist spirit of the Tutsi’ and ‘the reign of Tutsi terror’.16 Textbooks similarly portrayed the Tutsi has highly intelligent in contrast to submissive simpleminded Hutu, suitable only for manual labour.17 Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, genocide returned to the bloodstained continent of Europe in July  1995 when Bosnian Serb forces  – supported by some Serbian leaders and Serb paramilitaries and facilitated by the neutrality of Dutch UNPROFOR troops – deported 30,000 Bosniak civilians and murdered over 8000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica, originally designated as a United Nations (UN) ‘safe area’.18 The causes of this legally recognised genocide are complex and multifaceted, but there is general agreement that Serb nationalist propaganda played an important role, including the widespread grassroots emergence of Serb mythic martyrological history after the death of dictator Josip Broz Tito in 1980. Historical disinformation, however, did not appear out of the blue with the reawakening of Balkan nationalisms in the late 20th century; on the contrary, it was already at the heart of the communist Yugoslav nation-­building project. Under the slogan of ‘brotherhood and unity’, Tito’s propagandists disseminated false accounts of Yugoslavia during the Second World War: total war-­related fatalities of 1  million were inflated to 1.7 million;19 the entire fratricidal war experience was characterised as a simple class struggle devoid of interethnic genocidal hatred; the perpetrators of all crimes were bourgeois elites; Tito’s partisans were glorified; and internecine combat between communist Partisans, Serbian nationalist Chetniks, and Croatian fascist Ustaša were conveniently forgotten.20 Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the federal Yugoslav republic disintegrated, communist hagiography was replaced by nationalist hagiographies. The most pernicious, widespread, and radical of these was the ‘Heavenly Serbia’ myth,21 originally incorporating nostalgia for the short-­lived 14th-­ century Serbian Empire, in which the 1389 Serb defeat by the Ottomans at the Battle of Kosovo has been interpreted ever since as a noble sacrifice to gain access to heaven.22 A  veritable avalanche of ‘Heavenly Serbia’ texts – expanded to martyrise the whole of Serb history and demonise its neighbours23  – ranging from pronouncements by academics, Orthodox clergy, theologians, intellectuals, and nationalist politicians to bestseller

4  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones historical novels and popular histories inundated Serb public discourse in the 1980s. Consequently, Serb-­inflated numbers of wartime victims further rocketed to fantastic figures such as General Velimir Terzić’s 1983 assertion that over 1  million Serbs alone perished at the Croat Jasenovac death camp complex (the true figure being about 50,000),24 while Serb state-­ level collaboration with the Nazis under the puppet government of Milan Nedić  – where much of the discriminatory anti-­Jewish legislation, the mass use of torture, and complicity in the Holocaust took place with native initiative and zeal – was passed over in silence.25 Interestingly from the perspective of today’s post-­truth, some Serb orthodox thinkers actually claimed that myths are more truthful than history. A chilling example comes from an article published just ten days before the beginning of the Srebrenica genocide in the church journal Pravoslavlje: Historical science can change its truth with every new fact. Tradition does not need to change anything because it does not depend on facts, because it is an image of the divine Truth.26 While our historical examples may give credence to the cliché that the 20th century was an exceptional age of genocide, we should perhaps follow Eric Hobsbawm’s cautionary and prophetic prognosis from 1994: ‘the world of the third millennium will . . . almost certainly continue to be one of violent politics and violent political changes’.27 In fact, genocide is occurring right now as we write this page. One example is the case of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority that has been all but decimated following over four decades of extreme legal, symbolic, and physical violence perpetrated by the Burmese local and state authorities, the army and police, and Rakhine Buddhist vigilante groups. According to the UNHCR, over 742,000 Rohingya refugees have fled the latest wave of persecution in Myanmar since mid-­2017.28 In the sprawling makeshift refugee camps near the town of Cox’s Bazar  – housing 613,272 of the 913,981 refugees in Bangladesh, often described as the world’s largest refugee camp complex29  – researchers have conducted thousands of interviews with Rohingya refugees, suggesting that the most recent spree of violence culminated in 24,000 deaths, 18,000 rapes, 34,000 incidents of family members being thrown into fire, and 115,000 beatings.30 Here, as in our previous historical cases, dehumanising propaganda (often comparing the Rohingya to fleas, dogs, and pests) preceded the physical atrocities.31 This included a pervasive false historical narrative – disseminated by politicians, government-­controlled media, and Buddhist monks – that both denies the Rohingya’s 19th-­century roots in Myanmar (exemplified by the 2014 legally sanctioned refusal to acknowledge the term ‘Rohingya’, preferring terms denoting recent unwanted immigration, such as ‘Bengali’ or ‘Muslim’)32 and identifies the Rohingya en masse as innate

Who Controls the Past? 5 exterminatory Islamist terrorists (exemplified by contemporary distorted references to their 1940s colonial-­era appellation of ‘mujahid’, which actually symbolised Muslim identity and not Islamist ideology).33 Pointing to the pervasive use of negative emotions, misinformation, and social media,34 Ali Siddiquee has interestingly suggested that the Burmese anti-­ Rohingya discourse is a clear case of post-­truth politics.35

Truth and Post-­Truth This book emerged from the international symposium ‘History in a Post-­Truth World’ held at Collegium Civitas University in Warsaw on 14 September  2018. It explores one of the most significant paradigm shifts in public discourse this century. The political significance and ramifications of a post-­truth world may seem clear. But does an environment where personal belief and emotion is more influential than facts and expert opinion impact history as well? The chapters in this volume will argue that a post-­truth world has profound implications far beyond Brexit or the election of Donald Trump. Investigating both the theoretical dimensions and specific case studies, it argues that the ramifications of post-­truth are deeply significant to the study of history. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this work explores some of the following questions. What exactly is post-­truth? Does it represent a new phenomenon, and if so, what are its causes? A post-­truth environment presents particular problems to historians who are trained to deal with evidence, data, and facts. Does the historian have a special role to play in preserving public memory from ‘alternative facts’? Do academics more generally have an obligation to combat fake news both in universities and on social media? How has a ‘post-­truth culture’ impacted professional and popular historical discourse? With contributions from scholars based in Europe, North America and South America, Africa, and Asia/Pacific, this is a truly global collaboration on a topic of ever-­increasing importance. Following a surge of usage, Oxford Dictionaries made ‘post-­truth’ its word of the year in 2016, describing it as a situation where ‘objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.36 If we are living in a post-­truth world, this impacts all of us. In the first instance, it impacts us as citizens who are encouraged to take part in the political process through voting. A post-­ truth environment impacts us as consumers of news and information more generally. But for those of us in academia, it impacts us in a deep, perhaps even existential sense because the foundation of academe is that we are not post-­truth but rather in pursuit of truth. Famously, the motto of Harvard University is the solitary Latin word veritas (truth), and well over one hundred universities around the world contain the word truth somewhere in their respective mottos. It is central to the mission of higher education.

6  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones But what is truth? It is a question of profundity and deceptive complexity in Western thought. In a climactic moment, it was asked by Pontius Pilate in the trial of Jesus Christ in the Biblical tradition.37 He left the room without hearing an answer, and the question has hung in the intellectual air since. Theories about the nature of truth are endlessly contested in the halls of university philosophy and theology departments, but as a discipline, history has not strayed too far from Aristotle’s definition in Metaphysics: ‘to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true’.38 In the 1980s and 1990s respectively, postmodernism and poststructuralism presented a challenge to the notion of objective historical truth. In Is History Fiction? Ann Curthoys and John Docker argue convincingly that despite the concerns of Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, Richard Evans, and others, this hardly represents a historical relativism.39 Postmodern awareness does not disallow ‘a commitment to truth and rigorous reliance on the evidence’.40 Dealing specifically with the Holocaust, Dan Stone rejects that postmodernism can be seen as a vehicle for denialism. He insists that the ‘perception of postmodernism as moral relativism misses the point’.41 Truth certainly has a contested meaning but retains currency for historians whether they are critical of postmodernism or not. Indeed, the title of Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob’s book is Telling the Truth about History.42 Particularly when compared to philosophy, in historical writing, the truth has a less esoteric and more functional definition. The truth is, or at least is guided by, what can be demonstrated by facts and evidence as opposed to opinions or guesses. This is not an entirely satisfying definition on two counts. First, there is the issue that facts can be selectively presented, manipulated, or omitted. This is a point most famously illustrated by E.H. Carr, who compared historical facts to fish in the ocean. Some are inaccessible, and there is an element of chance in what may be caught, but the historian is largely empowered to pursue the fish that suit their purpose and throw others back into the deep.43 Selectively choosing facts with an ideological agenda, however, is not an example of post-­truth but what we might popularly call bending the truth. The second issue cuts to the core of post-­truth: what qualifies as a fact in the first place? This question leads directly to the issue of authority. In The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols takes aim at ‘the outrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture’ that denounces experts as elites and ‘cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality’.44 The issue this raises for academia, by definition composed of experts, is clear. It is all well and good to have a book or article peer reviewed or professionally fact-­checked, but if the audience does not accept the authority of the fact-­checker, we enter a different type of debate. Post-­truth as a political concept sprang to prominence in 2016 in the wake of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Who Controls the Past? 7 An example of post-­truth politics is Trump’s contestation of the popular vote. His initial response to securing nearly 3 million votes fewer than Hillary Clinton was to claim it was the result of his campaign strategy to focus on smaller states.45 Later, he revised this and argued he did win the popular vote but millions of illegal immigrants were allowed to vote, and this skewed the numbers.46 Despite having no evidence for this explosive claim, a poll commissioned by the Washington Post in 2017 found that just under half of Republicans believe Trump did win the popular vote and, of greater concern, just over half of Republicans would support Trump postponing the 2020 election as a result.47 US politics is certainly the focus of much of the post-­truth analysis. Within a year of Trump’s election, several books were published all with ‘post-­truth’ in their titles. With diverse authorship by economist Evan Davis, journalists Matthew d’Ancona and James Ball, and philosopher Lee McIntyre, the quartet take different approaches to come to rather similar conclusions. The blurring of lines between editorial and opinion in the mainstream press, the proliferation and easy dissemination of highly partisan or outright fake news, the rise of social media and its tendency to create ideological silos, a general undermining of traditional sources of knowledge authority, and the human inclination to want to believe a comforting falsehood over a fact that challenges deep-­rooted psychological schemata combine to create an ideal environment for the rise of post-­truth politics.48 The term ‘post-­truth’ appears to be relatively recent, and it is worth reflecting on its origins. In a January 1992 article for The Nation, playwright Steve Tesich possibly coined but certainly popularised the now ubiquitous word.49 It also appeared in the summer/fall 1992 issue of the scholarly journal Soundings in an article by Jeff Malpas.50 It is possible that both writers coined the phrase independently; they certainly use it in different contexts. Malpas draws the link between postmodernism and post-­truth. Tesich’s article has been far more influential (perhaps unsurprisingly given the much higher readership of his publication). He uses ‘post-­truth’ to describe the American psyche after the damning revelations about the Watergate and Iran-­Contra scandals. Collectively depressed and weary of uncomfortable truths that reflect poorly on their country, Tesich wrote, we began to shy away from the truth. We came to equate truth with bad news and we didn’t want bad news anymore, no matter how true or vital to our health as a nation. We looked to our government to protect us from the truth.51 These words apply equally to many parts of Europe and the rest of the world.

8  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Tesich warned that a breeding ground for authoritarianism is created when feelings and emotions are more important than pursuing truth. In the penultimate section of his famous article, he claimed, We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-­truth world. In this passage, Tesich echoes a warning from Hannah Arendt that the ‘ideal subject of totalitarian rule is . . . people for whom the distinction between . . . true and false . . . no longer exist’.52

A Definition of Post-­Truth History ‘Post-­truth’ is a contested term, and post-­truth history is a contested concept. Even within this book, some of the authors disagree on certain aspects – particularly whether post-­truth history is anything new. While acknowledging these differences, the editors of this volume do offer a tentative definition of post-­truth history. Following from the work of methodologist and political scientist John Gerring, a useful conceptual definition should include the following aspects: differentiation, intuitiveness, and explanatoriness. First, a concept needs to be easily distinguished from neighbouring concepts; otherwise, it will end up being used synonymously. Second, a concept needs to be intuitive – the definition should not diverge from the common understanding of the term. And third, it is useful if the definition incorporates some degree of explanation of the phenomenon.53 Bearing this advice in mind, we argue that ‘post-­truth history’ has three essential elements: indifference to historicity, appeal to emotion and/or personal belief, and ideological motivation. We define the concept as follows: Post-­truth history is the communication of false information on a historical phenomenon that appeals to emotion and personal belief, where both the purveyor and recipient are indifferent to historicity and contemptuous of expert opinion that contradicts it, and where the underlying objective is ideological, especially in support of a collective identity or a political programme. The most important neighbouring concepts are myth, denial, conspiracy theory, lie, and pseudohistory. While some characteristics of post-­truth

Who Controls the Past? 9 history clearly overlap with other concepts, the ensemble of traits listed render it distinct. For most theorists, lies necessarily involve deception.54 Denial also largely involves deception but may, at times, include ignorance, self-­deception, and unconscious defence mechanisms.55 None of these correlates with truth indifference. Myths, as Lauri Honko summarises, generally incorporate sacred origins, rituals, cosmogony, and ontology, none of which is necessary in post-­truth history.56 Conspiracy theories constitute an interpretation of history and identify nefarious cabals behind world events.57 Consequently, they are a belief in a particular, albeit false, historical narrative and therefore cannot be described as indifferent to historicity. The closest concept in the list is pseudohistory, and Brian Regal’s definition captures what most scholars understand by the term: pseudohistory uses the trappings of scholarly historical method  – footnotes, citations, bibliographies, and primary sources  – yet is designed not as a thoughtful analysis intent on discovering insights into the past, but as a subjective arranging of facts to support a predetermined idea that often supports a political agenda.58 Like post-­ truth history, pseudohistory involves disinformation and a political agenda, but it is in essence a highly sophisticated onerous art of deception. Post-­truth, be it in the sphere of electoral politics or in the sphere of history, does not need to bother with the ‘trappings of scholarly historical method’ or with expert opinion. The considerable effort that is invested to legitimise pseudohistory, to make it appear scholarly, rational, and ingenuous, contrasts with the spontaneous and emotional pithy comments that characterise post-­truth. It will be useful here to give two clear examples of post-­truth history: the fake death camp K.L. Warschau and the fake story of the United States’ Irish slaves. The Fake Death Camp – K.L. Warschau Regarding our first example, we need to bear in mind the historical facts. Extensive research conducted by historian Bogusław Kopka and award-­ winning photographic analyst Zygmunt Walkowski has shown that the Nazis created a relatively small concentration camp on the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto that was operational between 19 July  1943 and 5 August 1944. The camp used forced labour to complete the liquidation of all traces of the former ghetto and eventually to build a park on top. On average, there were 5000 to 7000 prisoners at any one time, most of them Jewish deportees from Southern Europe and Western Europe. A total of 20,000 forced labourers were murdered there, including Jews and Catholic Poles.59

10  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Our example of post-­truth is a plaque erected on the wall of Warsaw’s Church of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr, blessed by Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz, on 24 May 2009 (see Figure 1.1).60

Figure 1.1  Plaque commemorating K.L. Warschau, Warsaw. Source: Photograph © M. Gudonis

Who Controls the Past? 11 The text translates into English as follows: Homage to the 200,000 Poles murdered by the German occupiers in the extermination camp KL Warschau in the years 1942–1944 [signed] Compatriots. (Based on the book by Maria Trzcińska KL Warschau – Extermination camp for Poles) Indifference to historicity is rarely communicated explicitly. Trump’s ‘who cares’ in response to a question whether the nursery rhyme-­themed tiles in his Mar-­o-­Lago home were really by Walt Disney,61 or presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway’s notion of ‘alternative facts’ to describe the supposed large crowds at Trump’s inauguration,62 would constitute explicit indifference. Otherwise indifference can only be inferred. Here all the ‘facts’ are false, namely the duration (it was actually 1943–44, i.e. under 13 months), number of victims (it was around 20,000, not 200,000), ethnicity of victims (they were mostly Western European and Southern European Jews and Polish Catholics) and function of the camp (it was a labour/concentration camp – there were no gas chambers, which were otherwise present in all the other Nazi death camps). Indifference can also be inferred by the fact that the plaque refers to the 2002 book by communist-­era judge Maria Trzcińska, whose main findings have been robustly refuted by Kopka’s definitive 2007 history, published by the Institute of National Remembrance. We interpret the erection of the plaque, just two years after Kopka’s much-­publicised study, as a clear indifference of established historical fact. In addition, we see appeals to both emotion (the plaque features a harrowing image of skulls in a tunnel where the gas chambers were supposed to have been) and personal experience (the plaque is signed ‘compatriots’). The plaque is also sanctified by its location on the wall of a church and by the Archbishop of Warsaw’s benediction, suggesting the information is to be believed in much the same way that other religious truths are believed. As for ideological motivation, this again has to be inferred from the context. The Church of St. Stanislaus actively promotes a radically ‘national conservative’ version of Polish history that among others insinuates the denial of Polish wartime atrocities and the existence of an anti-­Polish conspiracy.63 Thus, if K.L. Warschau had been a death camp like Auschwitz, the nationalist can claim that ethnic Poles suffered no less than Jews and deserve greater victim recognition than is currently afforded. The Fake Story of the United States’ Irish Slaves In our second example, an Internet meme proclaims that white Irish constituted the most maltreated slaves in the United States (see Figure 1.2).

12  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones

Figure 1.2  Meme depicting ‘white Irish slaves’.

The historical evidence, however, reveals that although Irish indentured servants were often terribly abused, their legal status and actual living conditions bore only superficial resemblance to African slaves. Among the most important differences between the two groups are the following: many indentured servants were voluntary, contractually paying for

Who Controls the Past? 13 their ocean passage and sustenance with five to seven years of labour – slavery, in contrast, was always forced; servitude was limited in time to several years, whereas slavery was life-­long and passed on to the next generation; servants had limited legal rights, whereas slaves had none; servants were only legally considered as property during the period of indenture, whereas slaves were property in perpetuity; theoretically at least, servants could receive wages and some form of pecuniary or immovable compensation after the indenture, whereas slaves received nothing beyond basic sustenance; servants could occasionally seek redress in the courts, whereas slaves could not; servants faced added time to their indenture if convicted of theft, whereas slaves were often executed for a similar offence; servants leaving their master’s property without permission would receive an extra day of servitude for every two hours of absence, whereas slaves received corporal punishment; servants in certain situations could be whipped or placed in stocks, whereas slaves could endure gibbeting, being burned alive, decapitation, and castration; and the murder of a servant was treated as homicide, whereas until 1818, the murder of a slave resulted in a mere fine payable to the public treasury.64 The Internet meme, like the Warsaw plaque, exhibits indifference to truth. We can reasonably infer this by the fact that there is no attempt to justify the claim and that the photo shows breaker boys, who broke up pieces of coal, not indentured servants.65 There is an overwhelming appeal to emotion manifested by the use of capitals, the provocative colloquial expressions (bitching, pussies, free shit), and the sombre photograph of poor children. And finally, unlike the Warsaw plaque, the ideological motivation is directly and blatantly expressed: African Americans, who suffered less than Irish Americans, are not justified in seeking redress or recognition for slavery. Whereas the ideology in the first case was Polish nationalism, here we have American white supremacism.

Summary of Book Content With the definition of ‘post-­truth history’ in mind, the book is set up as follows. The opening chapters consider the theoretical dimensions of a post-­truth world. Jędrzej Czerep explores how sources might be assessed when there is a crisis of trust. Observing that established science is regularly stigmatised as ‘elitist’ and that ‘alternative’ discourses can gain initial credit for breaking a perceived ‘information blockade’, he discusses whether there are means available to regain trust in expertise. Taking a different approach, Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski questions whether, despite its ubiquity, post-­truth is a bubble concept. His chapter focuses on post-­truth from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge and philosophy of social sciences and history, with the aim of anchoring the concept to facilitate the discrimination of post-­truth from what it is not.

14  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Adam Chmielewski observes the prevalent reaction to duplicity in politics. Typically, he argues, this assumes the form of a moralistic demand on politicians that the requirements of truthfulness be observed. He suggests that this attitude deserves the name ‘alethic populism’ and that it stems from a misconception of the nature of political activity – an error that he calls cognitocratic fallacy. Against the contention that postmodern philosophers are responsible for the abjuration of truth, this chapter considers the unintended consequence of persistent attempts to work out a definitive conception of truth. Adrian Wesołowski’s chapter also considers postmodernism and its critics. He argues that those who place the blame for the emergence of post-­truth on postmodernism do so, ironically, in a post-­truthful way. Reflecting specifically on Steven Pinker and Jordan B. Peterson – creatively amalgamated as Pinkerson – he argues that those who blame postmodernism for society’s ills frequently do so in a manner that is simplistic, fallacious, and ideologically motivated. The majority of chapters look at specific post-­ truth case studies. Benjamin T. Jones looks at denialism with regard to Australia’s Stolen Generations. Despite a historic government apology in 2008 and the growing body of historical research, there is a vocal campaign to dismiss the Stolen Generations as a myth. The chapter by André Brett also considers pernicious myths about First Nations. The baseless claim that the Māori people of New Zealand violently dispossessed the Moriori is pervasive enough to appear in a 2019 comedy routine by Jim Gaffigan. Brett unpacks the resilience of the pre-­Māori myth and suggests that the availability of historical facts, in itself, is insufficient to quash emotive post-­truth claims. Gerald J. Steinacher and Ben Mercer both look at post-­truth in the United States. Steinacher takes one of the most potent and contested examples of denialism – Holocaust denialism – and assesses the current developments. Exploring the interplay between denialism and antisemitism, he asks if the post-­truth world has shaped this well-­documented phenomenon. Mercer uses a broader lens to consider fascism and the post-­truth world under Trump. He suggests that Trump’s election has sparked many important discussions but warns that historical parallels – most notably prewar fascist or Nazi propaganda – can both obscure and enlighten. Turning to South America, Daniel Feierstein considers Argentina’s 1976–1983 Process of National Reorganization. He explores how contemporary post-­truth discourse has been exploited in the service of the denial, minimisation, and relativisation of Argentine atrocities committed during the period of military dictatorship. Andrea Gallardo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa use examples from Mexico and the United States to consider the role of the museum as a propitious space to encourage and trigger alternative reflections on history and to sensitise the visitor

Who Controls the Past? 15 to the otherwise-­normalised images of death, violence, and pain of the other. A rare example of optimism in post-­truth discourse, their chapter argues that the museum can become a formidable weapon in the fight against disinformation. June Bam-­Hutchison’s chapter reflects on the relevance of post-­truth in South Africa since Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994. She argues that the strong emphasis on human rights and apartheid in history curricula has had the unintended consequence of marginalising precolonial history. Over the past decade, with an increase in the global awareness of indigenous peoples, the environment, and land rights, South Africa has experienced an upsurge in KhoiSan campaigns for social justice closely tied to historiographical contestations around ‘truth’. Historians, disciplinary canons, and methodologies are being challenged in the discourses on post-­truth in an African context. This chapter provides a critical overview. The other chapters evaluate and respond to post-­truth as a concept. In a pertinent and provocative chapter, Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson suggest that for feminist historians, the post-­truth world is business as usual. Drawing on historical examples of gender violence, they argue that emotional responses built around social myths had already been historically pervasive long before Tesich popularised the term ‘post-­truth’. In contrast, Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber do find something unique in the post-­truth world of the past two decades. Exploring Indian politics and history education, they argue that certain factors have combined to create a specific environment that breeds post-­truth. Specifically, they contend that the proliferation of the Internet and, later, social media has significantly contributed to a post-­truth environment. Finally, Marius Gudonis considers how academics, particularly historians, can respond to genocide denial. The denial, minimisation, or trivialisation of historical genocide can be considered a prototype of post-­truth. This chapter reveals, through the use of online surveys, how academics react to manifestations of genocide denial in three countries: Poland, France, and the United States. As a result, it postulates which factors may impede or encourage activism to oppose it. It will be clear to all who read this volume in its entirety that the authors do not hold a uniform position on whether we are in a unique historical period that can be called post-­truth. Although we have offered a formal definition in this chapter, ‘post-­truth’ is a contested term. The authors do agree, however, that we live in a world where more information than hitherto dreamed of is readily available to anyone with a device and an Internet connection. Also accessible in abundant supply is misinformation and disinformation. With experts dismissed as elites and the erosion of trust in traditional sources of knowledge, we may be experiencing a genuine acceleration in the role of emotion in shaping public opinion. Or it may be that the Internet and social media have simply provided new

16  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones technology to spread old lies. As Steinacher’s chapter reminds us, some of the oldest antisemitic lies are experiencing a resurgence.

False History Rising Across the Globe Why is it important to examine the impact and influence of post-­truth history? A recent study analysing speeches by almost 140 world leaders in 40 countries over the past two decades has revealed that both the number of populist leaders and the use of populist rhetoric have doubled and that over 2 billion people today have a populist leader.66 In Europe alone, according to another survey, support for populist parties in national elections has tripled from 7% in 1998 to over 25% in 2018.67 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the last decade or so has witnessed numerous cases of historical disinformation across the globe in both authoritarian regimes and democratic populist administrations. Let us briefly consider five examples. Brazil’s 2018 general election saw far-­right politician Jair Bolsonaro secure the presidency. He is actively seeking to rehabilitate the country’s 1964–1985 military dictatorship, which was responsible for at least 434 political executions and disappearances, as well as the massacre of indigenous peoples (at least 8350 between 1946 and 1988), widespread torture, censorship, and illegal detention.68 Former army officer Bolsonaro, however, has asserted that the 1964 coup actually ushered in a democracy worthy of celebration, that the dictatorship never existed, and that students should read the 2008 revisionist book The Suffocated Truth by the convicted dictatorship torturer Carlos Brilhante Ustra.69 In September 2019, far-­right politicians and army personnel demonstrated at the Cinemateca Brasileira, the Brazilian Film Archives, denouncing the institution’s alleged support for so-­called cultural Marxism and calling for the creation of a film festival that restored the reputation of the military regime. At the same time, funding for Ancine, a government agency that funds Brazilian films, was abruptly halved, and in December, Bolsonaro’s government launched a new anti-­left historical revisionist video series, Brazil: The Last Crusade.70 Hungary presents another example of recent political efforts to whitewash dark chapters of the country’s past, in particular the interwar regency of antisemite Miklós Horthy and subsequent Hungarian collaboration with Nazi Germany. From 1938 until the January 1945 liberation of Budapest by Soviet troops, Hungarian governments – under the auspices of Horthy and then Hitler – passed a series of Nuremberg-­style anti-­Jewish legislation that deprived Jews of their civic rights, economic livelihood, and, eventually, their lives. About 686,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in 1941–5, or 83% of the 1941 Jewish population in Hungary. Several tens of thousands were the direct victims of Hungarian exterminatory policy alone, and the rest – including some 458,000 that

Who Controls the Past? 17 were deported and gassed in Auschwitz in the space of just eight weeks – were victims of state-­level German-­Hungarian collaboration.71 And yet the current nationalist prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, who has been in power for over a decade, has spearheaded a campaign to glorify Horthy’s past and demonise the communist period in toto: the House of Terror Museum in Budapest, opened in 2002 by Orbán’s Fidesz party, minimises Horthy’s role in atrocities while suggesting communist-­ era crimes were equal to or greater than the Hungarian Holocaust – in fact, the museum’s director Mária Schmidt has asserted that the latter never took place; in 2012, two statues of the regent and a plaque have been erected in Kereki, Csokako, and Debrecen; in 2013, the government created the Veritas institute charged with the official reinterpretation of the past 150 years of Hungarian history; in 2014, another statue was erected in the capital’s Freedom Square, depicting Hungary’s complete innocence and victimhood during the war; in late December  2018, the statue of anti-­Soviet (but Communist) hero Imre Nagy, who led the failed 1956 revolution, was relocated away from its prominent and symbolic site in Martyrs’ Square, where it had looked towards parliament and democratic governance; and in 2019, Orbán abolished the 1956 Institute that focused on Nagy’s revolution by incorporating it into Fidesz-­controlled Veritas, leading to the resignation of all its historians.72 On 20 October 2015, Israel’s longest-­serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delivered a speech to the 37th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, in which he made an assertion that would make headlines around the world: the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-­Husseini . . . had a central role in fomenting the final solution. . . . Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-­Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here’. ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said, ‘Burn them’.73 On the basis of the unreliable self-­exculpatory testimony of SS officer Dieter Wisliceny, the notion that al-­Husseini was the originator of the Holocaust is entirely fictitious and has been robustly discredited by almost all academics in the field, including those at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial centre.74 This does not, of course, in any way exonerate the ‘Mufti of Jerusalem’ of collaborating with the Nazis and of enthusiastically and actively supporting the genocide of the Jews. So strong was the international academic reprobation that Netanyahu fully retracted his thesis just ten days later.75 While Netanyahu’s original comment constitutes a flagrant distortion of history to justify his government’s foreign policy, the editors also note that, unlike other countries, this is very much an isolated incident in Israel with the support of perhaps no more than a handful of individuals.76

18  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones A pertinent example of the weaponisation of post-­truth history is the dictatorial and violent regime of the late Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The one-­party state sought to legitimise itself through a massive programme to distort 20th-­century Zimbabwean history, which the eminent historian Terence Ranger called patriotic history. Disseminated in school textbooks, popular history books, youth militia camps, the media, political speeches, and commemorative events, patriotic history (or to use the regime’s nomenclature, the ‘Third Chimurenga’) consisted of a racist, nationalistic, and anti-­academic discourse glorifying the ruling party, ZANU-­PF, in the liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, its subsequent role in nation-­building during the era of independence, and its supposed successes in promoting pan-­Africanism throughout the continent. This meant ignoring or minimising the important contributions played by other Zimbabwean groups, most notably ZAPU, trade unions, urban populations, and other African nations. It also meant tabooing or misrepresenting the Gukurahundi massacres of 1982–7, in which government forces dominated by the Shona tribe murdered approximately 20,000 mainly Ndebele civilians  – suspected of being sympathisers of ZAPU military-­wing rebels  – in Matabeleland and the Midlands. Dismissed by Mugabe as a mere ‘Moment of Madness’, and almost completely absent in the official historical narrative, the human rights abuses at this time  – including mass murder by the infamous North Korean– trained Fifth Brigade, programmed mass starvation, and horrific forms of sexual, electric, and asphyxiating torture – have been classified as genocide by both Gregory Stanton’s Genocide Watch and the International Association of Genocide Scholars.77 Finally, we turn to Poland, a country whose communist government had long stifled critical historical research into the most recent past, emphasising instead Polish ethnic martyrology and communist heroism. Then, from the mid 1980s and especially after the collapse of the regime at the end of the decade, many Polish intellectuals and academics began to explore hitherto-­difficult taboo subjects such as Polish-­Jewish relations, Polish wartime atrocities (most notably the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, whose intense groundbreaking national debate in 2001 has been compared to France’s Dreyfus Affair), and the (often-­violent) expulsion of 3.6 million Germans from Poland after the war.78 However, since the victory of the nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS) in both parliamentary and presidential elections in 2015, communist-­style politics of memory has once again returned to the government’s policy palette. Most controversial was the 2018 Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) that initially criminalised, worldwide, any suggestion of Polish national or state complicity in the Holocaust with prison terms of up to three years.79 International outrage eventually led to the law being softened, denoting a civil offence of defamation, but it can now be applied to anyone, including journalists and academics.80

Who Controls the Past? 19 The IPN, a once-­respected research institution, has undergone a radical change in personnel, incorporating many nationalist historians with a governing body composed exclusively of PiS nominees.81 As a result, some of the IPN’s actions have distorted rather than elucidated history: it has stopped the publication of books that, allegedly, have failed to embrace the patriotic narrative;82 it has denied the 1946 genocidal anti-­ Byelorussian activities of the Polish partisan leader Romuald Rajs in direct contradiction to the IPN’s own investigation of 2005;83 and its president, Jarosław Szarek, has publicly denied Polish responsibility for the genocidal massacre of Jedwabne Jews in July 1941, again in contradiction to the IPN’s definitive 2002 publication.84 Direct political interference in history museums, aiming to produce a simple patriotic narrative of the past, have produced numerous ongoing scandals. The Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk was opened in 2017 amid much political acrimony, where PiS politicians described it as anti-­Polish, pseudo-­universalist, cosmopolitan, and excessively oriented towards civilian wartime experiences. Following a lengthy legal battle, the museum’s founder, Paweł Machcewicz, was dismissed, and blatant ‘patriotic’ modifications to the main exhibit were implemented, including the replacement of a panel showing total war casualties in different countries (where the Soviet Union comes out on top) with one that highlights a list of war casualties per capita (where Poland comes out on top), increasing the number of active and armed resistance Home Army soldiers in 1944 from 40,000 to 350,000, and the installation of a panel featuring a photo of the Ulma family – who were executed while trying to save Jews – with the caption ‘Poles in the face of the Holocaust’ (thereby falsely generalising heroic Polish behaviour).85 This last distortion has been fully institutionalised in the ‘Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II’ (Markowa, southeastern Poland). Hosting hyped political events (such as a visit by Polish and foreign dignitaries in a live international broadcast to 29 Polish diplomatic posts) and benefiting from 95% central government funding, it portrays mass Polish heroism while ignoring Polish-­Nazi collaboration in persecuting Jews. Ironically, the very person who denounced the Ulma family to the Nazis was an officer of the Polish collaborationist Blue Police.86 This book discusses post-­truth as a concept, debates its origins and definition, and considers examples from around the world. Importantly, it also challenges historians to consider their response to a post-­truth world. Many historians and other academics recoil from public debate and commentary, not wishing to compromise the appearance of objectivity and non-­partisanship. Whatever noble intentions may motivate this stance, it robs the public of valuable commentary on important issues. It is not enough, we suggest, to provide evidence-­based research in peer-­reviewed journals and at academic conferences. Scholars who work in a public university, in particular, have a moral obligation to

20  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones engage with the public that funds them. Post-­truth history must be challenged not only in academic circles but also in the popular press and in the online space, where much disinformation originates. The editors of this volume condemn not only the actions of the Christchurch killer but his ideology as well. History is not a mere story to be written later. It is a conversation between the past and the present grounded in research and evidence, not instinct and emotion. To surrender history to post-­ truth narratives is to denude it of its academic rigour and intellectual buoyancy. We call on all who do not welcome a post-­truth world to resist.

Notes 1. Jones, “Opinion.” 2. A PFD of The Great Replacement manifesto is hosted on the International Policy Digest website. Accessed 5 July  2019, www.ilfoglio.it/userUpload/ The_Great_Replacementconvertito.pdf. 3. Anderson, “Propaganda.” 4. Totten et al., Dictionary of Genocide, 470. 5. Blackburn, Education in the Third Reich, 34–50, 177. 6. Ibid., 35–36; Mason, “Nazi Concepts of History,” 184. 7. Blackburn, Education in the Third Reich, 34–38, 51, 70–71, 178. 8. Ibid., 59. 9. Ibid., 47–49, 140–143; Bryan and Vavrus, “The Promise and Peril of Education,” 190; Pine, Education in Nazi Germany, 51. 10. Sims, “Intellectuals in Crisis,” 250–260; Schleier, “German Historiography,” 81, 85–86, 178. 11. Gilbert, “German Historiography,” 51; Mason, “Nazi Concepts of History,” 185; Schleier, “German Historiography,” 182, 86. 12. Moghalu, Rwanda’s Genocide, 17. 13. Carney, Rwanda before the Genocide, 4, 33–34, 75, 117. 14. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 39; Carney, Rwanda before the Genocide, 2. 15. Carney, Rwanda before the Genocide, 35; Bryan and Vavrus, “The Promise and Peril of Education,” 191–192. 16. Carney, Rwanda before the Genocide, 75–76. 17. Bryan and Vavrus, “The Promise and Peril of Education,” 192. 18. Morus, xxiii, xxx. 19. Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslaia, 38, 722–723. 20. Messenger, War and Public Memory, 187. 21. Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia, 140; Dragović-­Soso, ‘Saviours of the Nation’, 78. 22. Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia, 2, 4–5, 113. 23. Ibid., 109, 24, 28. 24. Ibid., 103–104. 25. Prusin, Serbia under the Swastika. See especially Chapter 4 and 8. 26. Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia, 125. 27. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 460. 28. “Rohingya Emergency.” 29. “Rohingya Refugee Response.” 30. Habib et al., Forced Migration of Rohingya, 69. 31. Siddiquee, “The Portrayal of the Rohingya Genocide,” 6, 9. 32. Anwary, “Interethnic Conflict,” 13; Crouch, “States of Legal Denial,” 4.

Who Controls the Past? 21 33. Fair, “The Making of the Rohingya Genocide,” 152; Schaack, “Determining the Commission of Genocide in Myanmar,” 314; Siddiquee, “The Portrayal of the Rohingya Genocide,” 5. 34. Facebook posts proliferated shortly before the 2017 official campaign of ethnic cleansing and included fake news of Muslims accumulating weapons in Yangon mosques to destroy Buddhist pagodas. See Fair, “Rohingya,” 69–70. 35. Siddiquee, “The Portrayal of the Rohingya Genocide,” 4, 10, 12. 36. “Word of the Year 2016.” 37. St John 18:38, KJV. 38. Edwards, Metaphysics, 42. 39. Curthoys and Docker, Is History Fiction? 207–209; Appleby et al., Telling the Truth About History; Evans, In Defense of History. 40. Curthoys and Docker are approvingly paraphrasing Dan Stone in this quote. Curthoys and Docker, 217–218. 41. Stone, Constructing the Holocaust, 4. 42. Abbleby et al., Telling the Truth. 43. Carr, What is History? 23. 44. Nichols, The Death of Expertise, 4. 45. Blake, “Donald Trump Says He Would Have Won.” 46. Phillip and DeBonis, “Without Evidence.” 47. Malka and Lelkes, “In a New Poll.” 48. d’Ancona, Post-­Truth; Evan Davis, Post-­Truth; McIntyre, Post-­Truth. 49. Tesich, “The Watergate Syndrome.” 50. Malpas, “Retrieving the Truth,” 288. 51. Ibid. 52. Baehr, Hannah Arendt, 75. 53. Gerring also uses the term ‘analytic utility’ to describe explanatoriness. Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good?” 68, 364; Gerring, Social Science Methodology, 90–91. 54. Barnes, A Pack of Lies, 10–19. 55. Cohen, States of Denial, 3–9. 56. Honko, “The Problem of Defining Myth,” 49–51. 57. Knight, “Making Sense of Conspiracy Theories,” 16. 58. Regal, Pseudoscience, 136. 59. Kopka, Konzentrationslager Warschau, 30–31, 119–121; Nowotnik and Walkowski, “Z. Walkowski o KL Warschau.” 60. Podulka, “KL Warschau wychodzi z cienia historii,” 3. 61. Horowitz, “A King in His Castle.” 62. Piper, “Speaking Post-­Truth to Power,” 180. 63. “Zapomniany niemiecki oboz zaglady w Warszawie.” 64. Handler and Reilly, “Contesting ‘White Slavery’ ”; Hogan et al., “The Irish in the Anglo-­Caribbean.” 65. Varner, “The Curious Origins of the ‘Irish slaves’ Myth.” 66. Lewis et al., “Revealed: The Rise and Rise of Populist Rhetoric.” 67. Lewis et al., “Revealed: One in four Europeans Vote Populist.” 68. Chirio, Politics in Uniform, 7; Dias et al., “Violações de direitos humanos dos povos indígenas,” 204–205. 69. Finchelstein, “Why Far-­right Populists Are at War with History”; Cowie, “Bolsonaro Tells Students to read book by dictatorship-­era torturer.” 70. Jorden, “Bolsonaro’s Revisionist History of Brazil.” 71. Patai, The Jews of Hungary, 535–594; Rév, “Liberty Square, Budapest.” 72. Toomey, “History, Nationalism, and Democracy”; Seewann, “Hungary,” 46–47, 242; Rév, “Liberty Square, Budapest,” 610; Hopkins, “Hungary’s

22  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Viktor Orban and the Rewriting of History”; Scanish and Eisen, “History in the (un)making.” 73. Netanyahu, “PM Netanyahu addresses the 37th Zionist Congress.” 74. Litvak, “Netanyahu and the Mufti”; Sells, “Holocaust Abuse.” 75. Rudoren, “Netanyahu Retracts Assertion.” 76. The only scholarly work to support the idea that Husseini and his Arab associates were pivotal in the decision to initiate the Holocaust at a time when Hitler favoured deportation is Rubin and Schwanitz’s Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. In addition, according to the historian Meir Litvak from Tel Aviv University, the right-­wing journalist Erel Segal and lawyer Yoram Sheftel, both of whom host popular Israeli radio programmes, have also upheld the above thesis (personal communication, 29 December 2019). 77. Barnes et al., “Vacuum in the Classroom?” 29–36, 323; Maposa and Wassermann, “Historical Literacy in a Context of Patriotic History,” 255; Maposa, “Zimbabwe,” 739–743; Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation”; Moyo, “Mugabe’s Neo-­ sultanist Rule,” 61–64; Ndlovu-­Gatsheni, “Rethinking Chimurenga and Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe,” 5, 11; Rwodzi, “Whose Fault Was It Anyway?” 33, 111; Murambadoro, “ ‘We Cannot Reconcile Until the Past Has Been Acknowledged’,” 38–45; Mpofu, “When the Subaltern Speaks,” 83; Hitchcock, “The Impacts of Conservation and Militarization on Indigenous Peoples,” 232. 78. Polonsky and Michlic, The Neighbors Respond, 1–43, 147; Service, “Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland.” 79. Curiously, one of the stated aims of the bill was to stop the use of the term ‘Polish death camps’ supposedly implying Polish, rather than Nazi, responsibility. And yet ‘Polish’ as a purely spatial designation was used by none other than legendary underground courier Jan Karski in a 1944 American magazine article. See Hackmann, “Defending,” 601. Equally surprising is the fact that until recently the Auschwitz death camp was commonly referred to by its Polish-­language equivalent Oświęcim, without in any way alluding to the camp’s ‘Polishness’. Likewise, the ubiquitous term ‘getto warszawskie’, literally Varsovian ghetto (and not ghetto in Warsaw), seems not to cause any confusion at all. Consequently, one may reasonably doubt whether a foreign campaign of antipolonism, as suggested by former Senate leader Stanisław Karczewski, has any basis in fact. “Marszałek Senatu.” 80. Bucholc, “Commemorative Lawmaking,” 103; Ray and Kapralski, “Introduction to the Special Issue,” 209; Hackmann, “Defending,” 603. 81. Czuchnowski, “IPN narzędziem PiS.” 82. Motyka, “PiS tak naprawił IPN.” 83. Kończal, “The Invention,” 12–13. 84. Jan Grabowski, “The Holocaust,” 482; Wóycicka, “Global Patterns, Local Interpretations,” 2, 4–5, 14. 85. Bucholc, “Commemorative Lawmaking,” 103; Flieger, “The Populist Rewriting of Polish History”; Hackmann, “Defending,” 595–597; Siddi and Gaweda, “The National Agents of Transnational Memory,” 10; Machcewicz, The War that Never Ends, 68–75, 116–119; Flieger and Gałązka, “Kolejna ‘dobra zmiana’ ”; Flieger, “Muzeum II Wojny Światowej”; Sandecki, “Dyrekcja Muzeum II Wojny.” 86.  Hackmann, “Defending,” 588, 97–600; Wóycicka, “Global Patterns, Local Interpretations,” 2, 4–5, 14.

Who Controls the Past? 23

Bibliography Anderson, Kjell. “Propaganda: Communicating the Moral Context.” Chap. 4 in Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2018. Anwary, Afroza. “Interethnic Conflict and Genocide in Myanmar.” Homicide Studies 24, no. 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767919827354. Anzulovic, Branimir. Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide. New York and London: New York University Press, 1999. Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. Telling the Truth About History. New York: Norton, 1994. Baehr, Peter. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Barnes, John Arundel. A Pack of Lies: Towards a Sociology of Lying. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Barnes, Teresa, Munyaradzi Nyakudya, and Christopher Phiri. “Vacuum in the Classroom? Recent Trends in High School History Teaching and Textbooks in Zimbabwe.” Chap. 14 in (Re)Constructing Memory: Textbooks, Identity, Nation, and State, edited by James H. Williams and Wendy D. Bokhorst-­Heng. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016. Blackburn, Gilmer W. Education in the Third Reich: Race and History in Nazi Textbooks. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985. Blake, Aaron. “Donald Trump says He Would Have Won a Popular-­vote Election. And He Could be Right.” Washington Post, 15 November 2016. Bryan, Audrey, and Frances Vavrus. “The Promise and Peril of Education: The Teaching of in/Tolerance in an Era of Globalisation.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 3, no. 2 (2005). Bucholc, Marta. “Commemorative Lawmaking: Memory Frames of the Democratic Backsliding in Poland after 2015.” Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 11 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-­018-­0080-­7. Carney, J. J. Rwanda before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Carr, E. H. What is History? Melbourne: Penguin, 2008. Chirio, Maud. Politics in Uniform: Military Officers and Dictatorship in Brazil, 1960–1980. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Cohen, Stanley. States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge: Polity, 2001. Cowie, Sam. “Bolsonaro Tells Students to Read Book by Dictatorship-­Era Torturer.” The Guardian, 30 September 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ sep/30/bolsonaro-­tells-­students-­to-­read-­book-­by-­dictatorship-­era-­torturer. Crouch, Melissa. “States of Legal Denial: How the State in Myanmar Uses Law to Exclude the Rohingya.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 6 December 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2019.1691250. Curthoys, Ann, and John Docker. Is History Fiction? Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010. Czuchnowski, Wojciech. “IPN narzędziem PiS. Do kolegium IPN Sejm przegłosował tylko kandydatów partii Jarosława Kaczyńskiego.” Gazeta Wyborcza, 24 June  2016. https://wyborcza.pl/1,75398,20293542,ipn-­narzedziem-­pis-­ do-­kolegium-­ipn-­sejm-­przeglosowal-­tylko.html.

24  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones d’Ancona, Matthew. Post-­Truth, The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. London: Ebury, 2017. Davis, Evan. Post-­Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It. London: Little Brown, 2017. Dias, José Carlos, José Paulo Cavalcanti Filho, Maria Rita Kehl, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Pedro Bohomoletz de Abreu Dallari, and Rosa Maria Cardoso da Cunha. “Violações De Direitos Humanos Dos Povos Indígenas.” In Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade: Textos temáticos. Brasília: Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2015. http://cnv.memoriasreveladas.gov.br/images/pdf/ relatorio/Volume%202%20-­%20Texto%205.pdf. Dragović-­Soso, Jasna. ‘Saviours of the Nation’: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-­Queen’s University Press, 2002. Edwards, Douglas. The Metaphysics of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Evans, Richard J. In Defense of History. New York: Norton, 1999. Fair, C. Christine. “The Making of the Rohingya Genocide and Myanmar’s Impunity.” Current History 118, no. 807 (2019). ———. “Rohingya: Victims of a Great Game East.” The Washington Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2018.1519356. Finchelstein, Federico. “Why Far-­Right Populists Are at War with History.” The Washington Post, 23 April  2019. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/ 04/23/why-­far-­right-­populists-­are-­war-­with-­history/. Flieger, Estera. “Muzeum II Wojny Światowej w nowej odsłonie: Pilecki urósł, Kolbe ‘ewangelizuje Żydów’, Polska sama wygrała wojnę.” Gazeta Wyborcza, 16 June  2018. https://wyborcza.pl/magazyn/7,124059,23547122,muzeum-­ii-­ wojny-­swiatowej-­w-­nowej-­odslonie-­pilecki-­urosl.html. ———. “The Populist Rewriting of Polish History is a Warning to Us All.” The Guardian, 17 September  2019. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/ sep/17/populist-­rewriting-­polish-­history-­museum-­poland-­gdansk. Flieger, Estera, and Dariusz Gałązka. “Kolejna ‘dobra zmiana’ w Muzeum II Wojny Światowej.” Gazeta Wyborcza, 5 April  2018. https://trojmiasto. wyborcza.pl/trojmiasto/7,35612,23225824,kolejne-­z miany-­w -­w ystawie-­ stalej-­muzeum-­ii-­ws-­przywracamy.html Gerring, John. Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ———. “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences.” Polity 31, no. 3 (1999): 357– 393. https://doi.org/10.2307/3235246. Gilbert, Felix. “German Historiography During the Second World War: A Bibliographical Survey.” The American Historical Review 53, no. 1 (1947). Grabowski, Jan. “The Holocaust and Poland’s ‘History Policy’.” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 10, no. 3 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1080/23739770.2016.1262991 Habib, Mohshin, Christine Jubb, Salahuddin Ahmad, Masudur Rahman, and Henri Pallard. Forced Migration of Rohingya: The Untold Experience. Ottawa, Canada: Ontario International Development Agency, 2018. Hackmann, Jörg. “Defending the ‘Good Name’ of the Polish Nation: Politics of History as a Battlefield in Poland, 2015–18.” Journal of Genocide Research 20, no. 4 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2018.1528742.

Who Controls the Past? 25 Handler, Jerome S., and Matthew C. Reilly. “Contesting ‘White Slavery’ in the Caribbean: Enslaved Africans and European Indentured Servants in Seventeenth-­Century Barbados.” New West Indian Guide 91, no. 1–2 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1163/22134360-­09101056. Hitchcock, Robert K. “The Impacts of Conservation and Militarization on Indigenous Peoples.” Human Nature 30, no. 2 (2019): 217–241. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12110-­019-­09339-­3. Hobsbawm, Eric. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991. London: Abacus, 1995. Hogan, Liam, Laura McAtackney, and Matthew C. Reilly. “The Irish in the Anglo-­Caribbean: Servants or Slaves?” History Ireland (March–April 2016): 18–22. Honko, Lauri. “The Problem of Defining Myth”. In Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth, edited by Alan Dundes. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1984. Hopkins, Valerie. “Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the Rewriting of History.” The Financial Times, 25 July 2019. www.ft.com/content/c7032cb2-­aca5-­11e9-­8030­530adfa879c2. Horowitz, Jason. “A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, from His Longtime Butler.” The New York Times, 15 March  2016. www.nytimes. com/2016/03/16/us/politics/donald-­trump-­butler-­mar-­a-­lago.html. Jones, Chris. “Opinion, Informed Opinion, and Public Perception in the Wiki-­ Age.” Parergon 36, no. 2 (2019). Jorden, Danica. “Bolsonaro’s Revisionist History of Brazil.” openDemocracy, 18 December  2019. www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/la-­historia-­ revisionista-­de-­brasil-­que-­apadrina-­bolsonaro-­en/. Knight, Peter. “Making Sense of Conspiracy Theories”. In Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, edited by Peter Knight. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2003. Kończal, Kornelia. “The Invention of the ‘Cursed Soldiers’ and Its Opponents: Post-­War Partisan Struggle in Contemporary Poland.” East European Politics and Societies 34, no. 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325419865332. Kopka, Bogusław. Konzentrationslager Warschau: Historia i następstwa. Warszawa: IPN, 2007. Lewis, Paul, Caelainn Barr, Seán Clarke, Antonio Voce, Cath Levett, and Pablo Gutiérrez. “Revealed: The Rise and Rise of Populist Rhetoric.” The Guardian, 6 March 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-­interactive/2019/mar/06/ revealed-­the-­rise-­and-­rise-­of-­populist-­rhetoric. Lewis, Paul, Seán Clarke, Caelainn Barr, Josh Holder, and Niko Kommenda. “Revealed: One in Four Europeans Vote Populist.” The Guardian, 20 November  2018. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-­interactive/2018/nov/20/revealed-­ one-­in-­four-­europeans-­vote-­populist. Litvak, Meir. “Netanyahu and the Mufti: Hajj Amin Al-­Husseini as Prime Instigator of the Destruction of European Jewry or Eager Accessory?” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 9, no. 3 (2015): 459–464. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373 9770.2015.1130401. Machcewicz, Paweł. The War That Never Ends: The Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Translated by Anna Połapska Adamek. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.

26  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Malka, Ariel, and Yphtach Lelkes. “In a New Poll, Half of Republicans Say They Would Support Postponing the 2020 Election if Trump Proposed It.” Washington Post, 10 August 2017. Malpas, Jeff. “Retrieving the Truth: Modernism, Post-­modernism and The Problem of Truth.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 75, no. 2/3 (1992). Maposa, Marshall Tamuka. “Zimbabwe.” Chap. 57 in The Palgrave Handbook of Conflict and History Education in the Post-­Cold War Era, edited by Luigi Cajani, Simone Lässig and Maria Repousē. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Maposa, Marshall Tamuka, and Johan Wassermann. “Historical Literacy in a Context of Patriotic History: An Analysis of Zimbabwean History Textbooks.” Africa Education Review 11, no. 2 (2014): 254–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 18146627.2014.927160. “Marszałek Senatu zwraca się do Polonii. ‘Reagujcie na antypolonizm’ ”. Polskie Radio 24, 7 February  2018, https://polskieradio24.pl/5/3/Artykul/2019849, Marszalek-­Senatu-­zwraca-­sie-­do-­Polonii-­Reagujcie-­na-­antypolonizm. Mason, John Brown. “Nazi Concepts of History.” The Review of Politics 2, no. 2 (1940). Messenger, David A. War and Public Memory: Case Studies in Twentieth-­Century Europe. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2020. McIntyre, Lee. Post-­Truth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018. Moghalu, Kingsley. Rwanda’s Genocide: The Politics of Global Justice. New York and Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Morus, Christina M. “Bosnian Genocide Overview.” In Bosnian Genocide: The Essential Guide, edited by Paul R. Bartrop. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2016. Motyka, Grzegorz. “PiS tak naprawił IPN, że teraz nawet lokalny dyrektor lekceważy prezesa.” Gazeta Wyborcza, 17 June  2019. https://wyborcza.pl/ alehistoria/7,162654,24894679,pis-­tak-­naprawil-­ipn-­ze-­teraz-­nawet-­lokalny-­ dyrektor.html. Moyo, Gorden. “Mugabe’s Neo-­ Sultanist Rule: Beyond the Veil of Pan-­ Africanism.” Chap. 4 in Mugabeism? History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe, edited by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-­Gatsheni. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Mpofu, Shepherd “When the Subaltern Speaks: Citizen Journalism and Genocide ‘Victims’ Voices Online.” African Journalism Studies 36, no. 4 (2015). Murambadoro, Ruth. “ ‘We Cannot Reconcile until the Past Has Been Acknowledged’: Perspectives on Gukurahundi from Matabeleland, Zimbabwe.” African Journal on Conflict Resolution 15, no. 1 (2015). www.ajol.info/index.php/ ajcr/article/view/121690. Ndlovu-­Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Rethinking Chimurenga and Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: A Critique of Partisan National History.” African Studies Review 55, no. 3 (2012). Netanyahu, Benjamin. “PM Netanyahu Addresses the 37th Zionist Congress.” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 October  2015. https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ PressRoom/2015/Pages/PM-­Netanyahu-­addresses-­the-­37th-­Zionist-­Congress-­ 20-­Oct-­2015.aspx. Nichols, Tom. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Who Controls the Past? 27 Nowotnik, Norbert, and Zygmunt Walkowski. “Z. Walkowski o Kl Warschau: Tylko na terenie Gęsiówki i bez komór gazowych.” Warsaw: Muzeum Historii Polski and Polska Agencja Prasowa, 20 October  2017. https://dzieje. pl/aktualnosci/z-­walkowski-­o-­kl-­warschau-­tylko-­na-­terenie-­gesiowki-­i-­bez-­ komor-­gazowych. Patai, Raphael. The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1996. Phillip, Abby, and Mike DeBonis. “Without Evidence, Trump Tells Lawmakers 3 Million to 5 Million Illegal Ballots Cost him the Popular Vote.” Washington Post, 23 January 2017. Pine, Lisa. Education in Nazi Germany. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2010. Piper, Melanie. “Speaking Post-­Truth to Power: Comedy as Alternative Facts in Saturday Night Live.” In Trumping Truth: Essays on the Destructive Power of ‘Alternative Facts’, edited by Salvador Jiménez Murguía. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019. Podulka, Maciej. “Kl Warschau wychodzi z cienia historii.” Kurier Wolski (Warszawa), 10 June 2009. Polonsky, Antony, and Joanna B. Michlic, eds. The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. Prunier, Gérard. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Prusin, Alexander. Serbia under the Swastika: A  World War II Occupation. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Ranger, Terence. “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 30, no. 2 (2004). Ray, Larry, and Sławomir Kapralski. “Introduction to the Special Issue  – Disputed Holocaust Memory in Poland.” Holocaust Studies 25, no. 3 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2019.1567657. Regal, Brian. Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­ CLIO, 2009. Rév, István. “Liberty Square, Budapest: How Hungary Won the Second World War.” Journal of Genocide Research 20, no. 4 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080 /14623528.2018.1522820. “Rohingya Emergency.” UNHCR  – The UN Refugee Agency, 31 July  2019. www.unhcr.org/rohingya-­emergency.html. “Rohingya Refugee Response – Bangladesh.” UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency, 15 September 2019. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/71428. Rubin, Barry, and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2014. Rudoren, Jodi. “Netanyahu Retracts Assertion That Palestinian Inspired Holocaust.” The New York Times, 30 October 2015. www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/ world/middleeast/netanyahu-­r etracts-­a ssertion-­t hat-­p alestinian-­i nspired-­ holocaust.html?_r=0. Rwodzi, Aaron. “Whose Fault Was It Anyway? Gukurahundi (1982–87) and the Politics of Blame and Denial.” In The End of an Era? Robert Mugabe and a Conflicting Legacy, edited by Munyaradzi Mawere, Ngonidzashe Marongwe and Fidelis Peter Thomas Duri. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2018.

28  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Sandecki, Maciej. “Dyrekcja Muzeum II Wojny wprowadziła kolejne zmiany w wystawie.” Gazeta Wyborcza, 29 March  2018. https://trojmiasto.wyborcza. pl/trojmiasto/7,35612,23204341,jak-­d yrekcja-­m uzeum-­i i-­w ojny-­r obi-­z -­ polakow-­ofiary-­i-­bohaterow.html Scanish, Meilin, and Norman Eisen, “History in the (Un)Making: Historical Revisionism in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.” Order from Chaos. The Brookings Institution, 25 November  2019. www.brookings.edu/blog/order-­from-­chaos/2019/11/25/ history-­in-­the-­unmaking-­historical-­revisionism-­in-­viktor-­orbans-­hungary/. Schaack, Beth Van. “Determining the Commission of Genocide in Myanmar: Legal and Policy Considerations.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 17 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1093/jicj/mqz008. Schleier, Hans. “German Historiography under National Socialism: Dreams of a Powerful Nation-­State and German Volkstum Come True.” Chap. 14 in Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800, edited by Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Seewann, Gerhard. “Hungary: History as a Legitimizing Precedent  – ‘Illiberal Democracy’.” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-­Forschung 67, no. 2 (2018). www.zfo-­online.de/index.php/zfo/article/view/13455/13197. Sells, Michael A. “Holocaust Abuse: The Case of Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-­ Husayni.” Journal of Religious Ethics 43, no. 4 (2015): 723–759. https://doi. org/10.1111/jore.12119. Service, Hugo. “Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, 1945–9.” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 3 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0022009412441652. Siddi, Marco, and Barbara Gaweda. “The National Agents of Transnational Memory and Their Limits: The Case of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 27, no. 2 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2019.1584096. Siddiquee, Ali. “The Portrayal of the Rohingya Genocide and Refugee Crisis in the Age of Post-­Truth Politics.” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 28 August 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057891119864454. Sims, Amy R. “Intellectuals in Crisis: Historians under Hitler.” The Virginia Quarterly Review 54, no. 2 (1978). Stone, Dan. Constructing the Holocaust: A  Study in Historiography. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003. Tesich, Steve. “The Watergate Syndrome: A Government of Lies.” The Nation, 13 January 1992. Tomasevich, Jozo. War and Revolution in Yugoslaia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Toomey, Michael. “History, Nationalism, and Democracy: Myth and Narrative in Viktor Orbán’s ‘Illiberal Hungary’.” New Perspectives 25, no. 1 (2018). Totten, Samuel, Paul R. Bartrop, and Steven L. Jacobs. Dictionary of Genocide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. Varner, Natasha. “The Curious Origins of the ‘Irish Slaves’ Myth.” Public Radio International, 17 March 2017. www.pri.org/stories/2017-­03-­17/curious-­origins­irish-­slaves-­myth. “Word of the Year 2016.” Oxford University Press. https://languages.oup.com/ word-­of-­the-­year/2016/

Who Controls the Past? 29 Wóycicka, Zofia. “Global Patterns, Local Interpretations: New Polish Museums Dedicated to the Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust.” Holocaust Studies 25, no. 3 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2019.1567660. “Zapomniany niemiecki obóz zagłady w Warszawie: Kl Warschau w latach 1942–1944.” Warszawa: Parafia Św. Stanisława Biskupa Męczennika. www. stanislaw-­bm.pl/images/klwars.pdf.

Part 1

What Is Post-­Truth? Theoretical Considerations

2 Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust and Critical Source Assessment Jędrzej Czerep

Introduction The emergence of the Internet era offered unprecedented access to high-­ quality sources not only to research professionals but also to the general public and participants of public debate. Initial enthusiasm about the role that social media played in mobilising against authoritarian governments at the inception of the Arab Spring further contributed to the anticipation of a new ‘end of history’ unfolding. This time, it was to materialise in the area of conscience and public awareness. In a new digital age, optimists even imagined that the lie was about to disappear from public life. This was because a well-­informed public would be able to easily unmask it. Bestselling authors of the early 2010s prophesised that people who would try to perpetuate myths ‘will struggle to keep their narratives afloat amid a sea of newly informed listeners’ and strongly believed that with more data available, ‘everyone gains a better frame of reference’.1 Amid a widely shared expectation of the triumph of quality over backwardness, symptoms of the emerging crisis were lightly overlooked. Social media offered a perfect ground to nurture confirmation bias – a tendency to believe in sources which support one’s assumptions and dismiss those which provide evidences to the opposite.2 The proliferation of parallel – often-­contradicting – narratives made it difficult to refer to a universal ‘truth’ as each aspired to hold its own. ‘Everyone has their own truth’ became a mantra repeated at multiple levels: by home-­grown philosophers,3 public intellectuals, journalists, and policymakers when challenged about their misinforming record, in book and talk-­show titles (ETV+ in Russia), by the alt-­right media outlets (such as Breitbart), and eventually by popular discourse. Public debate has fragmented and ossified its participants, who become unwilling to believe in anything beyond their filter bubble, unable to let their beliefs be challenged, and unprepared to allow themselves to change their mind.4 For the purpose of this chapter, the post-­truth world will be understood as a set of conditions that allow falsehood, or sources of poor quality, to be equally offered to shape worldviews as truth and expertise. Obviously, lies, manipulations, propaganda, or attempts to make people believe someone said what they

34  Jędrzej Czerep did not say have existed throughout history. Further, some sections of some societies were always prone to accepting falsehoods rather than facts. What changes the game, so to speak, and makes the post-­truth context distinctly different from past historical experiences is the ‘suspension of the rules of discussion’ that used solid data, even if fabricated, as a point of reference around which arguments could be exchanged.5 This new situation has introduced a model where reference to facts can be unproblematically challenged by alternative facts or alternative truths. In a post-­truth world, the notion of subjectivity is extended to all realms of knowledge.6 One of the features of the post-­truth world is a certain helplessness in mitigating the proliferation of falsehood. Especially in online fora, falsehood can spread much faster and wider than any eventual disclaimer or refutation.7 For academics particularly concerned with post-­truth history, there is a need to accept these circumstances as a new standard and adapt accordingly. Nigerian authorities faced this problem when a rumour stating that the country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, died and was replaced by a double, sometimes referred to as a clone. The circulation of this gossip expanded as the original story, at first only associated with hard-­line and not reliable anti-­government activists, was taken up by an Internet news site which added details of the alleged transaction and claimed the imposter had a grip on much of the country’s wealth.8 But only as this second story was grasped by a popular tele-­evangelist, Bishop David Oyedepo, who enjoys a significant following,9 did the story became so big that Buhari himself needed to calm down the public. During his stay in Katowice, Poland, the Nigerian president assured journalists he was not dead and nobody else was playing his role.10 The statement, although performed in a quasi-­informal way, while joking, was an odd act of adherence to the agenda-­setting power of gossip that goes viral and a declaration of acceptance of the new rules of the game.

Bad Money Drives Out Good? The easy availability of a variety of sources has not directed the public towards those of better quality and reliability. Internet-­connected constituencies have failed to delegitimise the authorities of witchdoctors, holy men, or tribal leaders, contrary to what top Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen anticipated in their bestselling The New Digital Age. False prophets and conspiracy theorists are doing better than ever. Beliefs that there is a plan to make Muslims a majority in Europe, that climate change is a hoax, or that the dangers of vaccines are being hidden grew to the extent that some argue they became mainstream. The conspiracies related to immigration were upheld by a reported 48% of Hungarians and 47% of Brexiters.11 Flat-­earth societies received an enormous boost in new memberships around 2015, mostly thanks to

Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust 35 developing their social media accounts and to enjoying the tacit support of YouTube, which put their videos high in suggestions, calculating they would keep viewers engaged.12 Relying on algorithms that suggest what one should see or read offered a fast track to accepting sources that one would not normally consider reliable, but due to exposure and community links, viewers started to normalise and internalise them. Therefore, it helped to radicalise the accidental visitors and turn many of them into full-­blown science deniers. As one participant of a conference attended by a few hundred believers in a flat earth recalled, the movement’s growth could not have been more evident, as the previous gathering he attended attracted three people, including himself. Interestingly, the new sympathisers of the ‘cause’ are, in one sense, dedicated truth seekers who devote much of their time to browsing countless sources in the pursuit of – what they believe to be – the uncomfortable but full truth. Mimicking the scientific approach, they pursue wisdom by being critical towards established authorities with questionable qualities and intentions. Still, this morally driven motivation increasingly pushes them away from proper research findings rather than towards them. This was probably the case of the American rapper B.o.B, who became a prominent flat earther. Even when presented a video recording of a full orbit around the Earth, shot by the astronaut Scott Kelly, he insisted that people were discouraging him because ‘they have something to hide’.13 B.o.B’s denialist activity only declined after an American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, populariser of science, adopted an interesting strategy to challenge the growing influence of science deniers in public debate. Acknowledging their ability to speak the cultural language of the youth, he turned his argument with B.o.B into a show and eventually presented himself as not only better informed but arguably ‘cooler’ than his opponent.14 For historians, the real challenge is to confront the increase in popularity of theories that allegedly unmask centuries-­old truth-­inhibiting conspiracies. The new information environment legitimises them on an unprecedented scale. In pursuit of a goal of ‘exposing’ these ‘real histories’, authors would draw ahistorical concatenations, parallels, and conclusions as long as they serve the goal of and resonate with the worldviews and emotions of the audiences. This helps us understand the recent explosion of popularity of ‘investigative’ publications on the alleged ancient, forgotten empire of the Poles. The pioneering author promoting this belief (or a political statement), Janusz Bieszk, wrote the bestselling Słowiańscy królowie Lechii (Slavic Kings of Lechia), printed by the Bellona publishing house in 2015. In his writing, Bieszk repeatedly asks why no historians and chronicles ever describe the powerful state that covered half of Europe and concludes that this in itself is proof of a conspiracy.15 And the mission to break the alleged collusion of silence excuses him from keeping any scientific standards. Bieszk freely ignores the basic rules of the selection of sources  – he treats original ancient documents and

36  Jędrzej Czerep amateur-­made contemporary maps found on the Internet as equally valid as long as they mention ‘Sarmatia’ and draws continuities of ethnic and political structures (or rather their projections) across 70,000  years of history. Bieszk considers professional historians as enemies and calls for a radical democratisation of historical research. He also postulates publishing a full collection of translated original medieval texts (including falsified chronicles) without any ‘expert’ comments. In his view, historians’ interpretations distract readers from making their own judgements on ancient facts.16 Hard facts, therefore, should be secondary to readers’ feelings and intuitions – which is exactly the way Oxford Dictionaries defines post-­truth. Bieszk proposes a form of post-­truth history where everyone should be given space to establish a truth for themselves. Bieszk heralds the beginning of the revolution in history-­ making, announcing the emergence of a new generation of ‘young historians of the Internet age’ who would fill the gaps left by official historiography. Interestingly, this book and its successors were issued by a reputable publisher, renowned for popularising history by printing high-­quality reader-­friendly publications. Bellona’s previous record makes the decision to authorise the openly antiscientific book symbolic. It welcomed post-­truth discourse into the mainstream, brought it to the bookstores, and thus effectively undermined the credibility of the professionals it traditionally supported. Reactions of the devoted believers of ‘Ancient Poland’ to Napiórkowski’s devastating criticism of Bieszk’s methodology, apart from accusations of his involvement in conspiracy to block the unwanted truth, included a symptomatic comment stating ‘I don’t care if it’s fiction, what I want [to read] is that the Poles are the best’.17 The same notion of post-­truth comes from Swedish web culture journalist Jack Werner’s analysis of reactions to debunking viral myths. In the example he recalls, a Facebook user first believed in a false story of a school in Sweden banning children from having an iPhone cover with a Swedish flag on it (because that was allegedly racist). After he was exposed to a decisive disclaimer, he wrote ‘I don’t care if it’s fake, it’s still messed up!’18 Both statements illustrate similar mechanisms of resistance to hard facts. They also point to situations where its upholders offer a certain excuse for their sticking to the falsehood. In their views, although specific stories might be untrue, they remain relevant if they point to a wider, real problem. Such is the case of the limited interest of historians in Poland in the pre-­Christian history of the Slavic peoples,19 grassroots demand for a discourse glorifying the past,20 or oversensitivity and hypocrisy on racism in Sweden.21

A Quiet Shift in Roles Internet 2.0, with its sense of belonging, participation, and creation, brought a radical shift in relations between sources and recipients of information. Readers and viewers have become actively involved in the

Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust 37 distributing of and commenting on texts and in judging its qualities and allure.22 Audiences, offering feedback and interaction with authors, have become indirectly involved in every step of creating new content and in the process of putting it out. Recipients’ opinions, such as comments following the article, have become points of reference for authors. The latter, on their part, adapted to the new format by making their outputs fit the social media ‘walls’ and memes or by absorbing tweets into the main part of the articles, as an ersatz presentation of the state of a public debate on a certain issue. Such was the case of the BBC’s reporting on Nicki Minaj’s releasing a video partly shot on London’s Westminster Bridge the day before the 2017 terror attack.23 The short text on the story included seven, mostly accidental, pasted tweets. The author’s narration served more as a link between them than as a separate line of argumentation. It can be argued that, in such cases, journalists limit their own roles into that of republishing certain comments, which used to be reactionary and subsidiary by nature. With authors’ assessments replaced by a string of random quotations of Twitter users, the border between the source and recipient is further blurred. As Werner argues, almost every comment, like, share, or tweet on social media should be considered public publishing – a powerful action previously reserved for authors, journalists, and public intellectuals. But while technical tools for publishing have been massively adopted in the public domain, this has not been the case regarding journalists’ ethics and standards. The proliferation of publishers affects the overall quality and trustworthiness of the information system, understood as a global, interconnected pool of texts. It can function properly only if it can be trusted, if it remains a point of reference and a transmission belt of collective wisdom. Its general stability and quality must be of a high standard, and its extremes should not outweigh the core, so that it can self-­regulate just like a slightly swinging pendulum that will always lean towards the equilibrium. Otherwise, the distinction between the standard and the exception becomes problematic, as exemplified by the experiment with an artificial intelligence–driven automatic Twitter user Tay introduced by Microsoft on 23 May 2016. It was designed to imitate the language of a teenager and gradually build her worldview on the basis of interactions with real users of the social network. Within hours, Tay started spreading hateful racist messages, admiring Hitler, denying the Holocaust, upholding conspiracy theories on the World Trade Centre attacks, and even harassing a game developer who had earlier experienced attacks by online stalkers.24 Whether or not her behaviour was caused by the interference of trolls, deliberately providing her with malicious content to learn from, as suggested by Microsoft, the experiment failed. Nevertheless, it proved helpful in exposing the vulnerability of an individual to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff in a situation where the proportion of trash content in the information set is too high.

38  Jędrzej Czerep This new situation modifies the common perception of where and what the source is and complicates one’s relation to the information flow. Credit for bringing the story to the public shifts from the original author to the last republisher. This hardly noticed but highly impactful change stripped agents of selection – who prefiltered agendas of public debate,25 later known as gatekeepers or agenda setters26 – of the reason to exist. With the inflation of content quantity, decrease in their overall quality, and lack of clarity on the hierarchy of sources and directions of flow of information, the distinction between the rule and the exception becomes problematic. If the post-­truth approach is being instrumentalised and effectively promoted by heavyweight shapers of public debate, the likelihood increases that their ways of dealing with truth will be followed.

Losing Dialogue Skills Another key element of post-­truth is a loss of confidence in experts and traditional sources of authority. At the core of this crisis of trust lies a combination of fast-­evolving changes in how participation in dialogue is understood, the deceptive comfort of having access to an unlimited spectrum of publications, and the symbolic attractiveness of rejecting the mainstream. Moving conversations from face-­to-­face settings into social media affects the way people interact with one another. The introduction of online devices into our daily lives has seen deep changes affecting childhood and family dynamics.27 As body-­language skills are not required in online communication – as is the case with handwritten texts – their possession gradually decreases and reduces the ability to communicate effectively in real life. Research on Tinder has produced similar conclusions: its users become more concerned about their appearances than those who do not use it, and their self-­esteem is lower.28 Retaining abilities in interpersonal communication among employees has become a point of concern for executives.29 The decline in people-­to-­people communication skills and empathy is accompanied by an unprecedented overload of emotions in the public sphere.30 A  combination of these factors has contributed to the emergence of a fearful attitude towards the act of conversation, which could leave both sides enriched and transformed but instead constitutes something one should avoid.31 A meeting of two (or more) interlocutors is being reduced to mutual presentations of one-­sided points of view supported by strong emotions, where the disputants refuse to review their original stances, whatever the cost. This scheme is now standardised by the way political debates are being held and moderated, with participants hardly accepting the moral right of their opponents to question their views. The aforementioned patterns are further consolidated with the effect of filter bubbles. Being on social media offers the illusion of connection to a wide spectrum of opinions, while its algorithms and the user’s own

Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust 39 decisions to limit the visibility of certain voices or topics entrenches them with ubiquitous confirmations and discourages them from questioning the validity of their readymade opinions.32 Moving away from the safety of one’s bubble seems both unpleasant and unnecessary – a rather odd act of exposure to the unknown or to unwanted territory. The social media– accelerated model of exchanging information discourages the user from seeking value in the interlocutors’ opinions. While winners of the verbal or pictographic battles – particularly those with huge following – are immediately granted satisfying online fame, arguments of the defeated are labelled worthless and pushed out of the winners’ perspectives and stigmatised. It pushes supporters of certain statements to adopt a quasi-­tribal approach of ‘us’ vs ‘them’ in communication. Those perceptions filter out into the communication schemes within families and societies and cause cracks in social fabric, as observed in the United States, where friends or relatives are increasingly often unable to cope with their political differences.33 These phenomena produce attitudes of rejecting legitimacy and moral qualifications of entire social groups and their narratives, distrusting them by default and attributing suspicious intentions to them.

From Denying Science to a Moral Community Adherence to a certain set of beliefs and values offers its upholder a sense of belonging to a like-­minded community unified by the belief in its moral advantages. The concept of moral community derives from attempts to explain processes of the consolidation of traditional rural communities as driven by social and moral factors,34 the latter consisting of sets of shared beliefs about morality and behaviour.35 Douglas Johnson and David Anderson define moral communities as those to whose members’ basic – internally agreed  – moral standards apply, where internal conflicts are solved through the mediation of an agent representing symbolic values to which they, and only they, subscribe.36 Perception of one’s own group through such a moral lens places one in the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ dichotomy, where the outside sphere is not entitled to challenge groups’ principal worldviews or to point out their alleged wrongdoing. In conspiracy discourse, a specifically suspicious category of ‘them’ is embodied in the notion of the mainstream. Its views, knowledge, or pretences to gatekeeping are identified with perceived professional privileges, symbolic power, and a pretence to be depositors of a ‘better’ kind of expertise. Those views and its upholders would be distrusted by default. To rely on mainstream news sources, and even to believe its representatives, would mean taking a step back from self-­achieved freedom and empowerment to the abandoned kingdom of former gatekeepers. To roam the mainstream (read its magazines, watch its TV shows, or even to discuss with interlocutors who trust them), one would have to put on a protective shield of immunity to the encountered arguments. Upon

40  Jędrzej Czerep returning to one’s soulmates, one would then ridicule what others – the naïve, the misled – hopelessly believe. Abandoning the mainstream can become a quasi-­ritual, an initiation to the community of the righteous, curious, rebellious truth seekers. The 2007 conspiracy theorist documentary Zeitgeist by Peter Joseph, claiming that the 9/11 World Trade Centre attack was staged by US authorities, attracted a multimillion audience on Google Video and other online platforms. Participation in its ‘eye-­opening’ screenings in private and semi-­official settings offered its viewers an experience of joining an exclusive, avant-­garde community whose members share similar concerns and sentiments.37 Its authors, who capitalised on the initial success with two film sequels, attempted to build a mass movement, which eventually took the form of an apocalyptic quasi-­cult. Its members would combine far-­ left and far-­right fears and myths in their worldviews. The movies aspired to explain secret meanings of major global developments with a quasi-­ scientific ‘analysis’ of the world economic system. Incoherencies in the films’ narratives would be overcome by movement sympathisers’ general rejection of established knowledge and by the perception of standing on the side of truth and morality. Alex Jones’s InfoWars portal  – which detects and decries conspiracies and lies in almost anything the mainstream media says  – devotes much of its energy to building a sense of belonging among its readers and viewers. It uses slogans and gadgets presenting them as a spiritual heirs of the egalitarian philosophy that drove the American Revolution and laid the foundations to the Declaration of Independence. T-­shirts with the ‘I am the Resistance, est. 1776’ slogan, available in its online store, appeal to the tradition of insubordination to the dominating powers and the freedom to project one’s place into the world. Similar motives resonate throughout its grassroots fan base. Singer-­songwriter Ruben Obed, who produces InfoWars-­inspired songs, stresses the empowering effect of adhering to the ‘resistance’ community, which made him feel part of the cause and motivated him to assist in ‘waking people up’.38 The powerful notion of being a rebel for the good cause by rejecting the mainstream cannot be ignored as mere Internet folklore. Derived from Promethean ethics (empowering ordinary people with previously unavailable tools and raising their quality of life), it enriches the individualistic aspect of Western culture (appreciation of being an outsider) with a quasi-­religious, value-­based sense of belonging (to the community of the ‘knowing’). Thus, for the anti-­mainstream communities, rejecting unwanted sources gains a new ethical dimension.

Everyone Is an Expert Widespread connection to the Internet, which opens access to references on almost every issue, has had a profound effect on the individual’s

Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust 41 position in the hierarchy of sources. It gives the empowering sensation of being omnipotent while online. However, as Google-­ like engines use individual search history, user’s records of cookies, and location to differentiate results,39 they fail to offer a coherent, universal gradation of the quality of scores to different individuals. As a result, the ‘truth seeker’ would rather stick to his general worldview and disregard what established references say, whether the given claim originated from an amateur or qualified expert, as long as it fit the user’s opinions, emotions, and sympathies. A layperson is thus empowered not only to question informed opinions of professionals but also to disclaim the idea of placing greater weight on expert opinion.40 As in the case of scepticism towards the mainstream, the idea of professionalism is being increasingly reduced to the notion of ‘official knowledge’ – an imperfect set of beliefs, which would benefit from being ‘supplied’ with alternatives. If any self-­declared ‘researcher’ can challenge a professional with alternative findings, one could easily conclude that official knowledge must have been censored or that its holders were deliberately not telling the whole truth. And again, filling this gap not only delivers personal satisfaction (‘I am an expert myself, as good as any academic’) but also offers a feeling of acting for the greater good. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that the subjective and inflated trust in one’s own mastery in research, understood as the ability to conclusively prove the opposite to established opinion on any issue, quickly leads to a general attitude of rejecting hard facts. Given all this, the success of What Doctors Don’t Tell You  – an antiscientific lifestyle magazine, which gained mass popularity in the United Kingdom in 2012 and spread across the world – should hardly be surprising. Not only does the title suggest that a nefarious group solidarity exists among medical professionals to prevent ordinary people from gaining access to full knowledge, but it also presents its own ‘findings’, such as claiming that chemotherapy does not treat cancer but makes it grow bigger or the possibility of vitamin C curing AIDS,41 as a valid equivalent to formal sources. Furthermore, to mobilise its readers and reassure them in their pursuit of alternative facts, its editor-­in-­chief presented any attack on their newly won position – such as a call by The Times to take the magazine off open-­access shop shelves – as a revenge of the system and proof that she is right. When the magazine faced legal problems, its columnists loudly demanded the public be given access to a full spectrum of sources, ascribing to itself the role of the defender of the freedom of research. Similarly, controversies on whether celebrity activist Jenny McCarthy was qualified to speak out against vaccination while ignoring achievements of established medicine only strengthened McCarthy’s stance. When asked about the sources of her conviction that vaccines cause autism and her casual dismissal of medical authorities, she proudly referred to the ‘University of Google’ as key to her

42  Jędrzej Czerep education.42 Even though she was aware that the bulk of experts have hard evidence that vaccines are safe and helpful, she would not seek to legitimise her position by entering into dialogue with them as equals. Instead, she rejected the medical establishment in its entirety by saying, ‘we’re sick of it!’ thereby fomenting popular rage against the monopoly of medical institutions.43

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted a number of features of the post-­truth world that can affect our understanding of history (such as a forgotten Polish empire) or science (such as the anti-­vaccination movement). These features include the digital elevation of the public from passive reader to active commenter; the loss of dialogical skills; the feeling of belonging to a righteous, anti-­mainstream community; and the imagined democratisation of knowledge through Google ‘university’. A combination of the elements and mechanisms described in this chapter makes embracing flawed datasets a far more serious act than at first it may appear. The inability to assess the validity of sources represents a side effect of a general crisis of trust that has come with the social media–driven shift in standards of interpersonal communication. It is an immanent part of the deep, wide-­ranging processes of renewing one’s identity in a complex and fast-­changing world, where a sense of belonging to a moral community helps in coping with overarching chaos. Despite contradicting the Enlightenment’s scientific (e.g. encyclopaedic) tradition, the act of rejecting the validity of certain sources represents a paradoxical adherence to Western intellectual heritage. It involves identifying with the tradition of civil disobedience and a democratising mission. And this sense of acting for the public good and for the sake of one’s identity makes the crisis of trust in sources a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a lack of research skills and therefore overlooked.

Notes 1. Schmidt and Cohen, The New Digital Age, 35. 2. Dardenne and Leyens, “Confirmation Bias.” 3. Sokol, Thinking About Ordinary Things, 103. 4. Pariser, The Filter Bubble, 12–15. 5. Dehnel, “Każdy.” 6. Pomerantsev, This Is Not Propaganda. 7. Vosoughi et al., “The Spread of True and False News Online.” 8. Dare, “Matters Miscellaneous.” 9. Sahara TV, “Cloned Nigerian President.” 10. Robinson, “President Buhari of Nigeria.” 11. Leal and Drochon, “Brexit and Trump.” 12. Silva, “Flat Earth.”

Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust 43 3. Nace, “NASA Astronauts.” 1 14. Comedy Central, “The Nightly Show.” 15. Napiórkowski, “Przepis na pseudohistoryczny bestseller.” 16. Bieszk, Słowiańscy królowie Lechii, 22, 25, 277. 17. Napiórkowski, “Imperium Lechitów kontratakuje.” 18. Werner, “Debunking Viral Rumors.” 19. Rosa, “Pułapki historii.” 20. Wilczyk, “Słownik Polsko-­polski.” 21. Becker, “The Global Machine.” 22. Rogers et al., “The New Age of Propaganda.” 23. “Nicki Minaj criticised over Westminster Bridge video” (BBC). 24. Price, “Microsoft Is Deleting its AI Chatbot’s Incredibly Racist Tweets.” 25. Park, The Immigrant Press, 328–330. 26. McCombs and Shaw, “The Agenda-­ Setting Function of Mass Media,” 176–181. 27. Steiner-­Adair and Barker, “The Big Disconnect.” 28. Hunte, “Are We Losing the Art of Face-­To-­Face Communication?” 29. Goman, “Has Technology Killed Face-­To-­Face Communication?” 30. Bloom, Against Empathy. 31. Stawiszyński, “Dyskusjofobia.” 32. Pariser, The Filter Bubble, 12–15. 33. Pierre, “Why Has America Become So Divided?” 34. Durkheim, Division of Labor in Society. 35. Marshall and Scott, A Dictionary of Sociology, 488. 36. Anderson and Douglas, Revealing Prophets, 18–19. 37. Goldberg, “Brave New World.” 38. “Infowars interviews Ruben Oben.” 39. Weisberg, “Bubble Trouble.” 40. Nichols, The Death of Expertise, 20. 41. Chapman, “What Doctors Don’t Tell You.” 42. Vanden Heuvel, “Jenny McCarthy’s Vaccination Fear-­Mongering.” 43. Greenfeld, “The Autism Debate.”

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44  Jędrzej Czerep Dare, Olatunji. “Matters Miscellaneous.” The Nation (Mushin, Nigeria), 27 November 2018. https://thenationonlineng.net/matters-­miscellaneous-­13/ Dardenne, Benoit, and Jacques-­Philippe Leyens. “Confirmation Bias as a Social Skill.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21, no. 11 (1995). https:// doi.org/10.1177/01461672952111011. Dehnel, Jacek. “Każdy, kto należy do społeczności LGBT w Polsce, jest ofiarą fake newsów.” Interview by Emilia Padoł, Onet, 26 July 2019. https://kultura. onet.pl/wywiady-­i-­artykuly/jacek-­dehnel-­o-­marszu-­rownosci-­w-­bialymstoku­lgbt-­i-­nowej-­ksiazce-­wywiad/ze94pwk. Durkheim, Émile. Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960. Goldberg, Michelle. “Brave New World.” Tablet Magazine, 2 February  2011. www.tabletmag.com/jewish-­news-­and-­politics/57732/brave-­new-­world. Goman, Carol Kinsey. “Has Technology Killed Face-­ To-­ Face Communication?” Forbes, 14 November 2018. www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/ 2018/11/14/has-­technology-­killed-­face-­to-­face-­communication/. Greenfeld, Karl Taro. “The Autism Debate: Who’s Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?” Time, 25 February  2010. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 1968100,00.html. Hunte, Alex. “Are We Losing the Art of Face-­to-­Face Communication?” Huffington Post, 12 December  2016. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/alex-­hunte/are-­ we-­losing-­the-­art-­of-­_b_13514074.html?guccounter=1 “Infowars interviews Ruben Oben.” YouTube, 18 August 2017. www.youtube. com/watch?v=jz1cqZF1I1k&list=PLwhIVu7MFaqltmZ0DemJyDXPF5fC4nY gA&index=4&t=0s. Leal, Hugo and Hugo Drochon. “Brexit and Trump Voters More Likely to Believe in Conspiracy Theories, Survey Shows.” CRASSH News, 23 November 2018. www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/blog/post/brexit-­and-­trump-­voters-­more-­likely-­to­believe-­in-­conspiracy-­theories-­surve. Marshall, Gordon, and John Scott. A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. McCombs, Maxwell, and Donald Shaw. “The Agenda-­Setting Function of Mass Media.” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1972). Nace, Trevor. “NASA Astronauts Provide a Perfect Response to B.o.B’s GoFundMe to Prove the Earth is Flat.” Forbes, 5 October 2017. www.forbes. com/sites/trevornace/2017/10/05/nasa-­astronauts-­perfect-­response-­to-­b-­o-­bs-­ gofundme-­to-­prove-­the-­earth-­is-­flat/#3d201be1ce3b Napiórkowski, Marcin. “Imperium Lechitów kontratakuje.” Mitologia Wspó­ łczesna, 27 January 2019. http://mitologiawspolczesna.pl/imperium-­lechitow-­ kontratakuje/. ———.“Przepis na pseudohistoryczny bestseller. Cała postprawda o imperium Lechitów.” Mitologia Współczesna, 23 January 2019. http://mitologiawspolczesna.pl/tryumf-­historycznej-­post-­prawdy-­pseudonaukowe-­bestsellery-­o-­ starozytnym-­imperium-­lechitow/. Nichols, Thomas. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. “Nicki Minaj Criticised over Westminster Bridge Video, Filmed the Day before the Attack.” BBC, 20 April 2017. www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/39650861/

Post-­Truth as Crisis of Trust 45 nicki-­minaj-­criticised-­over-­westminster-­bridge-­video-­filmed-­the-­day-­before-­ the-­attack. Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. New York: Penguin Books, 2011. Park, Robert Ezra. The Immigrant Press and its Control. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1922. Pierre, Joe. “Why Has America Become So Divided?” Psychology Today, 5 September 2018. www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/psych-­unseen/201809/why-­ has-­america-­become-­so-­divided. Pomerantsev, Peter. This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. London: Faber & Faber, 2019. Price, Rob. “Microsoft is deleting its AI chatbot’s incredibly racist tweets.” Business Insider, 24 March 2016. www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-­deletes-­racist­genocidal-­tweets-­from-­ai-­chatbot-­tay-­2016-­3?IR=T Robinson, Matthew. “President Buhari of Nigeria: I’m not Dead or a Clone.” The Times, 3 December  2018. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/president-­buhari-­ of-­nigeria-­i-­havent-­died-­and-­been-­replaced-­by-­clone-­bwrz065rw Rogers, Zac, Emily Bienvenue, and Maryanne Kelton. “The New Age of Propaganda: Understanding Influence Operations in the Digital Age,” War on the Rocks, 1 May  2019. https://warontherocks.com/2019/05/the-­new-­age-­of-­propaganda­understanding-­influence-­operations-­in-­the-­digital-­age/. Rosa, Igor. “Pułapki historii. Historiografia chrztu Polski od średniowiecza do współczesności.” HistMag, 15 April 2016. https://histmag.org/pulapki-­historii-­ historiografia-­chrztu-­polski-­od-­sredniowiecza-­do-­wspolczesnosci-­13122. Sahara TV. “Cloned Nigerian President: Bishop David Oyedepo Propagates Buhari Likely Dead.” YouTube, 3 December  2018. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Qg1SUFU7CJA. Schmidt, Eric, and Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. London: John Murray, 2013. Silva, Marco. “Flat Earth: How did YouTube Help Spread a Conspiracy Theory?” BBC, 18 July 2019. www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07h3yc0/flat-­earth-­how-­did-­ youtube-­help-­spread-­a-­conspiracy-­theory. Sokol, Jan. Thinking About Ordinary Things: A Short Invitation to Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Stawiszyński, Tomasz. “Dyskusjofobia.” Tok FM, 22 October  2019. www. tokfm.pl/Tokfm/7,124813,25334410,stawiszynski-­dyskusjofobia.html. Steiner-­Adair, Catherine, and Teresa H. Barker. The Big Disconnect. Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, New York: Harper, 2013. Vanden Heuvel, Katrina. “Jenny McCarthy’s Vaccination Fear-­Mongering and the Cult of False Equivalence.” The Nation, 22 July 2013. www.thenation.com/article/ jenny-­mccarthys-­vaccination-­fear-­mongering-­and-­cult-­false-­equivalence/. Vosoughi, Soroush, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral. “The Spread of True and False News Online.” Science 359, no. 6380 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1126/science. aap9559. Weisberg, Jacob. “Bubble Trouble. Is Web Personalization Turning us into Solipsistic Twits?” Slate, 10 June 2011. https://slate.com/news-­and-­politics/2011/06/ eli-­p ariser-­s -­t he-­f ilter-­b ubble-­i s-­w eb-­p ersonalization-­t urning-­u s-­i nto-­ solipsistic-­twits.html.

46  Jędrzej Czerep Werner, Jack. “Debunking viral rumors – A story of modern folklore.” Uploaded 29 January 2016. TEDx Talks on YouTube, 18:11. www.youtube.com/watch? v=IbXI0hdviLs Wilczyk, Wojciech. “Słownik Polsko-­ polski.” Exhibition at Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot, 8 November–15 December  2019. https://pgs.pl/ wojciech-­wilczyk-­slownik-­polsko-­polski/

3 Post-­Truth and Consequences Adam Chmielewski

Post-­Truth Recognised According to dominant sentiment, the concept of post-­truth, which refers to the blatant mendacity perpetrated by politicians to secure popular support, legitimises this practice as something acceptable. Some commentators argued that those who approve of post-­truth should remember that it means nothing more than lying by those whom we have given our trust. The term ‘post-­truth’, coined by Steve (Stojan) Tesich, an American playwright of Serbian origin, originally referred to something else, however. ‘Post-­truth’ appears in his bitter diagnosis, in which he focused not on the dishonesty of politicians but rather on the indifference and civic apathy of the people who elect them. His argument is a critical assessment of the public opinion in the United States at the time of three Republican presidencies: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush. He refers to ‘Watergate syndrome’, which, as he claimed, emerged after the revelations that something wrong took place in the highest offices of the country. The syndrome of the public shying from truth has been further strengthened by the public and political attitude towards the Iran-­Contra affair. In his conclusion, Tesich stressed that the morally dubious silence of the silent majority took place not in the conditions of political violent oppression of a Soviet-­type regime but in a country consistently presenting itself as a paragon of liberty: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-­truth world.1 The diagnosis, applied to the US political culture, is particularly sour. The belief in the importance of truth in politics has always been strong

48  Adam Chmielewski in the United States, drawing its strength, most especially, from various Christian denominations and their conviction of the redemptive power of truth. It also draws its force from the teachings of the Founding Fathers inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed ‘certain truths’ as ‘self-­evident’. Anecdotally, though not insignificantly, the importance of truth in US culture is also widely promulgated by the story about young George Washington and the cherry tree.2

Alethic Populism Widespread lies in current politics and the ensuing political damages provoke an attitude which may be called alethic populism. It is an adamant belief in the validity of truth and an unwavering demand that it be restored to, and respected, in political life. Alethic populism as a moralistic defence of truth is a progeny of a naïve belief in the unproblematic status of truth and is the ground on which many forms of populism forage. Alethic populists, believing in a moral dimension of truth, demand respect for truth, but usually only the one they profess themselves, not infrequently seeking in it a justification for exclusivist politics. Alethic populism lurks behind a variety of other populisms. Most commonly, it is known as religious and racist exclusivism aimed against those who do not believe and/or accept the truth professed by a given religious or ethnic grouping. Applying scientific knowledge and/or the scientific method to unsuitable areas of investigation, known as scientism, belongs to the same family. Scientism is not so much an invitation to a fruitful debate about the truths put forward by scientists but rather an attempt to silence those who dare express their doubts about them. Thus, scientism is the most serious enemy of science. One may also mention philosophical types of alethic populism. Its populist force comes from a belief that anyone who questions the existence of truth deserves the name of a relativist or even a nihilist. In other words, alethic populism functions in the same way as religion in that its intervention in the process of deliberation is tantamount to an end of rational inquiry. In other words, alethic populism is often the justification for various forms of political populism which, in the name of its own absolutely true view of the world, do not hesitate to resort to lies or violence. Alethic populism functions as a gag or as a conversation stopper.3 Apart from the foregoing points, alethic populists’ demand for whole truth and nothing but the truth cannot be met, because any human community owes its continuing existence not only to adequate knowledge sufficient for its survival but also to the awareness of the existence of knowledge which is not to be expressed. The adamant insistence on truth in various spheres of human life would be tantamount to cynical parrhesia,4 which, while sometimes salutary and welcome, is usually disruptive for communal life. The point has been made by Thomas Nagel, who

Post-­Truth and Consequences 49 insisted that concealment, which includes not only secrecy and deception but also reticence and non-­acknowledgement, is not only a condition of civilisation but also constitutive of the distinction between the public and the private.5

Evaporation of Truth The present uproar around the concept of post-­truth raises, once again, the question concerning the place and the role of truth in politics. It is believed that the quandary might be resolved by a recourse to philosophy. One has to say, however, that even though, or rather just because, truth has been intensely debated by philosophers, the effects of their labours in this regard are disappointing for three major reasons. First, the alleged expulsion of truth from politics is interpreted as a consequence of the destruction of truth itself, which is commonly blamed on so-­called postmodernism, or more widely on the doctrines which approach the universalist, foundationalist, and objectivist views of human knowledge with suspicion. Second, philosophers put forward so many, often mutually exclusive, conceptions of truth that no unified opinion on the subject may be expected from them. Third, the topic of the role of truth in politics has been addressed by many philosophers since Plato, but their predominant opinion on the subject may seem discouraging. This is unsurprising, because philosophers differ in their perception of the role of truth in politics. Some of them are convinced that truth should be seen as salvation; others, no less cogently, argue that it is a source of oppression. The issue is mired also by other, more fundamental difficulties. The most obvious ones have to do with the fact that there are no agreed definitions of the concept of politics, the political, or truth itself. The problems are additionally aggravated by a multiplicity of concepts employed in the discussion. Truth is substituted, all too easily, by truthfulness, veracity, validity, accuracy, facts, data, and so on, whereas falsity is used interchangeably with lies, duplicity, mendacity, deceit, dishonesty, fabrication, sham, deception, and so on. While the respective sets of concepts are related to each other, they are also unavoidably charged with moral overtones that get in the way of arriving at the truth of the truth in politics.

Philosophy and Truth Truth became a subject of philosophical attention at the turn of the 6th century BCE, thanks to Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Heraclitus, true inventors of the concept, and problem, of truth. Ever since, philosophers have exerted themselves to establish its meaning so much that its seemingly clear common-­sense intuition was lost. To realise the extent to which the status of truth in philosophy is questioned and questionable,

50  Adam Chmielewski it is worth running through the catalogue of its most popular definitions and conceptions. To begin with, truth is identified with reality itself, or the Being, with its whole or with its pieces, or with the knowledge about them. It is understood as an attribute of objects or a property of knowledge about objects. Some believe that truth is pre-­existing and eternal; others believe it is transient and dynamic. It is seen as transcendent, immanent, or relative. Most philosophers believe that truth is something to be discovered rather than created; others believe otherwise. There is no agreement on which components of knowledge can legitimately be considered carriers of truth. Most philosophers believe that sentences, statements, or propositions are capable of performing this role, but they are doubtful about mental states, like thoughts, or perceptions, like images. Some believe that truth is an attribute of individual elements of knowledge; others identify it with the whole of knowledge. Most often, truth is understood as a result of a special relationship between the knowledge of reality and reality itself. The classical conception of truth conceives of this relationship as correspondence, adequacy, or agreement between statements about reality and the reality to which those statements refer, but there is no agreement on how this relation is to be understood. The most important result of the philosophical work on the concept of truth is in fact the subversion of the notion of truth as correspondence. The most contentious issue is the criterion capable of determining whether the relationship of correspondence between statements and objects to which they refer holds or not. The foregoing issues may be illustrated by historical examples. The impossibility of finding a criterion enabling one to make sense of the relationship of correspondence led to the formulation of a number of non-­classical theories of truth. The evidential conception of truth is one of them. It is usually attributed to Descartes, though its premonitions may be found already among ancient philosophers. Such an approach has been countenanced by Martin Heidegger with his idea of aletheia; ἀ-­λήθεια is the opposite of Λήθη – that is, ‘forgetfulness’ or ‘oblivion’ – and is usually translated as ‘disclosedness’ or ‘revealedness’. Heidegger influenced political philosopher Leo Strauss, who believed in truth as a result of the non-­mediated perception of things. The coherence theory of truth asserts that a statement may be accepted as true if and only if it is not contradicted by the ones which have already been accepted as true. Its stronger version demands that it is not enough for a new statement to cohere with the statements already belonging to the system, but moreover, it must endow them with additional justification that they previously lacked. A consensual conception of truth is somewhat related to the former one and asserts that only those statements which are or may be accepted as true by all people or a group of people consisting of more than one

Post-­Truth and Consequences 51 person may be considered true. Jürgen Habermas is interpreted as the main contemporary champion of such a conception of truth. Various pragmatist conceptions stress the dynamic nature of the process through which truth is supposed to emerge. Charles S. Peirce’s limit conception of truth asserts that truth is the knowledge which will necessarily be accepted at the end of an inquiry by all involved in it: ‘The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality’.6 Peirce thus stressed the idea of approximation to truth as well as its incompleteness and partiality: truth is permanently incomplete, because it is an agreement of an abstract statement with an ideal limit to which all scientific inquiries are directed. An essential aspect of truth is its inadequacy and one-­sidedness: ‘The third indispensable ingredient is a sincere doubt in the experimenter’s mind as to the truth of that [given] hypothesis’.7 Most of the pragmatist philosophers followed in Peirce’s footsteps. According to the convenience theory of truth, formulated by William James, truth refers only to the convenient modes of thought, just as rightness refers only to the convenient ways of conduct. John Dewey asserted in his self-­corrective conception of truth that each inquiry has a self-­corrective nature in so far as its results are subjected to the tests conducted by a community of researchers who aim for the clarification, justification, and refutation of proposed statements. An interesting contribution to the pragmatist theory came from William Hocking, who observed that statements leading to expected results may be true or false; but if they lead to a disappointment, they are certainly false, because true statements are unfailingly reliant. Hocking’s approach to truth seems to be a synthesis of Peirce’s fallibilism and Karl Popper’s falsificationism and is interpreted as a negative pragmatism. Richard Rorty’s bravado idea that truth is something others will let us get away with saying is also worth mentioning.8 For this reason, it may be called the impunity conception of truth. The emphatic conception of truth asserts that the concept of truth serves no epistemological purposes but only emphatic ones. It is based on an obvious observation that our languages fulfil not only a descriptive function that enables us to produce statements describing the world but also argumentative, critical, or hortative ones. This may be illustrated by an example from Gilbert Ryle, who observed that the belief in the truth of a sentence ‘two plus two equals four’ may be conveyed by saying that ‘the statement “two plus two equals four” is true’, but in another context, it may be inculcated into the mind of a pupil by yelling at him ‘Two plus two equals four!’ Shouting out a statement may indeed help to convince someone of its truth, though it achieves the purpose in a different way from just stating it or otherwise arguing on behalf of its truth.

52  Adam Chmielewski In view of the diversity of conceptions of truth and disagreements ensuing from this abundance, there emerged a number of theories which deny the usefulness of the predicate of truth altogether. They are known as dispensability, redundancy, disappearance, deflationary, or ‘no-­truth’ conceptions of truth. They claim that the concept is spurious, disposable, unnecessary, and indeed redundant. The basic argument in favour of such theories asserts that, for example, a sentence ‘ “x is y” is true’ is equivalent to just stating ‘x is y’. In other words, we may easily get rid of the predicate ‘is true’ from the epistemological discourse without any harm or cognitive loss. One should stress that among thinkers ill-­ disposed towards the concept of truth were such eminent logicians as Frank P. Ramsey, Alfred J. Ayer, Peter Strawson, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Robert Brandom. Against alethic populism, truth appears to be an impenetrable enigma.9 The resulting evaporation of truth from philosophy therefore cannot be blamed only on contemporary postmodern thinkers who indeed questioned the sensibility of truth. Undoubtedly, postmodern philosophers, as Nietzsche’s progeny, were under the spell of his powerful adage in which he equated truth with a movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions – they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.10 Nietzsche also claimed that ‘necessary lies’ were, as Martin Jay paraphrases, ‘the fictions on which all politics is based’.11 Despite that, most of the blame falls rather on the philosophers for whom the possibly strictest grasp of the essence of truth was of paramount importance. The chief effect of their toils is that the concept had lost its apparent intuitively clear meaning, if it ever had one. In view of this, one should not be surprised that many philosophers themselves in fact renounce the concept of truth altogether. It is thus fair to conclude that nothing has undermined the belief in the incontestability of truth more than the persistent philosophical attempts to define it in an incontestable way.

Truth, Politics, and the Cognitocratic Fallacy The question of the role of truth in politics, or more generally the relationship between truth and politics, has been addressed by numerous philosophers since the birth of the philosophy of politics. Canonically, it

Post-­Truth and Consequences 53 was dealt with by Plato in his Republic, where he actually recommended the employment of γενναῖον ψεῦδος – that is, ‘noble lie’ or ‘noble falsehood’ – as essential instruments of politics, which goes much against the grain of the present indignation about the deceptiveness of politicians. He claimed that ‘falsehood, though of no use to the gods, is useful to people as a form of drug, clearly we must allow only doctors to use it, not private citizens’ (389b).12 He also expected the people of his imagined city to accept falsehoods employed by their leaders ‘in silence’, to allow themselves to ‘be persuaded by’ them, ‘fearing their commanders’ (389e).13 In other words, Plato’s politics, epistemologically grounded in truth, is to be implemented by means of a systemic use of deliberate falsehoods. Quite often, the nearly universal admiration of Plato’s views evaporates at this point, while the meaning of his concept of γενναῖον ψεῦδος is a source of interminable controversy. The problem of noble falsehood has been revived by Karl R. Popper,14 provoking in particular a reply from R.B. Levinson.15 The perception of the role of truth in politics was greatly affected by Niccolò Machiavelli. The importance of Machiavelli lies in his breaking away from the constraints of cognitive orders established by major intellectual systems which preceded him.16 He repudiated the moralism of classical Greek philosophy and Platonic attempts to ground political power in epistemology, and he rejected the subjection of politics to religious beliefs, countenanced by the medieval Christian thinkers and ecclesiastical practical politics. Machiavelli advocated for the autonomy of politics and recommended a recourse to all available means which may bring the ruler closer to their political aims, including those inconsistent with private morality. Declaring his sincere desire to be truthful about political mechanisms, he stressed that A wise ruler . . . cannot and should not keep his word when such an observance would be to his disadvantage, and when the reasons that caused him to make a promise are removed. If men were all good, this precept would not be good. But since men are a wicked lot and will not keep their promises to you, you likewise need not keep yours to them. A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to colour over his failure to keep his word.17 More importantly, he stressed the political benefits of deception: it is not necessary for a prince to possess all of the [good] qualities, but it is very necessary for him to appear to possess them. Furthermore, I  shall dare to assert this: that having them and always observing them is harmful, but appearing to observe them is useful: for instance, to appear merciful, faithful, humane, trustworthy, religious, and to be so; but with his mind disposed in such a way

54  Adam Chmielewski that, should it become necessary not to be so, he will be able and know how to change to the opposite. One must understand this: a prince . . . must often act against his faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion. And so it is necessary that he should have a mind ready to turn itself according to the way the winds of Fortune and the changing circumstances command him. (emphasis added)18 In his novel perspective, the efficacy of political action rose to pre-­ eminence and pushed to the background the epistemological category of truth and moral virtues; it also left no room for any theological justification of political power. In this – as Isaiah Berlin claimed – lies his originality.19 Machiavelli is often perceived as the ancestor of contemporary conceptions of politics because in our times politics also broke away from theology, morality, and epistemology as the sources of the legitimacy of political action, even if its daily officiating frequently employs references to religious and moral values which are usually, though not always, reduced to the role of trivial paraphernalia. Interpreted as a cynical promoter of lying as an instrument of effective politics, he is often held responsible for the degeneration of contemporary politics. The problem of truth in politics has been explicitly addressed by many contemporary philosophers. Leo Strauss’s view on this topic may best be grasped indirectly, through his critique of the ‘opinion’ as distinct from ‘knowledge’.20 He understood truth in a twofold manner. On the one hand, following the ancient philosophers, he believed that truth is an agreement of a proposition, or belief, with reality. On the other, he also thought that truth is an attribute of reality itself. Its expressions formulated in conventional languages, which he perceived as secondary echoes of the essential nature of things, are not self-­sufficient in themselves. In his analysis of Socrates, he wrote that opinions are to be seen as fragments of the truth, soiled fragments of the pure truth. In other words, the opinions prove to be solicited by the self-­subsisting truth, and the ascent to the truth proves to be guided by the self-­subsistent truth which all men always divine.21 He also believed that truth has a supreme moral value and equated it, in Platonic manner, with the good. As for the mode of arriving at truth, he thought that it is accessible through an adequate intuition of things. In view of all this, Strauss may be interpreted as an alethic absolutist. The usefulness of this label in relation to his views is, however, limited. In his deliberations on the role of truth in politics, which revolve around the concept of persecution and the art of double message that a philosopher uses in their political writings, he claimed that truth has to be defended

Post-­Truth and Consequences 55 from politics and that it can be saved only by a philosophical politics which needs to be impenetrable to the multitude and which may resort to lies to achieve its noble purposes.22 Hannah Arendt’s views on the role of truth in politics have been inspired first by her experience as a victim of the Nazi regime; second, by the public reception of her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, vehemently contested by Jewish communities; and third, by the realities of politics and the military action of the United States in Vietnam (in this case, her opinions were directly provoked by the publication of the Pentagon Papers). A number of her incisive comments, insightful observations, and strong opinions concerning the role of truth in politics do not seem to add to a unified conception and are marked by a certain ambiguity. She seemed to defend the truth and its role in public life, as in her criticism of the Nazi regime and communism, but at the same time, she realistically noted the obvious point that secrecy – what diplomatically is called discretion as well as the arcana imperii, the mysteries of government – and deception, the deliberate falsehood and the outright lie used as legitimate means to achieve political ends, have been with us since the beginning of recorded history. Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.23 She also recognised that lies have been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only for the trade of the politician or the demagogue but also of the statesperson. Exploring the question whether it is of the essence of truth to be impotent and of the essence of power to be deceitful,24 she claimed that a precondition of the human ability to act is to question reality in order to make place for something new and that the source of this creative negativity is human imagination: ‘The ability to lie, the deliberate denial of factual truth, and the capacity to change facts, the ability to act, are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source, imagination’.25 She even ventured a puzzling opinion that factual truths, though usually unquestioned, are never compellingly true. This suggests that truth and truthfulness cannot be the sole ground for efficient action, including the political one. As for politics itself, she condemned the ubiquitous post-­Machiavellian conviction that half of politics is image making and the other half the art of making people believe in the imagery, but also defended Plato from accusations of justifying falsehood, even if noble, in politics.26 Eventually, she did not work out a systematic answer concerning the proper locus and role of truth in politics. John Rawls’s position on the role of truth in politics grew out of his awareness of the dangers stemming from what he described as ‘comprehensive doctrines’: all-­embracing worldviews which aim to provide

56  Adam Chmielewski answers to all possible worries of its believers. He explicitly claimed that a liberal democratic society should not be directed at ‘the whole truth’: ‘Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought’.27 He also expressly opposed the Platonic view of politics and philosophy as aiming to ascertain the truth about justice and the common good, which then seeks a political agent to realize that truth in institutions, irrespective of whether that truth is freely accepted, or even understood. On this view, political philosophy’s knowledge of the truth authorizes it to shape, even to control, the outcome of politics, by persuasion and force if necessary. Witness Plato’s philosopher king, or Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard. Here the claim to truth is understood as carrying with it not only the claim to know, but also the claim to control and to act politically.28 In Jürgen Habermas’s views, truth has a significant role to play in politics but is understood in an unorthodox manner, namely consensually. In his complex theory of discourse and the ideal speech situation, he spells out the main assumptions of his conception of truth and its role in the deliberative process, which is a precondition of the proper, normatively grounded, political system. He emphasises the openness of communication of deliberating with people and a lack of coercion in the formulation of opinions. Habermas is less interested in the complex relation between truth and justification than in the possibility of conceiving truth, purified of all connotations of correspondence, as a special case of validity, where this general concept of validity is introduced in connection with the discursive redemption of validity claims. In this way we open up a conceptual space in which the concept of normative, and in particular moral, validity can be situated. The rightness of moral norms (or of general normative statements) and of normative injunctions based on them can then be understood as analogous to the truth of descriptive statements. What unites these two concepts of validity is the procedure of discursively redeeming the corresponding validity claims. What separates them is the fact that they refer, respectively, to the social and the objective worlds.29 There are several conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing selective summary of the philosophical views on the role of truth in politics. First of all, it challenges, once again, the widespread belief that it is the postmodern thinkers who have undermined the importance of truth in political life. Second, it suggests that the enfeebled role of truth in politics cannot be seen as a result only of Machiavellian cynicism’s infesting

Post-­Truth and Consequences 57 contemporary politics. It also challenges the belief that the assault on the public dimension of truth is a contemporary concern only in that it demonstrates that the status of truth in politics was problematic for philosophers from the beginnings of political philosophy, even, or most especially, for its most fervent philosophical champions. In view of what this chapter has contended so far, it is no surprise that few philosophers of politics are willing to countenance a strict observance of the requirements of truth in politics.30

Cognitive Regimes and the Reconstitution of Truth The foregoing conclusions suggest that turning to philosophy for a solution to the problem of truth in public life is bound to be disappointing. This is because most of the philosophical views on the subject, the expectations addressed to philosophers in this regard, and the motivation to turn to philosophy for a solution of the problem are often informed by an attitude which I would like to call the cognitocratic fallacy. The fallacy is an erroneous belief that political power may be legitimised only by the knowledge possessed by political actors. The error involved is about mistaking knowledge, including knowledge of politics, with political skill, or acumen, and presuming that true knowledge is a necessary and sufficient condition of successful political action. The fallacy is thus an obvious but commonly committed categorical error, one that mistakes ‘knowing that’ for ‘knowing how’.31 As a distant echo of the Platonic/Baconian idea that knowledge is power, the fallacy stems from a belief that truth as a property of knowledge is a self-­subsisting entity and that it is a precondition of successful political action. The cognitocratic fallacy also overlooks the fact that political statements are not descriptive in nature but often have a performative purpose: they are meant not to convey a truth but, more often than not, to transform the beliefs of their addressees. Acknowledging the import of philosophical criticism of truth is not tantamount to a dismissal of the problem of truth in politics nor a declaration of philosophical impotence in this regard. A conception of truth capable of resisting traditional philosophical criticisms is a doctrine which may be called alethic constructivism, which understands truth as a social construction and enables one to make sense of nearly all existing conceptions of truth understood as a property of statements of knowledge without exposing itself to their faults. Aristotle observed that the word ‘being’ is used in many ways (1003a).32 Similarly, according to alethic constructivism, the word ‘truth’ is being construed and applied in many ways. Alethic constructivism starts from an assumption that the term ‘truth’ is being construed and applied in a variety of ways in various contexts and that all those various usages cannot be reduced to a common core. For this reason, alethic constructivism is an alethic pluralism.

58  Adam Chmielewski Another aspect of alethic pluralism is that knowledge is not a unified and homogenous phenomenon. It acknowledges the existence of various spaces of human life, constituted by various material practical activities guided by, and inextricably linked to, diverse cognitive practices. Knowledge is built and expressed by means of various symbolic systems known as languages; different ways of talking about different things are possible in virtue of their being subject to more or less stable rules regulating them. Those different modes of knowledge may be understood as distinct types of cognitive regimes.33 Their distinctiveness is a result of different aims which a given type of knowledge is supposed to serve and standards of quality which emerge within those various spaces. Those aims and standards prescribe norms which regulate the ways of application of knowledge in specific contexts. The task of cognitive regimes is also to regulate the ways we speak about things. Those regulated systems of talking about things may be called regimes of discourse, and they constitute an essential part of cognitive regimes. Every regime is oppressive; so are the cognitive regimes. The norms guiding cognitive and descriptive processes thus fulfil a disciplinary task; it means that they allow certain ways of viewing things and speaking about them while prohibiting other ones. The cognitive regime sufficient for mundane purposes is more tolerant than the cognitive regime in science or engineering, which are among the most demanding and oppressive ones. The regimes of the logical, mathematical, technical, or grammatical discourses are more constraining – that is, intolerant of divergence from adopted rules – than the regimes of everyday discourses. Various cognitive regimes, though they overlap with each other, do not form a coherent disciplinary system and often clash with each other. The concept of truth is just one of many means of disciplining the way we acquire knowledge and speak about things. For example, the constraints of the scientific cognitive regime result from the recognition of the binding nature of several cognitive values. Accordingly, scientific claims are expected to be adequate, consistent with already-­accepted claims, to go ever deeper into the phenomena under investigation, to be ever more exact, and to be endowed with increasing predictive power. The additional disciplinary effect of the norms of a scientific regime comes from tension generated by the bipolarity of the foregoing normative demands. Requirement of increasing depth and universality encourages imagination and boldness in explanations, which are to be subsequently kept in check by the rigours of adequacy, coherence, and exactness.34 True knowledge is manufactured in various ways under various regimes: the term ‘truth’ is used in one way in science; in a different one in the arts, technology, and everyday discourse; and in another still in politics. The guidelines provided by cognitive regimes are nothing but norms regulating the processes of manufacturing the facts. This remark additionally helps to dismiss the claim that postmodern philosophy has

Post-­Truth and Consequences 59 undermined the truth and thus the validity of knowledge. What postmodern philosophy did undermine was not science and justified knowledge but rather the erroneous belief of there being readymade facts passively awaiting our contemplative, objective, and undistorted inspection. The postmodern criticism of science was motivated by the intention to challenge the hegemony of this scientist ideology, or scientism, rather than science itself. Postmodernists were right in stressing that facts are being produced in socially organised and strictly regulated manufacturing processes, though they did not stress strongly enough that the facts, as the products of these processes, are subject to stringent checks and are not acknowledged as facts forever: if they fail the test of the scientific standards, they are dismissed, and the productive process continues. This point may be illustrated by an example of the actor-­network theory.35 Latour’s anthropological approach to science provoked accusations of relativism, undermining the institution of science and questioning the authority of scientific truths. As a matter of fact, however, the stress he put on the production of facts and knowledge within a scientific cognitive regime, rather than their discovery, did not undermine the status of science vs other forms of knowledge but enabled him to demonstrate its superiority against other kinds of cognitive regimes. For example, in a debate between the climate change deniers and the climate researchers investigating global warming, the researchers are able to justify their claims about climate change by invoking precisely the elaborate system of procuring data by means of weather stations, satellites and computers, their processing, and their evaluation. The climate change deniers, however, are able to counter this complex machinery of data production only with their own subjective, unsubstantiated, and often-­prejudiced beliefs.36 Importantly, cognitive regimes are not fixed and stable; rather, they depend on, and are sensitive to, the growth of human knowledge. Alethic constructivism is an alethic dynamism. For example, scientific knowledge is divided into branches known as ‘disciplines’, a term which perfectly conveys the disciplinary nature of the scientific regime. Understanding the values and rules of scientific discourse is the subject of constant disputes in the scientific community. For this reason, every discipline of scientific knowledge is a space of ongoing struggles concerning the norms in force in it and for domination in it. Therefore, science can be defined not only as systematically organised and methodically carried-­out activities aimed at producing statements that enable explanation, prediction, and transformation of reality but also as a field of constant dispute about what it means to proceed in a scientific way. The same may be said, naturally, of other regimes. Finally, the scientific cognitive regime is not self-­contained: it emerges and grows within cultural, economic, and political contexts  – that is, spaces of human life which are governed by different norms and rules, something which is unavoidably reflected by it and within it. Therefore,

60  Adam Chmielewski inevitably, extra-­scientific resources are necessary for the existence and functioning of science and in efforts to understand it. Alethic constructivism thus opens a way to the understanding of politics as a specific regime of thinking, speaking, and acting in which truth does play a role yet in a different way than it does in science and other areas of human life. On the level of state politics, the regime of politics involves, first of all, formulation, critical assessment, and the communication of diagnoses of the general state of public affairs. Second, it involves the formulation, communication, and critical public assessment of alternative visions of a desired state of affairs and an outline of the modes of its accomplishment. It requires that diagnosis, vision, and a proposed modus operandi are being conveyed in an understandable and persuasive way to the members of a political community. In other words, the regime of politics imposes specific requirements on political narratives which, though based to some extent on daily, legal, scientific, engineering, and other specialised discourses, cannot be reduced to them. One may say that truth as a paramount value in science translates itself into the ingenuity, credibility, and trustworthiness of the political actors and that the efficacy of their actions hinges first and foremost on those properties. Third, and most obviously, however, the regime of politics involves decision-­ making which, as action rather than a statement or a narrative, is beyond the scope of epistemological valuation and is the proper subject of moral judgements. This is why the regime of politics cannot be evaluated only from the point of view of the requirements of truth, as fallacious alethic populism demands. Politics is not a cognitive practice but an ethical one. It is subject to normative moral judgement and is assessed primarily from the point of view of categories distinct from truth.

Post-­Truth Society and the Moral Free Ride At the time of struggle against the communist regimes, Václav Havel wrote about truth as the source of strength of those who seemed powerless against overwhelming power: Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-­inclusiveness. . . . In the post-­totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not

Post-­Truth and Consequences 61 surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else. In the post-­totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force.37 (Havel, The Power of the Powerless, 1985). Havel’s concept of living in truth reverberated throughout Central and Eastern Europe, inspiring the series of velvet revolutions in the region. He believed in a firm connection between truth and political power and thought that living in truth has revolutionary consequences. Several decades later, however, he remarked that rapid transformation, triggered by the courage of living in truth, released evil social tendencies which the precarious new civil order was not able to cope with: The return of freedom to a place that became morally unhinged has produced . . . an enormous and blindingly visible explosion of every imaginable human vice. A  wide range of questionable or at least ambivalent human tendencies, quietly encouraged over the years and, at the same time, quietly pressed to serve the daily operation of the totalitarian system, has suddenly been liberated, as it were, from its straitjacket and given free rein at last.38 He added that an order capable of taming the negative human tendencies takes years to develop and cultivate. Havel’s views imply, on the one hand, a belief in efficacy of some kind of protracted social engineering which gradually, in a piecemeal manner, will necessarily generate a condition in which human goodness will be fostered and firmly established. On the other hand, however, his view not only violates the warning against the belief in historical inevitability39 but fails to account for the situation in Western countries in which the negative tendencies appear to be no less pervasive. This seems to undermine Havel’s belief in the moral force of the established social and political orders and suggests that no social and political order is secure from them. The explanation for the problems, if not the cure, has to be sought elsewhere, then. Tesich’s concept of post-­truth has become an instrument of condemnation of duplicity and lies of contemporary politicians. The edge of his criticism is directed, however, not against them or at least not primarily so. From his argument it follows that we, silent majorities, behave in such a way because it is convenient and the least demanding for us. The true offenders are the citizens of liberal democratic societies. After all, we condone the mendacity of the politicians whom we elect: we exonerate their offences despite the harms they cause and then elect them

62  Adam Chmielewski again. This suggests that we value our own convenience more than the good and the future of our society. We transfer our responsibility for our societies to politicians even if we are well aware that they are neither able nor willing to bear it and should not be trusted with it. Thus, arguably, true reason for the crisis of contemporary democracies is this act of transference of the citizens’ burdens onto vicarious agents in order to take a leave of the essential part of citizens’ duties. That is why our societies have become the disunited assemblies of free-­riders. The outrage against political hypocrisy and the associated calls for truth in politics are themselves hypocritical because they do not mean that we wish to live in truth ourselves and be witnesses to it: in an interpassive mode, we just want someone else to do it for us and instead of us. The calls for truth and against post-­truth in politics are tantamount to nothing but pleas to be left in peace. That is why contemporary societies fall prey to new despots. This, however, is only one side of the coin. Tesich’s argument is that we, the citizens of the liberal democratic societies, do know the truth but do not care about it sufficiently enough. What he did not take into account is that politics does not and cannot live on truth alone. By overlooking the fact that even more important in, and for, politics is the sense of agency among citizens, he commits the cognitocratic fallacy frequently committed by some philosophers of politics. The problem of liberal democracies is not the fact that their citizens are indifferent to truth. The problem is rather that they increasingly perceive themselves as helpless and unable to exercise their agency in accordance with their self-­understanding. The crisis of contemporary liberal democracies is not an epistemological one. It is a moral one.

Notes 1. Tesich, “A Government of Lies,” 13. 2. The story about George Washington and the cherry tree was fabricated (and probably plagiarised too) by Mason Locke Weems, the author of Life of George Washington; with Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honorable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen (1800), an extremely popular biography of the first US president. The story about the cherry tree appeared only in the sixth edition of the book, in 1806. David, “Burying the Hatchet,” 149–165; Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity. 3. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 171. 4. Foucault, The Courage of the Truth. 5. Nagel, Concealment and Exposure, 3–26. 6. Peirce, Collected Papers, 268. 7. Ibid., 283. 8. ‘[T]ruth [is] something  .  .  . what our peers will, ceteris paribus, let us get away with saying’. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 176. The impunity conception of truth has become a subject of professional debate initiated by Alvin Plantinga in 1982, and it attracted popular attention after the publication of Crispin Sartwell’s obituary of Rorty in 2007. See Plantinga, “How to be an Anti-­Realist” and Sartwell, “The Provocateur’s Philosopher.”

Post-­Truth and Consequences 63 9. Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas. 10. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies,” 84. 11. Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity, 151. 12. Plato, “Republic,” 1026. 13. Ibid., 1027. 14. Popper, The Open Society. 15. Levinson, In Defense of Plato. 16. For the concept of “cognitive order” please see Chmielewski, “Order, philosophy, and recognition,” 8–11. 17. Machiavelli, The Prince, 60–61. 18. Ibid., 61. 19. Berlin, “The Originality of Machiavelli,” 25–79. 20. Strauss, Natural Right. 21. Ibid., 124. 22. Strauss, Persecution, 36. 23. Arendt, “Lying in Politics.” 24. Arendt, “Truth in Politics,” 535. 25. Arendt, “Lying in Politics.” 26. Arendt, “Truth in Politics,” 574. 27. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 3. 28. Rawls, Lectures, 3. 29. Habermas, “A Genealogical Analysis,” 36–37. 30. Bok, Lying; Hitchens, No One Left to Lie To; Vidal, United States; Gray, Black Mass. 31. Ryle, “Knowing How,” 222–235; Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 14–48. 32. Aristotle, Metaphysics. 33. The proposed concept owes much to, but differs from, both Michel Foucault’s regimes of truth and Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm. 34. Watkins, Science and Scepticism, 129–130. 35. Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life; Latour, Reassembling the Social. 36. Kofman, “Bruno Latour.” 37. Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” 40. 38. Havel, “Paradise Lost.” 39. Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” 94–165.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. “Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers.” The New York Review of Books, 18 November 1971. ———. “Truth in Politics.” 1967. In The Portable Hannah Arendt, edited by Peter Baehr, 535–576. New York: Penguin, 2000. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by Hugh Lawson-­Tancred. London: Penguin, 1998. Berlin, Isaiah. “Historical Inevitability.” In Liberty, edited by Henry Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “The Originality of Machiavelli.” In Against the Current. Essays in the History of Ideas, edited by Henry Hardy, 25–79. London: The Hogarth Press, 1980. Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

64  Adam Chmielewski Chmielewski, Adam. Politics and Recognition. Toward a New Political Aesthetics, London: Routledge, 2020. David, Ann. “Burying the hatchet: Ideology in Early American readers through the Story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree.” American Educational History Journal, 43, no. 2 (2016). Dummett, Michael. Truth and Other Enigmas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Foucault, Michel. The Courage of the Truth. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Gray, John. Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. London: Allen Lane, 2007. Habermas, Jürgen. “A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality.” In The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Havel, Václav. “Paradise Lost.” New York Review of Books, 9 April 1992. ———. “The Power of the Powerless.” In The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-­Eastern Europe. Edited by John Keane. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1985. Hitchens, Christopher. No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. London: Allen & Unwin, 1999. Jay, Martin. The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics. Charlottesville, VA and London: University of Virginia Press, 2010. Kofman, Ava. “Bruno Latour, the Post-­Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science.” New York Times Magazine, 25 October  2018. www.nytimes. com/2018/10/25/magazine/bruno-­latour-­post-­truth-­philosopher-­science.html. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-­Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Levinson, Ronald B. In Defense of Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Translated by Peter Bondanella. Edited by Maurizio Viroli. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Nagel, Thomas. Concealment and Exposure: And Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” Edited and Translated by Daniel Breazeale. In Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979. Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Vol. 5: Pragmatism and Pragmaticism and Vol. 6: Scientific Metaphysics. Edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974. Plantinga, Alvin. “How to Be an Anti-­Realist.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 56, no. 1 (1982): 47–70. https://doi. org/10.2307/3131293. Plato. “Republic.” Translated by G. M. A. Grube. In Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Post-­Truth and Consequences 65 Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies. 1945. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011. Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Edited by Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. ———. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books, 1999. ———. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind 60th Anniversary ed. 1949. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2009. ———. “Knowing How and Knowing That.” In Collected Papers. Vol. 2, Collected Essays, 1929–1968, 222–235. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009. Sartwell, Crispin. “The Provocateur’s Philosopher.” Los Angeles Times, 12 June  2007. www.latimes.com/archives/la-­xpm-­2007-­jun-­12-­oe-­sartwell12-­ story.html. Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953. ———. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952. Tesich, Steve. “A Government of Lies.” The Nation, 6–18 January 1992, 12–15. Vidal, Gore. United States: Essays, 1962–1992. New York: Random House, 1993. Watkins, John. Science and Scepticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

4 The Post-­Truth Condition and Social Distribution of Knowledge On Some Dilemmas with Post-­Truth Uses Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski Introduction In recent times, the concept of post-­ truth has become ubiquitous in various domains and discourses. The term ‘post-­truth’ serves not only a descriptive role in relation to a new social phenomenon but also evaluative, prescriptive, and persuasive ones. It creates a new social division between, to borrow a Star Wars analogy, those who stand on the light side of the Force (truth, reason, empiricism, world as it really is) and those who threaten it. The post-­truth ‘dark side’ is an escape from reason. Post-­truth has recently become the key word for understanding many processes from the areas of politics, economics, social change, or historical interpretation. However, one can ask whether we do not expect too much. Will the concept in question turn out to be a bubble concept (to use stock-­exchange jargon)? Do we refer the term to too many objects and domains? Or maybe it is the other way round: has the world we live in been infected by post-­truth, and do we have to recognise this state of affairs and adjust to it? One of the September  2016 issues of The Economist featured two sensational texts, both on post-­truth politics and the art of lying.1 The authors drew attention to a phenomenon from the 2016 US presidential campaign during which one of the candidates delivered the most varied judgements on almost all subjects. According to journalists, these were definitely not in line with the actual state of affairs, and at the same time, they were accepted as legitimate (justified true beliefs) by the recipients of these statements, or at least they were not questioned by them. The authors of the article were aware that politicians, especially in electoral campaigns, have always lied and will always lie. On the other hand, they were fascinated by the fact that the recipients bought the lies of certain politicians in toto, even those that should seem completely absurd on closer examination. Political pronouncements that distort empirical data can have serious consequences: they can affect individual political

The Post-­Truth Condition 67 careers, influence elections, and sway citizens’ decisions to participate in international structures – as was the case with Brexit.2 What distinguishes post-­truth politics from earlier lies of politicians is the fact that they refer to sources of information that is often accessible to the public but given in a form that obscures their authenticity – for example, it is ‘said’ or ‘as reported by the media x or y’. Post-­truth is not intended to hide the actual truth: be this by an authoritarian regime that seeks self-­preservation (e.g. Katyn) or by a democratic power because it may be uncomfortable for the government (e.g. Watergate). Post-­truth aims at creating a certain vision of reality through the multiplication of sources (intermediaries), the extent of which makes it difficult to grasp which empirical evidence we are to accept for a given piece of information: ‘if they were lying, they took care to prove what they were doing was “the truth”. Now no one even tries proving “the truth”. You can just say anything. Create realities’.3 In the context of post-­truth, political understandings also include references to scientific and technical knowledge (often in a popularised form or even in a distorted form). One can therefore explore not only the social phenomenon of the new version of the political lie that fascinates journalists and researchers of contemporary communication but also the status (and its transformations) of categories such as ‘knowledge’, ‘information’, and ‘science’. In a post-­truth environment  – understood as the creation of new realities, or at least attempts to redefine existing ones – are we actually dealing with a different understanding of ‘cognition’ and its communication than what we were dealing with before? What changes have occurred earlier in the understanding of these and related categories, which have today allowed post-­truth to thrive as a predatory form of information management and social communication?4 In this chapter, I will address five key points: 1. The complexity of scientific knowledge and its technological applications in a social context. 2. The problem of representation. 3. Elective modernism as upgrading science strategy. 4. The post-­truth condition, protscience, and the ‘academic rentiership’ problem as downgrading science strategy. 5. The irrealist character of historical narratives that create a multiplicity of factors, which complicate the stubborn picture of the post-­truth issue on the one hand and on the other allow for a more nuanced approach to this issue. It seems that the problem of post-­truth is often considered somewhat simplistically in terms of falsehood colliding with truth. Accordingly, it is enough to get rid of dogmatic attitudes and presuppositions, and then

68  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski the truth, in the spirit of the Heideggerian Lichtung, will reveal itself and illuminate the path in the Black Forest.

The Complexity of Modern Science and Technology – Why Science Scepticism Grows Paradoxically, one can hypothesise that the phenomenon of post-­truth appears in societies that sociologists call knowledge-­ based societies. These are societies in which knowledge circulation is widespread. Here knowledge at various levels of specialisation resulting from the social distribution of knowledge is available to representatives of all social groups. At the same time, these are societies that are technologically highly developed and egalitarian in terms of social ideals and organisation of political systems. This does not mean that previous class, wealth, or educational differences have completely disappeared; on the contrary, as some suggest, there are even-­greater differences within these societies.5 If post-­ truth is a form of misuse of the communicative epistemic relationship between the sender and the recipient, it is so because the message, while seemingly descriptive and factual, actually engages the recipient’s emotions rather than cognition. What puzzles us first of all is the attitude of the recipient who is ready to accept its content that only seems to have the appearance of truth, despite such or other ‘camouflage’ masking its justification. This issue undoubtedly requires more in-­depth and multifaceted analysis that goes beyond the framework of this text. The concept of post-­truth may also be entangled in a policy of deciding who, and by virtue of what criteria, ‘describes the world as it is’.6 I believe that this epistemic abuse is possible in societies where knowledge circulates in various forms and degrees of legitimacy and where this knowledge is at least minimally syntactically coherent and semantically relevant. One may wonder whether there is also a specific application of Copernicus-­Gresham’s law, according to which bad money drives out good or where in the case of the information economy post-­truth drives out truth from public circulation. Given the pragmatic aspect of post-­truth communication, one may ask, why do the users of information (knowledge) consent to the fact that ‘worse’ information functions in circulation? Can it be that at least part of the blame lies with the issuers and those who establish the rules for the circulation of this information money? Of course, we can stress that some (perhaps even most) users are satisfied with such a description of the world, but as we know from the literature on the subject, the matter is more complicated, and the relations between different types of knowledge have their own numerous conditions. The potential threat of a lack of trust and the currently growing lack of trust in science as a distinguished form of socially accepted knowledge has already been publicised by a number of authors.7

The Post-­Truth Condition 69 Here, however, we are dealing with a new aspect of popular common-­ sense epistemology, which may constitute another variant of the phenomenon of post-­truth. Namely, in the context of universal access to expert knowledge, for example through the accumulation of information in various contemporary media, there is a conviction among laypeople that it is easy for them to obtain expert status. A good example of such effort is the attitude of committed citizens who seek quasi-­expert knowledge in fields that are important to them. In the Platonic tradition of defending episteme against the domination of doxa (i.e. scientific knowledge vs people’s beliefs), Tom Nichols published the book The Death of Expertise in 2017.8 His work can be treated as a sociopolitical attempt to ‘resist’ the threat of a growing dilettantism. Another political scientist, Jason Brennan, analyses in his 2016 work Against Democracy the issue of the domination of ignorance in the context of elections, especially the lack of cognitive competence of a large number of voters who, in his opinion, have difficulty in understanding not only the overall programmes of individual candidates but also the meaning of particular words used in these programmes.9 While not claiming to be an in-­depth analysis, because that would go beyond the scope of this text, this chapter considers to what extent the category of the knowledge-­based society may constitute a certain interpretative framework within which it is possible (at least potentially) to describe and explain the reported problems. These issues can be described as epistemic abuse in social communication that, however, a significant proportion of recipients agree to. Sociologists of knowledge (most notably Nico Stehr and his collaborators) have attempted to identify the ongoing changes in the complex forms and systems of contemporary societies, in my view, to reveal changes in the way social communication is conducted. First of all, I highlight a certain transformation from an optimistic approach to the social dimension of the dissemination of knowledge – such as in the context of its diffusion in lower social strata – to a more realistic (pessimistic) and pluralistic view. In this context, I  identify some changes that we can observe in the understanding of science and its functioning in the social sphere (especially in liberal democratic societies). The content and scope of these discussions go far beyond the universalist framework of Merton’s ideal of Gelertherepublik,10 entering the third wave of studies on science,11 as contemporary scientific discussions increasingly address the issue of placing science in the structures of democratic institutions, at both the state level and the local level.12 Thus, we are dealing with a certain ‘pragmatisation’ and contextualisation of the concept of truth, which is expressed in the belief that science seeks many possible truths. Science searches for significant truths in this respect, and truth is important to a person when that knowledge increases their chances of achieving practical goals.13

70  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski At the same time, we can increasingly observe an increase in distrust of science (especially in its institutional dimension) and technological applications. There appear to be societies of risk or fear,14 in which an optimistic (or excessively optimistic) vision of science as an institution that changes the world and human life for the better is undermined. This does not mean that the positive dimension of the changes taking place is not perceived, but sometimes (perhaps in an exaggerated way) unexpected and unintended side effects arise, which attract, or at least accompany, these changes. One of these negative consequences in modern societies is the cultural struggle between two groups who compete for common acceptance of their particular values.15 In the context of post-­truth, this problem overlaps partly with questions about the sources of populism and the fragmentation of modern societies.16 This issue is more concerned with social divisions and arises primarily in the context of universalist and local dimensions of knowledge: the latter may be important in the daily lives of local communities but may be regarded by ‘universalists’ as knowledge that does not meet the conditions of relevance and adaptability to a cosmopolitan and global way of life. In the case of so-­called social clashes and cultural wars, the dispute over the status of local knowledge or traditional ways of life may resemble a debate about fake news or accusations of post-­truth. Some authors stress the role of local elites and local communities as crucial for promoting oikos (i.e. the family home) and the common good. However, civic associations often have to fight with experts and central bureaucracy to defend their causes against global and universal solutions, which tend to disregard the local dimension of issues and proposed solutions. In both cases, we are dealing with a certain valuable understanding of knowledge and its resources (capital) and with certain social tensions.17

The Problem of Representation Richard Rorty notes, ‘if you take care of freedom . . . truth will take care of itself’,18 which has been treated as a liberal democratic commandment but which raises some challenges and serious problems. This is especially true if we take into account the value-­ladenness of the concept. Rorty’s freedom–truth dictum appears clearly in politicians’ science-­based arguments in democratic fora.19 Therefore, since the use of knowledge is connected with the problem of determining which of its users is right and which of its interpretations is acceptable, in the context of reflecting on the phenomenon of post-­truth, it is important to consider the representation of experts who speak in public fora as members of a knowledge guild.20 This issue is all the more important in knowledge-­based societies. Since knowledge permeates all aspects of the life of modern societies, the space

The Post-­Truth Condition 71 of politics is not free from it. What is more, political, economic, or social decision-­making, which meet the conditions of rationality (i.e. rational choice), constitutes both access to information and the discursive processing of information. References to knowledge  – including decisions about the implementation strategy or applications – justify the promotion of a particular project. At the same time, decisions on the conduct of particular political solutions are made on behalf of those who have given their mandate for it and should correspond to their interests. However, this mechanism is characterised by frequent contradictory claims to the cognitive credibility and legitimacy of the actions taken. Each party shall refer to a particular resource of information which is relevant to the intended action or to the discontinuance of the other party’s action. So how, from the perspective that interests us, can we define truthful claims, actions (policies) taken on their basis, relationships between politicians and their experts, and relationships between politicians and their interlocutors (voters, interest groups, lobbyists, etc.)? Here we can point to two approaches to the analysis of expert communication: the first concerns the discrepancies between experts; the second concerns the role played by experts (universal knowledge) in relation to the representatives of various groups that seek support from them (local knowledge, or ‘protscience’). In the rich literature on the position of science in liberal democracies, one can point to various attempts at solving the problem of politicised expert knowledge. In this chapter, I will confine myself essentially to the proposal made by Mark Brown.21 Brown draws attention to the process of politicisation of science and argues that the notion of representation is important in understanding this phenomenon. Politicians, looking for reasons for their decisions, refer to experts. However, the mere mentioning of them is a political exercise, since the experts’ task is first and foremost to confirm the position adopted by politicians on a given issue. On the one hand, experts are necessary to justify political decisions in a knowledge-­based society; on the other hand, the choice of experts is not neutral, especially in situations that are controversial in terms of axiology, economics, or the environment. As Mark Brown points out, experts are selected in such a way that they represent the position appropriate for a given political option (understood here broadly in terms of its worldview, ideology, culture, or religion). However, such controversies were known much earlier: discussions on, among others, the use and safety of nuclear energy, environmental pollution (especially the atmosphere and water), global warming, stem cell research, and genetically modified food. How can such disputes be effectively resolved in a democratic system? In Brown’s opinion, it is necessary to go beyond the current disputes in the field of science policy and take into account the historical sources of mutual relations between politics and science (knowledge) and to pay attention to the conceptual and institutional resources that are

72  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski used in the mediation of socio-­technical conflicts in democratic societies. In this context, he provides a reflection on the relationship between the categories of representation in science and politics, within the theory and practice of democracy.22 The second issue of representation is that of the representation of various social groups by people of science, who are experts, not to say translators of complex knowledge for the laity. The type of sociological scholarly activity that Michael Burawoy legitimises as a sociology to support civic public life, also referred to by some as civic sociology, is advocacy scholarship. It aims to understand and express the point of view of a group in society in a way that is understandable and instructive to the members of that group and to support that point of view through social research. The term ‘dialogical’, which is usually contrasted with ‘analytical’, means in this context that the views and points of view of the partners not only are the subject of research but also form part of the definition of the problem itself. As Turner notes, this use of dialogue is not in line with liberalism: the partner in this dialogue is not society as a whole but only the allies of the movement. In the models of sociology adopted so far and its role in liberal democracy, this kind of scientific activity would be a problem for both sociology and the state: for the state, it would be a problem because it is a form of taking sides; for sociology, understood as science, it would be a problem because it would lack what Robert Merton called disinterestedness. Burawoy’s model, if understood in the broader context of democratic theory, allows sociology to transcend both. Many states of liberal democracy support different points of view while assuming a neutral attitude towards them. Burawoy’s concept also refers to a certain understanding of the neutrality assumption: research conducted for the benefit of specific groups – or what it describes as an organic sociology of public life relating to a specific social group – is in principle acceptable as a sociology of public life, regardless of which group it refers to. The financing of such scientific activities must be regarded not as unacceptable partisan state support but rather as a means of improving the quality of public debate by supporting different opinions. This solves the problem of political neutrality because the state does not choose: the state-­supported discipline of sociology is neutral in relation to the types of commitment that individual sociologists choose to make.23 The interpretation of public sociology given earlier is important because it tries to define the issue of the axiological engagement of science on the side of certain values (the problem is not the engagement itself but rather the preservation of the pluralism of engagement – as a consequence each side has at least a chance to exist in public discourse) and because it tries to develop a certain acceptable model of cooperation between the expert and the layperson. Both aspects of the relationship of representation are important for understanding post-­truth issues because they indicate the relative nature

The Post-­Truth Condition 73 of the potential disputes between experts, since in the first case, they are merely representatives of various axiological, cultural, economic, social, or political options, who have been ‘hired’ to legitimise these options scientifically, and in the second case, they are representatives of groups who try to act on their behalf to solve some of their problems. The potential issue of the dispute about post-­truth can be solved by indicating the social or axiological location of the experts. In both cases, however, we have in mind the functioning of experts within the framework of legitimacy, which is given by their membership in an academic guild. But as Steve Fuller notes, in a post-­truth environment, the authority of the academic guild is questioned by committed laypeople.

Elective Modernism – Can We Step Into the Same River Twice? Harry Collins and Robert Evans point to the distinguished role of science in contemporary knowledge-­based societies.24 This book can be seen as the crowning achievement of earlier works: an article about three waves of studies on science25 and a book about the sociology of expertise.26 Both authors point out in their work some unexpected consequences of the sociological deconstruction of scientific knowledge and its dethroning as a distinguished form of cognition. Thus, in the first wave of studies on science, ‘philosophers and sociologists of science took it to be their job to explain how science . . . worked, and how society could be arranged to nurture it’.27 The second wave ‘took science to be just as open to the analysis of the sociology of knowledge as any other form of knowledge’, consequently devaluating science. The third wave ‘accepts this major change in our understanding of science but tries to show that . . . there are still ways to value expertise and to value science’.28 They try to redefine the results of sociological criticism of scientific knowledge to preserve its results on the one hand and reappraise the earlier, more optimistic vision of science as a source and method of reliable cognition that provides us with knowledge of the world through observation of almost naked facts on the other: ‘the Third Wave sees the analysis of the Second Wave as correct, but normative conclusions drawn from it as incorrect’.29 As their solution, they propose to embrace the elective modernism position, which ‘offers us the chance of living in the city of science without abandoning the new understanding of science developed over the last half-­century’.30 The position proposed by the authors seems to be an attempt to overcome Heraclitus’s famous diagnosis that one cannot enter the same river twice, by moving on to a higher degree of abstraction, where the premature contradictions are overcome at a higher level. The third wave avoids the barren discussions about science as a source of truth and usefulness

74  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski that were so criticised in the second wave. At the same time, it points to the importance of science in the construction of modern democratic societies. Science is socially significant and important, because it can be a source of good values important for society: ‘Science’s understandings are continually disputed, but science’s values are eternal’.31 Collins and Evans arguably want to restore science to its former glory, which the sociological philistines under the patronage of relativism and subjectivism tried to deprive it of. They do so in a skilful way and argue convincingly in favour of the position they are defending. Nevertheless, without denying why they are defending elective modernism, the question may be asked whether in their defence of science they have not overlooked a new phenomenon that Steve Fuller has pointed out.

The Post-­Truth Condition – Knowledge as a Power Game In Steve Fuller’s recently published book, he refers to the ongoing debate on post-­truth.32 On the one hand, he continues his earlier reflections on the sociology of scientific knowledge and institutional changes in the academy, and on the other, he introduces a provocative thesis on the relationship between doxa and episteme: the knowledge used by humans and that sought by scientists. Referring to Machiavelli and Pareto, Fuller differentiates between different strategies that power-­game players adopt for socially legitimised knowledge. Metaphorically, the game is played between a fox and a lion. The lion is the king of the animal world and sets the rules. The only strategy that the fox can adopt if it wants to defeat a lion is to propose a change in the rules of the game during its duration. In the political game for the US presidency, the fox strategy was adopted by member of the nouveau riche, Donald Trump, who defeated the ‘lion’, Hillary Clinton. According to the author, she was one of the better-­prepared politicians to perform the role for which she had applied, but by changing the rules of the game, Trump won the elections with a representative of the elite and political establishment. For Fuller, post-­truth is not only a semantic category that refers to facts but also a meta-­category, because it determines not only the game in accordance with the rules but also the process of establishing them: In philosophical slang, the post-­truth condition is all about going meta. You try to win not simply by playing by the rules but also by controlling what the rules are. The lion tries to win by keeping the rules as they are, and the fox tries by changing them. In a truth game, the lion’s point of view is taken for granted without much thought: opponents contest each other according to agreed rules, and this initial agreement defines the nature of their opposition and the state of play at a given moment. Here the foxes are potentially disgruntled losers. In a post-­truth game, the aim is to defeat your opponent in the

The Post-­Truth Condition 75 full knowledge that the rules of the game might change. In that case the nature of your opposition could change in a way that might flip the advantage to your opponent. Here the foxes are always playing for the flip.33 The definition of the situation proposed by Fuller is of fundamental importance for understanding post-­ truth and the relationships to be found in the definition of socially legitimised knowledge. He introduces a category of foxes as players in the game of knowledge, which enter the long-­time reserved area for lions. Since foxes can redefine the situation and thus change the rules of the game, an old philosophical question about intersubjectivity and how foxes and lions function in the same social world arises. The context of Fuller’s post-­ truth condition is undoubtedly a knowledge-­based society, in which knowledge (science) not only is an area reserved for the few but also becomes, in the process of universal socialisation, an object with which almost all members of society come into contact, even in a situation of strong differentiation in the assimilation of this knowledge. Knowledge as a capacity to act serves scientists, technologists, and ordinary people alike, who use it in their own way, guided by pragmatic motives, not merely theoretical ones.34 In this context, Fuller introduces other important concepts: Protestant science (protscience) and academic rentiership. For Fuller, Protestant science is an example of a way out for those seeking not only knowledge but also meaning (role) that the knowledge they seek will play in their lives. Protestants started to read the scriptures without the mediation of clergy because of the greater access to printed books and because of the conviction that they are able to comprehend the sense contained in it, at least in the existential sense (the role for religious and moral life). Such anti-­ establishment movements in science, often referred to as ‘pseudoscience’, include the supporters of the theory of intelligent design (creationism), New Age alternative medicine, and anti-­vaccine movements. Fuller does not believe that Protestant science in its various dimensions fails to contribute anything to the collection of knowledge; on the contrary, he provocatively adopts an anti-­expert position emphasising the universal access to information, which because of new technologies has significantly expanded and become ‘democratised’, because it does not require special permissions such as library cards or membership in the academy (e.g. status of student, professor, etc.). At the same time, it recognises the importance of the subjective dimension of knowledge, which, however, cannot obscure the objective requirements for the acceptance of scientific knowledge. In this context, Fuller’s suggestion that academics as a monopolistic group are trying to take advantage of certain status benefits resulting from a monopoly on socially legitimised knowledge is all the more important. We can treat some of Fuller’s basic

76  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski scientific intuitions not only as a certain intellectual provocation but perhaps above all as an insightful observation of the meaning of the current discussion on the sources, methods, and criteria for the acceptability of scientific knowledge – not only in academia but also in everyday life. The fundamental question that can be asked here is how the foregoing comments on the different contexts and aspects of the functioning of post-­truth in modern science and more broadly of knowledge translate into historical research. Paul Roth, an analytical philosopher of history, approaches this issue from an irrealist position, and we turn to his approach in the final section of this chapter.35

Essentially Narrative Explanations – History as an Irrealist Tale Paul Roth in numerous papers has discussed the problem of historical understanding and the explanation of historical events and processes. One can label his background as the post-­positivist approach and his aim as overcoming various limitations of the Hempelian model of explanation applied to a historian’s understanding of the past. Roth is conscious of the many difficulties in the idea of understanding as an explanatory tool applied to social and human affairs, and he has provided a masterly analysis of such methodological self-­awareness applied to various proposals of actual understanding in Holocaust studies.36 Historical events exist only as events under description, and descriptions continuously emerge and change retrospectively. In short, historians look to explain any event as exists under a particular description, a description that ties to a retrospective, what I call a narrative perspective. Roth, however, as far as the problem of the object of historical descriptions are concerned, reasonably tries to find an intermediate position between realists and constructivists, underpinning his own view under the label of ‘irrealist’. In other words, Roth’s perspective is metahistorical, since it makes sense of what historians do when they provide us (the audience) with narratives. Accordingly, antinaturalist narratives offer an interpretative understanding of an actor’s motives, and naturalist narratives identify causes of individual behaviour. He focuses on historians’ semantics – that is, whether historians cover the object in question – as the principle problem of a historical narrative. However, a historian’s narrative is specific to a particular audience and will thus invoke specific cognitive and extra-­ cognitive functions that such an audience will be familiar with. These may be expressive/impressive (value orientations); persuasive (e.g. the injunction ‘never again!’); or performative – to change audience attitudes or to make room for new approaches, which promise to disclose what has been covered, forgotten, or pushed into the subconscious by hitherto established views.

The Post-­Truth Condition 77 For an adequate interpretation of historical events, we need to take into account not only various points of view – such as Roth’s Holocaust studies examples of intentionalism and functionalism – but also how different standpoints may influence a variety of descriptions covering the same event. I suggest distinguishing those cases described by Roth (the vertical dimension of historical explanation) from cases describing multiple realities (the horizontal dimension of historical explanation). What I have in mind are cases where different descriptions are ascribed to the same objects. One can claim that such ‘horizontal’ cases are typical in understanding historical events in East-­Central Europe, as the following examples demonstrate: 1. One can be recognised as a communist apparatchik of Jewish origin or a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who joined a new political order as the only solution for a Jew in postwar Poland – the case of the late Zygmunt Bauman and many others. 2. One can be a Ukrainian partisan of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fighting against Soviet domination and a murderer responsible for, or accused of, ethnic cleansing of local Polish inhabitants in Volhynia (today’s western Ukraine) during 1943. 3. One can be a member of an underground partisan group of ‘cursed soldiers’ fighting against the communist regime after 1945 in Poland and at the same time be recognised as a person responsible for killing not only communist police but also civilians from other ethnic groups – a topic of hot debate in Poland. 4. One can be a soldier of the Latvian Waffen SS Legion praised by his compatriots as heroes fighting against the former Soviet occupational forces which invaded the Baltic states in 1940 and at the same time be condemned as complicit in the Holocaust. Each of the descriptions result from taking into account a distinctive perspective by means of which we may perceive certain facts but also from structural and temporal factors, reflecting tensions between global and local history (histories), the latter often transmitted in oral form against dominating official narratives imposed by the new postwar powers. The oppositions implied in descriptions (may) reflect in certain cases ‘multiple realities’, descriptions of various moral dilemmas, which the actors involved have to face (like those in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice).37 One should not underestimate the significance of the temporal factor, which determines ‘uses’ of history. What I have in mind is the reassessment and change of certain acceptable standards in society. This might be the acceptance of ethnicity, gender, or other minority identities, understood as a sociological fact, which might constitute a standard of public morality. Certain standards in a given society may no longer be acceptable in the present, despite being accepted in previous times. It the

78  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski context of East-­Central European histories, a good example might be the case of antisemitism: today no one is going to claim that they are a proud antisemite and be accepted in public discourse.38 The four examples from earlier illustrate a problem that Roth points out, referring to the remarks of H.R. Trevor-­Roper: ‘what he finds to be new about this book does not consist primarily in the information it provides. It resides, rather, in Hilberg’s structuring of that information’.39 Finally, what the narrative explains cannot be explained in any other way. Narratives ‘create’ what they simultaneously set out to explain, not because they ‘make things up’ but precisely for the reason that narrativists such as Hayden White have for so long insisted: ‘only by this means does a historian provide meaning and structure to a morass of details that otherwise has neither’.40 For Roth, an essentially narrative explanation is one that bears no other explanation of how it came into existence, since one cannot separate it from a sequence of events.41 This new information about the past, in short, becomes available only upon assuming a retrospective view.

Conclusion Since narratives in relation to the same facts may be different, a further question arises over the potential relationship between available narratives. Should these narratives be mutually exclusive, or should they complement each other? Is the question of post-­truth in some cases one of a researcher’s decision to choose a particular narrative, where one characteristic is emphasised, and then to find those sources that back it up? This does not mean that they ignore other sources or consider them invalid. On the contrary, their reasons for constructing a particular narrative are as well thought out and well argued as possible but are at the same time different from those of other researchers working on the same source material. A separate issue is related to the more popular use of historical reflection (Protestant science), which may be associated in Fuller’s spirit with an attempt to question historical images proposed by the guild of academic historians. In this approach, the post-­truth condition may involve two aspects: what we know in the light of the information available to us and what we believe (i.e. the narrative we choose) because of the importance of that information for us today. One example is the local commemoration of past events, where we are dealing with a collective memory that reflects an intergenerational tradition passed on verbally. Should a possible problem of lack of overlap between factual, interpretative (narrative), and academic historiography be treated as a post-­ truth denial of ‘objective’ truth or as an attempt to acquire and put into circulation knowledge about the local community, which is essential for the identity of its users? These issues would undoubtedly require more

The Post-­Truth Condition 79 detailed analysis, which goes beyond the scope of this chapter. This chapter was intended only as an initial sketch of a certain conceptual framework that can be found in contemporary social sciences and humanities and that can be useful in outlining a broader context in which the post-­ truth phenomenon can be more fruitfully discussed.

Notes 1. “The Post-­Truth World”; “Post-­Truth Politics.” 2. Ibid.; Outhwaite, Brexit; Wierzchosławski, “Naukowcy w roli ekspertów,” 209. 3. “The Post-­Truth World.” 4. Wierzchosławski, “Naukowcy w roli ekspertów,” 210. 5. Wierzchosławski, “Odpowiedzialność uczelni,” 347; Stehr, The Fragility of Modern Societies; Stehr, Information, Power, and Democracy. 6. Wierzchosławski, “Naukowcy w roli ekspertów,” 210–211. 7. Merton, The Sociology of Science; Collins and Evans, “The Third Wave”; Collins and Evans, Why Democracies Need Science; Fischer, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment; Fuller, The Governance of Science; Fuller, Social Epistemology; Fuller, The Philosophy of Science; Fuller, New Frontiers; Beck, Risk Society. 8. Nichols, The Death of Expertise. 9. Brennan, Against Democracy. 10. Merton, The Sociology of Science. 11. Collins and Evans, “The Third Wave”; Collins and Evans, Why Democracies Need Science. 12. Fischer, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment; Fischer, Democracy and Expertise; Fuller, The Governance of Science; Fuller, The Academic Caesar. 13. Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy, 73. 14. Beck, Risk Society; Furedi, Culture of Fear Revisited; Furedi, How Fear Works. 15. Examples of such group rivalry can be found in the anywhere/somewhere clash in Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere and the Oikophobia/Oikophilia clash in Scruton’s Green Philosophy. 16. Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism; Guilluy, La France périphérique; Guilluy, No Society; Mounk, The People vs. Democracy. 17. Wierzchosławski, “Dissidents and Nomads.” 18. Rorty, “Education as Socialization,” 114. 19. Brown, Science in Democracy. 20. Fuller, The Academic Caesar; Fuller, Post-­Truth. 21. Brown, Science in Democracy. 22. Ibid., 3. 23. Turner, “Public Sociology,” 793. 24. Collins and Evans, Why Democracies Need Science. 25. Collins and Evans, “The Third Wave.” 26. Collins and Evans, Rethinking Expertise. 27. Collins and Evans, Why Democracies Need Science, 28–29. 28. Ibid., 29. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 26. 32. Fuller, Post-­Truth.

80  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski 3. Ibid., 3. 3 34. Schütz, “The Well-­Informed Citizen.” 35. Roth, The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation. 36. Roth, “Beyond Understanding.” 37. Wierzchosławski, “Antinomies, Multiple Realities and the Past,” 178–179. 38. Ibid., 179. 39. Roth, The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, 73. 40. Ibid., 75. 41. Ibid., 79–80.

Bibliography Ball, James. Post-­Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World. London: Biteback Publishing, 2017. Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Translated by Mark Ritter. London: Sage, 1992. ———. World at Risk. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity, 2009. Boyer, Dominic. “Our Post-­Post-­Truth Condition.” Berliner Blätter 80, no. 1 (2018): 83–90. Brennan, Jason. Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Brown, Mark B. Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2009. Browning, Christopher R. “Beyond ‘Intentionalism’ and ‘Functionalism’: The Decision for the Final Solution Reconsidered.” Chap. 5 in The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ———. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Burawoy, Michael. “2004 American Sociological Association Presidential Address: For Public Sociology.” The British Journal of Sociology 56, no. 2 (2005): 259–294. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­4446.2005.00059.x. Collins, Harry, and Robert Evans. Rethinking Expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ———. “The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience.” Social Studies of Science 32, no. 2 (2002): 235–296. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0306312702032002003. ———. Why Democracies Need Science. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017. d’Ancona, Matthew. Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. Kindle ed. London: Ebury Press, 2017. Davis, Evan. Post-­Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It. London: Little, Brown, 2017. Eatwell, Roger, and Matthew Goodwin. National Populism: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy. London: Pelican, 2018. Fischer, Frank. Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. ———. Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Fuller, Steve. The Academic Caesar: University Leadership Is Hard. London: SAGE, 2016.

The Post-­Truth Condition 81 ———. “Against Academic Rentiership: A  Radical Critique of the Knowledge Economy.” Journal article. Postdigital Science and Education 1, no. 2 (2019): 335–356. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-­019-­00035-­0. ———. “Essentially Narrative Explanations.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62 (2017): 42–50. ———. The Governance of Science: Ideology and the Future of the Open Society. Buckingham; Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2000. ———. Kuhn Vs Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2003. ———. New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. ———. The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies. London: Routledge, 2006. ———. Post-­Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game. London: Anthem Press, 2018. ———. Social Epistemology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988. Fuller, Steve, Mikael Stenmark, and Ulf Zackariasson, eds. The Customization of Science: The Impact of Religious and Political Worldviews on Contemporary Science. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Furedi, Frank. Culture of Fear Revisited: Risk-­Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation. London; New York: Continuum, 2006. ———. How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-­First Century. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Goodhart, David. The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. London: C Hurst & Co, 2017. Guilluy, Christophe. La France périphérique: Comment on a sacrifié les classes populaires. Paris: Flammarion, 2014. ———. No Society: La fin de la classe moyenne occidentale. Paris: Flammarion, 2018. Hage, Jerald. Restoring the Innovative Edge. Driving the Evolution of Science and Technology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Hage, Jerald, and Marius Meeus, eds. Innovation, Science, and Institutional Change. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2006. Hage, Jerald, and Charles H. Powers. Post-­Industrial Lives: Roles and Relationships in the 21st Century. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992. Keyes, Ralph. The Post-­Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life. New York: St. Martin Press, 2004. Kitcher, Philip. Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. McIntyre, Lee. Post-­Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Merton, Robert K. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Mounk, Yascha. The People Vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Nichols, Thomas M. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Outhwaite, William, ed. Brexit: Sociological Responses. London: Anthem Press, 2017.

82  Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski Peacock, Mark S., and Paul A. Roth. “Holocaust Studies: What Is to Be Learned?”. History of the Human Sciences 17, no. 2–3 (2004): 1–13. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0952695104047292. “Post-­Truth Politics: Art of the Lie.” The Economist, 10 September 2016. www. economist.com/leaders/2016/09/10/art-­of-­the-­lie. “The Post-­Truth World: Yes, I’d Lie to You.” The Economist, 10 September 2016. www.economist.com/briefing/2016/09/10/yes-­id-­lie-­to-­you. Rorty, Richard. “Education as Socialization and as Individuation.” Chap. 7 in Philosophy and Social Hope, 114–126. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Roth, Paul A. “Beyond Understanding: The Career of the Concept of Understanding in the Human Sciences.” Chap. 13 in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, edited by Stephen P. Turner and Paul A. Roth, 311–333. Malden, MA; Oxford; Melbourne; Berlin: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. ———. “Hearts of Darkness: ‘Perpetrator History’ and Why There Is No Why.” History of the Human Sciences 17, no. 2–3 (2004): 211–251. https://doi. org/10.1177/0952695104047303. ———. “The Pasts.” History and Theory 51, no. 3 (2012): 313–339. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­2303.2012.00630.x. ———. The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctvt1sg91. Schütz, Alfred. “The Well-­Informed Citizen: An Essay on the Social Distribution of Knowledge.” In Collected Papers: Studies in Social Theory, edited by Arvid Brodersen, 120–134. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. Scruton, Roger. Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet. London: Atlantic Books, 2014. Stehr, Nico. The Fragility of Modern Societies: Knowledge and Risk in the Information Age. London: SAGE, 2001. ———. Information, Power, and Democracy: Liberty Is a Daughter of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Stenmark, Mikael, Steve Fuller, and Ulf Zackariasson, eds. Relativism and Post-­ Truth in Contemporary Society: Possibilities and Challenges. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Turner, Stephen P. Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts. London: Sage, 2003. ———. “The Method of Antinomies: Oakeshott and Others.” Cosmos + Taxis 6, no. 1–2 (2018): 54–63. ———. The Politics of Expertise. New York: Routledge, 2013. doi:10.4324/ 9781315884974. ———. “Public Sociology and Democratic Theory.” Sociology 41, no. 5 (2007): 785–798. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507080436. ———. “What Are Disciplines? And How Is Interdisciplinarity Different?” Chap. 3 in Practising Interdisciplinarity, edited by Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2000. ———. “What Do Narratives Explain? Roth, Mink and Weber.” Chap. 8 in Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History: Around Paul A. Roth’s Vision of Historical Sciences, edited by Krzysztof Brzechczyn, 130–147. Leiden, The Netherlands and Boston: Brill | Rodopi, 2018. Urbinati, Nadia. Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

The Post-­Truth Condition 83 Wierzchosławski, Rafał Paweł. “Antinomies, Multiple Realities and the Past.” Chap. 10 in Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History: Around Paul A. Roth’s Vision of Historical Sciences, edited by Krzysztof Brzechczyn. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Rodopi, 2018. ———. “Dissidents and Nomads in [Not Only] Post-­Totalitarian Countries: Why Are There So Many Problems If Things Are Going So Well?”. Central European Journal of International and Security Studies 13, no. 1 (2019): 226–232. ———. “Naukowcy w roli ekspertów:o pewnych problemach (re-­ )prezentacji prawdy w polityce.” Zagadnienia Naukoznawstwa, no. 2(212) (2017): 207–231. ———. “Odpowiedzialność uczelni za kształtowanie postaw obywatelskich studentów.” Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny 80, no. 1 (2018). https://doi.org/10.14746/rpeis.2018.80.1.26. Wilber, Ken. Trump and a Post-­Truth World. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2017.

Part 2

Case Studies of Post-­Truth

5 Pinkersonian Post-­Truth History, Ideology, and Postmodernism Adrian Wesołowski

Post-­truth history, the subject of this volume, is often seen as a phenomenon with roots in postmodernism.1 Those denouncing postmodernism can in turn be seen as exposers of post-­truth and suppressors of its condemnable cause. This chapter will argue that the exposers are sometimes to blame as well. It reverses the cause-­and-­effect reasoning to show how talking about history, and particularly about the history of postmodernism, can prove to facilitate post-­truth rather than to oppose it. More precisely, the chapter’s goal is to point to the connection between the supposed exposers of post-­truth and the deceptive ways that they use historical knowledge. I  turn to Jordan Peterson and Stephen Pinker, two prominent psychologists and public intellectuals who gained global reputations as the protectors of scientific standards of reasoning against the onslaught of postmodernism. First, I provide a description and critical analysis of the ways Peterson and Pinker misrepresent postmodernism. Directing one’s attention to how Peterson and Pinker distort history, I  aim to present how their twisted concept of postmodernism has its roots in their broader outlook on the historical process. Rather than being meticulous about what is and what is not true, Peterson and Pinker’s attack on postmodernism is driven by defending their idea of the truth. In this process, the historical errors they make are far from coincidental and effectively support the narratives they develop in their entire pop oeuvres. Peterson and Pinker were chosen because they share the tactic of painting postmodernism as cartoonishly villainous. The goal here is not to link Peterson’s distortion or Pinker’s distortion to a political agenda – a notion as popular as it is simplistic.2 Instead, I want to show the themes shared by the famously conservative Peterson and avowedly progressive Pinker, pointing at the deeper roots of the problem. Moreover, throughout the text, I  will refer to the ideas shared by Peterson and Pinker in the composite figure of ‘Pinkerson’. This follows the practice of James Smith, who has already noted similarities in how both scholars approach postmodernism.3 I will refer to Pinkerson by they/them/their pronouns.

88  Adrian Wesołowski

Postmodernism – What It Can Be, What It Cannot Be The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy describes postmodernism as a ‘set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality’ to destabilise the foundational concepts of modernity, such as ‘presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning’.4 While its influence has been seen in many fields, much discussion around the term concerns philosophical postmodernism. Both the adherents of postmodernism and its critics, including Pinkerson, point to the French philosophers active in the 1960s and 1970s as the initiators of the movement. Names such as Jean-­François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour, and Judith Butler, taking the top places in academic quotation rankings, reappear most often in Pinkerson’s texts.5 It is unclear whether postmodernism can be perceived as any one thing. Failure to define it is regarded as a truism.6 Postmodern philosophers have disagreed on the issues that, according to Pinkerson, constituted basic tenets of their philosophy, including being called postmodernists.7 The sparse markers of postmodernist philosophy include incredulity towards meta-­narratives, hostility towards ideologies, an insistence on the adoption of open language, and words eluding unitary interpretations. Many postmodernists built on the rejection of essentialism, distancing themselves from the categories widely regarded as ‘inevitable’ and challenging doctrinal reasoning. This preoccupation brought postmodernists to seek the hidden, ironic, and paradoxical tropes against the seemingly obvious ‘truths’ produced by the modern meta-­narratives (‘grand récits’).8 Postmodernism rejects the idea of one ultimate truth, instead focusing on perspectives, discourses, and alternative ways of reading the world and the conditions in which they have been or might be produced. Historically, postmodernism emerged as a criticism of modernity. Most of the iconic philosophers attacked the basic assumptions of assured discourses such as the structuralist narratives in social sciences, the view that history progresses linearly, the normative visions of sexuality and gender, the unwavering faith in the scientific process, and even the ontological and metaphysical fundaments of modern philosophy. The goals of postmodernists differed, but the tenet of undermining the supposed certainties of the modern outlook on the world and showing valid alternatives often recurred.9 The complexity of the topic rendered some misreadings unavoidable. While postmodernism has been ably criticised,10 most of objections to it, especially in the public sphere, have been driven by a pure attachment to the criticised categories or concepts.11 Some critics have been hostile towards postmodernism for some of its technicalities – its use of complex language, lack of systemic propositions, or the sheer fact that it gained huge popularity.12 Many take postmodernist critiques as statements of

Pinkersonian Post-­Truth 89 fact rather than postulates and as positive propositions rather than critical insights, committing a simple non sequitur.13 Despite the fact that postmodernism never presented itself as a uniform school of thought, it is often assumed to be such, albeit never on a basis of shared argument and always by its enemies. The view of postmodernism taken by Pinkerson14 starts off at this point. Postmodernism has been not, they claim, the diverse set of critical approaches but rather an ideology organised around a number of fixed doctrines. Most of them vaguely resemble some postmodernist critiques but are presented as normative propositions. Pinkerson identifies the French postmodernist philosophers as the root of the evil and blame them for the demise of American universities. Their input was apparently so powerful that Peterson included a lengthy discussion of postmodernism in his self-­help book, concluding that ‘it is almost impossible to over-­ estimate the nihilistic and destructive nature of this philosophy’.15 Since the 1990s, when the interest in postmodernist philosophy spread in US universities, this supposedly cohesive ideology has been able to dominate the world of art and literary criticism and has stretched to the humanities and social sciences.16 Once we recognise that, ‘the reasons for their decline and fall become all too obvious’, Pinker grumbles.17 Pinkerson takes particular issue with these departments, listing the fields invaded by postmodernism: feminist theory, poststructuralism, cultural studies, and social theory.18 This bundle of contradictory studies were to use the same ideological tenets often dubbed the ‘postmodern neo-­Marxism’.19 Pinkerson describes postmodernist doctrines as follows: at the centre, there is the concept of power, particularly power games driving group conflict. Thus, Pinkerson targets the disciplines that emphasise power relations between groups, effectively dividing society between the oppressors and the oppressed. The postmodernists see all other explanations of social issues as parts of the problem, which pushes them to support the politics of identity.20 Peterson describes how postmodernism, as a response to the problem of objectivity, inevitably leads to identity politics: postmodernists noticed that there is an infinite number of ways to interpret the world. They realised that all claims to objectivity are faulty, because all perception can be achieved only from a subjective perspective. Therefore, they concluded, ‘any way goes’.21 As humans tend to interpret the world in a way that facilitates their claim to power, all that drives human society are power games. Postmodernists are able to dismiss other factors contributing to social interaction by strategically adopting moral relativism and social constructivism. They treat social life as a construct and reality as its extension, dismissing all factors organising human activity, from stereotypes to scientific facts. People are simply machines that filter and embrace social constructs learned through culture. This facilitates justifying clearly immoral actions. Postmodernists do not see themselves as similarly vulnerable and use the same reasoning to undermine

90  Adrian Wesołowski any argument against their cause and any hard data that do not support emancipatory action for sexual, gender, or racial minorities, in their view the only truly moral thing to fight for in a word essentially defined by the majority exercising its power on suppressed groups.22 In considering the black-­and-­white picture that Pinkerson paints, one should take into account the situations in which the writers encountered what they saw as postmodernism. Peterson started his career in the 1990s, when postmodernist scholars such as Judith Butler established grounds for a number of new fields of study.23 Pinker became an assistant professor at Harvard in 1980, but the 1990s were also a formative period for him, marking the publication of his first pop science books.24 If one followed the science wars – a series of debates between scientific realists and postmodernist critics in the 1990s – they became used to considering postmodernism an enemy of science, especially if they never stood at the vanguard of the battle of ideas, but only received distorted news from the front.25 Later, postmodernism returned in many controversies that emerged with the growing culture of political correctness, when the arguments from the 1990s were echoed by student activist groups. Pinkerson is hostile to political correctness, as was the case during the Peterson pronoun controversy26 or the accusations that Pinker supports the alt-­right.27 Accordingly, the artillery of their arguments is often directed against postmodernism as the ultimate nihilistic force that spawned out of the university’s self-­devouring tendency: the rejection of truth overtaking the institution created for truth seeking.

Science, History, and Mysticism While Pinkerson presents themselves as an exposer of a covert, influential ideology that leads to a drastic loosening of the standards of truth, they have a rather conflicted relation to academic rigour and evidence-­based claims. This can be seen clearly in their attitude towards academic historiography and the criteria that they adopt when they make significant statements about history. At first glance, this drop in form can be blamed on carelessly stepping beyond their own specialisation. However, it soon becomes clear that Pinkerson’s historical theorems are central to their many criticisms of postmodernism. Both Peterson and Pinker were educated as psychologists. They aligned early with the ‘harder’ branches of the field, such as perfectly cogent empirical studies, rather than with, for instance, social psychology, often described as unreliable and speculative.28 In the course of their lives, however, they turned out to have abandoned their ‘hard’ science for ‘softer’ public careers, educating the masses through TED talks and popular science books. Peterson is a personality psychologist who produced many experimental studies but who authored only two books: the voluminous Maps of

Pinkersonian Post-­Truth 91 Meanings and the self-­help book 12 Rules for Life. Maps of Meaning was intended as Peterson’s magnum opus, a fat volume inspired by Jung’s mysticism. Peterson emphasised how his research into 20th-­century totalitarianism led him to write the work.29 On the other hand, 12 Rules for Life could hardly be considered an academic work, even though it included many views of the author, especially those on postmodernism.30 Peterson uttered most of his controversial claims about sociology or history during his public speeches, a form of expression that he has been best known for since his rise to fame in 2017. In a parallel manner, although Pinker found recognition first as an eminent psycholinguist, his work since the 1990s has taken a turn towards public intellectualism. A  growing number of pop science books slowly overshadowed his academic publications. Since the 2010s, he has produced two books concerned with sociohistorical topics: The Better Angels of Our Nature claimed that throughout human history violence has been in decline, and Enlightenment Now set off to defend Enlightenment-­era heritage faced with modern reality. Pinkerson are rather loose when it comes to academic standards concerning views unchecked by hard science, lying in the domain of ‘soft’ knowledge. Unsurprisingly, the professional criticisms of Peterson’s and Pinker’s trespassing into the domain of these fields became abundant. The common theme of nearly all criticisms directed against Pinkerson is that of simplification for the sake of neater argumentation. Critics highlighted Peterson’s anecdotal use of history to defend his narratives31 and the subtle distortions that he adopts, particularly concerning the rise of Nazism.32 One of Peterson’s synonyms for ‘postmodern neo-­Marxism’ is ‘cultural Marxism’, the scapegoat concept used by Nazi propaganda to indicate that Marxism was a Jewish plot.33 By the same token, a number of critics pointed out how Pinker misuses historical statistics,34 swims in hasty generalisations,35 and paints false images of historical concepts, even the ones seemingly central for him, like the Enlightenment.36 Those distortions are related to the fact that in forming their opinions, Pinkerson uses few accounts of professional historians, instead relying on specialists focused on a narrow field (e.g. cliometrics) or personal favourites (beloved authors and classical but outdated books). Those mistakes might be forgivable, as they have not been produced by professional historians. However, the historical errors not only undermine Pinkerson’s claims about history but also constitute false foundations for Peterson’s and Pinker’s broader worldviews. While Pinkerson’s narratives have been recognised as grand theories,37 they also include claims about the functioning of history as a whole and the existence of eternal historical forces. In Maps of Meaning, Peterson forgets about his empirical studies on personality traits that usually rely on limited findings and cumulative knowledge. Instead, he makes sweeping claims of a historical, sociological, and theological nature. The book aims at ‘rendering the meanings

92  Adrian Wesołowski of the most profound substrata of belief systems comprehensible’ while assuming that ‘beliefs are the world, in a more than metaphysical sense’.38 Peterson emphasises the symbolic-­archetypical frames of this theory: 1. The unexplored territory – the Great Mother. 2. The explored territory – the Great Father. 3. ‘[T]he process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory – the Divine Son’. God and Lucifer act as markers of an individual’s proclivity towards exposure to or rejection of the unknown.39 Beyond the fact that many of Peterson’s arguments rely on distorted historical information,40 the greatest problem in the book lies with the Jungian perspective itself, presenting culture as based on variations of constant unconscious archetypes, the unchangeable structure instilled in our brains.41 For Peterson, the collective unconscious contains ultimate truths, the accumulated wisdom of thousands of human generations, and thus the virtual prescription for a good life  – the lessons that Peterson thinks have been recognised by religious systems all over the world. Pinker’s claims about the downward trend of violence throughout history and the Enlightenment’s almost exclusively beneficial impact on the modern day depend on the factors he distinguished in The Better Angels of Our Nature. The ‘better angels’ included in the title were juxtaposed with the ‘inner demons’; together, they constituted the good and bad sides of human nature: empathy, self-­control, morality, and reason against violence on one hand and domination, vengeance, sadism, and ideology on the other.42 Importantly, Pinker saw them as responsible for historical change. In The Better Angels, Pinker periodised history into phases, describing the ‘major transitions’ brought about by the angels getting ahead in their fight with demons.43 In Enlightenment Now, Pinker presents the Enlightenment as a milestone victory of the angels, resulting in a set of ideas responsible for ‘science, progress, happiness, and humanism’ that have lasted until modern times.44 The tension between the angels and demons can be seen almost as a slight fluctuation in the many charts included in The Better Angels; but ultimately, Pinker comforts the reader by pointing to the dropping numbers, where the angels would win.45 For historians, an unsettling message hides among the numbers: history could be diminished to a fight between natural, inalterable forces dwelling in the human mind – the details reduced to statistical variation. This was noted by the historians who protested against Pinker’s simplification of historical complexity into a pattern that, according to many, fits his personal outlook on the world rather than the data. In their visions of history, Pinkerson professes a biological determinism typical of psychological reflection that targets the invariable human nature.46 However, they also project conclusions from empirical studies

Pinkersonian Post-­Truth 93 and their own prescriptive theorisations onto grand narratives describing how society came to be and how it developed throughout history. This leads to a paradox. Pinkerson openly distrusts speculation and theory, but at the same time, Pinker and Peterson produce historiosophies, folk philosophies of history, the most speculative and theoretical type of historical reflection. The tension fades only after one realises that despite their presentation as anti-­ideological objective scientists, Pinkerson is deeply engaged in the promotion of an ideology. The fact that they so easily neglect evidence that does not support their ideology, just as they attack postmodernism for its own supposed disregard of evidence, constitutes an irony on more than one level. Pinker has been accused of being driven by ‘Enlightened optimism’ and credulous scientism.47 Peterson is usually seen as a right-­wing sympathiser.48 While these preoccupations have certainly informed Peterson’s and Pinker’s historiosophies to some extent, the crux of the problem is where they meet. Both psychologists belong to the so-­called Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), a group of Internet-­famous personalities who stand against the academic intellectualism that they see as dominated by identity politics and political correctness.49 Rather than a consistent ideology, the IDW shares an audience,50 but many thinkers seen as its members allude to similar themes, including the opposition between the ‘Enlightenment ideals’ of science, objectivity, free speech, and rational discussion and the ‘radical leftist’ notions permeated by relativism, Marxism, and postmodernism.51 The IDW seem to share a motivation, trying to counter the impending societal catastrophe stemming from postmodernist relativism that inevitably leads to destructive moral nihilism.52 Pinkerson’s ideological preoccupation slips up when they assume a non-­ objective, opinionated tone. 12 Rules for Life includes entire excerpts listing unsubstantiated accusations against Marxism and postmodernism.53 Pinker rarely cites his subjective opinions, but he does so when writing about modern art, where he develops a conspiracy theory explaining it.54 Such upheavals have their most ridiculous form in Peterson’s lectures on postmodernism, some of which consist only of trivial distortions and long emotional rants.55 Even when Pinkerson keeps their composure, their misrepresentation of postmodernism remains informed by ideological involvement. Here, the situations when they turn towards history are particularly interesting because they reveal the historiosophical foundations of their ideologically motivated anti-­ postmodernism. History returns as a means to pervert philosophy in accordance with their Weltanschauung. Peterson believes that the roots of postmodernism can be found in Marxism, and thus, his enemies are ‘postmodernist neo-­Marxists’. He thinks that in the postwar era, Marxism decidedly failed to convert the world to its ideas and became indefensible. For the French Marxists of the late 1960s and early 1970s to continue promoting their agenda, they

94  Adrian Wesołowski decided to coin a new ideology and use it as a camouflage. By shifting all traditional Marxist claims to their postmodern versions, they were free to roam in and influence academia. Then, their nihilist doctrine expanded and found fertile ground in US universities.56 While multiple aspects of this explanation have been shown to be seriously flawed,57 Peterson stands by it firmly for reasons pertaining to his worldview. Peterson studied the Soviet regime before he was educated as a psychologist. He often mentions authors who denounced totalitarianism, like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as the most influential of his readings.58 He was particularly receptive to the postwar writers’ lessons about the human capacity to commit atrocious deeds, which reinforced his religious beliefs about the Manichean character of human nature.59 This fascination made Peterson interested in psychological abnormalities, such as aggression arising from alcohol and drug use. He has seen his vocation as a clinical psychologist as stemming from the same dual view of human nature: as a force for the good. Read this way, his story about the origins of postmodernism gains is meaningful as a bridge between the degenerating academic culture that he encountered in the 21st century and the atrocities committed in communist states after World War II. To this school of thought, the postmodernists  – that is, covert Marxists  – are reprehensible because they try to save the compromised ideology that led to totalitarianism and because have infected young US minds with it. The young, Pinkerson argues, are particularly vulnerable to the seduction of postmodernism because they never experienced the terrors described in The Gulag Archipelago. Pinker points to the same themes: nonchalantly bundling postmodernism and Marxism and linking French intellectual trends with support for autocracy.60 They both took the idea from a self-­published book by philosopher Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism. Discredited as a failed guide to the development of postmodernism and a misfired attack on political correctness, the book has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity since its publication in 2004, notably among the members of the IDW.61 However, while Hicks’s false intellectual history has been an inspiration, Peterson and Pinker seek their villain at a deeper level. In a talk about postmodernism, Peterson described Michel Foucault as the most reprehensible individual you could hardly even discover . . . who never fitted anywhere and was an outcast in many ways, and a bitter one, and a suicidal one [and who] did everything he possibly could . . . to figure out any treacherous way possible to undermine the structure that would not accept him in all his peculiarity.62 This was more than a sign of disrespect. In Maps of Meanings, Peterson mentioned that individuals and societies who flout the ‘universal moral

Pinkersonian Post-­Truth 95 absolutes’ are doomed to ‘misery and eventual dissolution’.63 For Peterson, Foucault’s life tragedies were consistent with his ‘nihilistic relativism’ in that Foucault brought the misery on himself by undermining the moral absolutes. This applied as well to other postmodernists, ‘hellbent on demolishing the fundamental substructure of Western civilisation’, a concept apparently synonymous with moral absolutism.64 Similarly, Pinker saw postmodernism as a recent iteration of the eternal adversary: as enemies of science, after existentialism, critical theory, poststructuralism, and deconstructivism;65 as another incarnation of counter-­ Enlightenment;66 and as an embodiment of the ‘inner demons’ of our nature.67 In contrast to ‘the angels’, postmodernism was to epitomise the all-­evil tendencies distinguished by Pinker – it was to be irrational, dominative, vengeful, perverted, and ideological. It is when looking at postmodernism that the naïveté of Pinkerson’s historiosophy truly comes to the fore. Although they shroud their voices in scientific objectivity, Peterson and Pinker merely retell the old story of good and evil.

Post-­Truth The way Pinkerson presents postmodernism constitutes post-­ truth. The most common definition of this contested concept is the priority of ‘appeals to emotion and personal belief’ in shaping public opinion and the ‘blatant disregard for truth’ rather than simple intentional falsehoods.68 Pinkerson’s mistaken assumptions about postmodernist philosophers are too impactful to blame them on a genuine misunderstanding. Despite many assurances to the contrary, Pinkerson also displays a disregard for the accuracy of their descriptions. Most criticisms of their claims are dismissed as reactionary nonsense. Pinker describes his critics as ‘highbrow pundits and cultural critics’ who ‘despise the Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress . . . prefer hermeneutic to analytic reasoning . . . valorize the consumption of elite art . . . and believe that Western civilization is on the verge of collapse’.69 Despite acknowledging that Marxism was theoretically different from postmodernism, Peterson did not see this as contradicting his argument.70 Moreover, Pinkerson promotes an agenda. It is not a simple bias that prevents them from critically reviewing postmodernism. Their caricature of the philosophy reveals a worldview with two tangible (if artificial) villains: the threat of communism in the United States and the innate vices of human nature. In Lee McIntyre’s recent work, he emphasises the ideological function of post-­truth. It constitutes ‘a form of ideological supremacy, whereby its practitioners are trying to compel someone to believe in something whether there is good evidence for it or not’.71 This definition does a better job of reflecting the motives behind Peterson’s and Pinker’s suspension of critical thinking and tendency to look the other way when it is pointed out.

96  Adrian Wesołowski The fact that Pinkerson’s ideological attack on postmodernism is rooted in their visions of history testifies to the inadequacy of the previous explanations of Peterson’s and Pinker’s distortions as driven purely by politics. However, an underlying issue concerns the fact that postmodernism has itself been the subject of post-­truth discourse. In 2015, the Postmodern Manifesto appeared in many political and artistic blogs. It consisted of a 13-­point list laying out the fundaments of postmodernism, supposedly discovered by the deathbed of Jacques Derrida and signed by two other postmodernist champions, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. The Postmodern Manifesto was a troubling document. For one, it provided a common thread for all philosophers dubbed ‘postmodern’, despite their declared differences. But more shockingly, some points openly confirmed the complaints of its critics. For instance, point no. 13 admitted that ‘postmodernist interpretation depends on coining new words unknown and unknowable to the masses, on developing a critical jargon of impenetrable profundity, and on a quagmire of theory with which to reinforce endowed significance’. The document was in fact a fake, harvesting the growing distrust towards French philosophy on the Internet, and was perhaps originally placed in Brian Sewell’s 2006 art exposition entitled Postmodernism: Style and Subversion.72 If the concept of postmodernism suffers from distortions as much as any other topic, could it still be that postmodern philosophy was responsible for loosening the standards of truth? It obviously could  – in the end, Frankenstein’s monster eventually turned against Dr Frankenstein. But the cases of Pinkerson and the Postmodern Manifesto remind us of an important lesson: in looking for reasons behind great mental shifts, pointing fingers at specific people rather than at modes of thinking and behaving encourages simplistic and misleading explanations rather than careful reflection. Pinkerson and the Postmodern Manifesto are at the bottom driven by the old fear of ‘the other’ – in this case a foreign, convoluted, and famously difficult-­to-­follow philosophy whose impact is mysterious for many. Confronted with a colourfully globalised, convoluted, and overwhelmingly difficult-­to-­follow 21st century, they choose to interpret the philosophers as those who brought it about rather than those who wanted to address it. In this case, the phrase ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ seems particularly resonant.

Notes 1. Bertrams and de Broux, “Du négationnisme au devoir de mémoire,”  107; Cohen, States of Denial, 280–285; Pomarantsev, “Why We’re Post-­Fact”; Tallis, “Living in Post-­Truth,” 7–18. Also, see McIntyre, Post-­Truth, 123–150. 2. Texts against Peterson include Cole, “The Political Enigma of Jordan Peterson”; and Lynskey, “How Dangerous is Jordan B Peterson.” Texts against Pinker include Gray, “Delusions of Peace”; and Lerner, “Have a Nice Millennium.” 3. Smith, “Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson.”

Pinkersonian Post-­Truth 97 4. Aylesworth, “Postmodernism.” 5. For instance, Peterson, “Campus Indoctrination”; Philipp, “Jordan Peterson Exposes the Postmodernist Agenda”; Pinker, The Blank Slate, 400–401, 411–416; Pinker, How the Mind Works, 341–342, 522; Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 114. 6. Aylesworth, “Postmodernism.” 7. For interesting contrasts and overviews, see Lemert, Postmodernism, 19–53; Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 71–82. 8. Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern, 124; Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, xxiv–xxv; Lyotard, The Differend, 151–161. 9. Docherty, “Postmodernism,” 1–32. 10. The most influential criticisms have been produced by Jürgen Habermas and Marxists scholars such as Alex Callinicos and Fredric Jameson. 11. See the religious criticisms of postmodernism Greer, Mapping Postmodernism, 225–228. 12. Scientific stars such as Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins often speculate on postmodernism’s obscurantism and its effect in the shape of ‘deviant behaviour’. Controversies have been raised around the apparently imperfect analogies to science made by some postmodern philosophers. 13. For the proper understanding of the problem, see Liston, “Discourse or Moral Action,” 371–393. For an example, see Shackel, “The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology,” 295–320. 14. The reader will note that I have not maintained grammatical integrity around the Pinkerson construct, which would normally be ‘Pinkerson presents himself’ or ‘Pinkerson present themselves’. This is intentional. I decided to use the singular ‘they’ here in reference to the fact that Peterson’s symbolic protest against postmodernism was directed towards the use of neutral pronouns by people of nontraditional gender identity. In so doing, by referring to Pinkerson with a neutral singular ‘they’, I convey a critical irony. 15. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 310–311. 16. Peterson, “Campus Indoctrination.” 17. Pinker, The Blank Slate, 115. 18. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 114. 19. Peterson, “Postmodern NeoMarxism.” 20. Pinker, How the Mind Works, 57. 21. See e.g. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 213. 22. See Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 11–13; Pinker, The Blank Slate, 26–27, 411–412. 23. Particularly feminist and queer studies. See Blumenfeld, Butler Matters. 24. Such as The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and Words and Rules. 25. Fuller, “The Reenchantment of Science,” 183–208. 26. Huertas, A Field Guide. 27. Bartlett, Why Do People Love to Hate Steven Pinker? 28. Bless and Burger, “A Closer Look,” 296–308. 29. Peterson, Maps of Meanings, preface. 30. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 311–316. 31. Hausdorf, “Historiography Wars”; Jacobsen, “Jordan Peterson”; Klein, “The Academic”; McGinnis, “Order.” 32. Greene, “Jordan Peterson’s Shocking Remarks.” 33. Wilson, “Cultural Marxism”; Zappone, “Cultural Marxism.” 34. Cirillo and Taleb, “On the Statistical Properties,” 29–45; Cirillo and Taleb, “The Decline,” 1–26. 35. Arquilla, “The Big Kill”; Gray, “Delusions of Peace”; Laws, “Against Pinker’s Violence”; Price, “Why Human Society.”

98  Adrian Wesołowski 36. Dattani, “Steven Pinker’s Counter-­Counter-­Enlightenment”; Harrison, “The Enlightenment of Steven Pinker”; Torres, “Steven Pinker’s Fake Enlightenment.” 37. Beheim, “Evolution”; DeGroot, “Steven Pinker’s Shallow Philosophy”; Proctor, “A Brief History of Jordan Peterson.” 38. Peterson, Maps of Meaning, xx. 39. Ibid., xx–xxii. 40. Thagard, “Jordan Peterson’s Murky Maps of Meaning.” 41. Jung, Collected Works. 42. Pinker, The Better Angels, Introduction. 43. Ibid., Chapters 2–7. 44. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Introduction. 45. Pinker, The Better Angels, Chapter 10. 46. Butler, “Psychology as History,” 40–46. 47. DeGroot, “Steven Pinker’s Shallow Philosophy”; Moyn, “Hype for the Best.” 48. Cole, “The Political Enigma of Jordan Peterson.” 49. Rozner, “Inside the Intellectual Dark Web,” 6–11. 50. Beckner, “Straw Man,” 42–43. 51. Ibid., 42–50. 52. Kelsey, “Jordan Peterson.” 53. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 11–13, 205–213. 54. Pinker, The Bank Slate, 198, 414–416. According to Pinker, all modern art is a ruse created to support the privileged position of the ‘intellectuals’. 55. For instance, Peterson, “Freedom of Speech/ Political Correctness”; Peterson, “Campus Indoctrination.” 56. Peterson, “Campus Indoctrination.” 57. Haider, “Postmodernism Did Not Take Place.” 58. Peterson, Maps of Meaning, preface. 59. Ibid., xx–xxii. 60. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 446–447. 61. McManus, The Rise of Post-­Modern Conservatism, 20, 25. 62. Peterson, “Campus Indoctrination.” 63. Peterson, Maps of Meaning, xx. 64. Philipp, Jordan Peterson Exposes the Postmodernist Agenda. 65. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 114. 66. Ibid., 446–447. 67. Pinker, The Better Angels, introduction. 68. Biesecker, “Toward an Archaeogenealogy of Post-­truth,” 329–341; “Word of the Year 2016.” 69. “Steven Pinker: Counter Enlightenment Convictions.” 70. Peterson, “Lecture and Q&A”; Peterson, “Marxism: Žižek/Peterson.” Particular attention should be paid to when Žižek asks Peterson about the Marxist element in his ‘postmodern neo-­Marxism’. 71. McIntyre, Post-­truth, 12. 72. The earliest Internet mention of the Postmodern Manifesto was an anonymous review from the exposition. See “Postmodernism, V&A – review.”

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100  Adrian Wesołowski apologism-­lindsey-­graham-­holocaust-­migrant-­caravan-­mexican-­border-­tear-­ gas-­a8659001.html Greer, Robert. Mapping Postmodernism. A Survey of Christian Options. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2003. Haider, Shuja. “Postmodernism Did Not Take Place: On Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.” Viewpoint Magazine, 23 January 2018. www.viewpointmag. com/2018/01/23/postmodernism-­not-­take-­place-­jordan-­petersons-­12-­rules-­life/ Hall, Christopher. “The Postmodern Manifesto.” Christopher Hall’s art blog, 12  March  2015. www.christopherhallart.com/blog/2015/3/12/the-­postmodern-­ manifesto Harrison, Peter. “The Enlightenment of Steven Pinker.” ABC Religion  & Ethics, 20 February  2018. www.abc.net.au/religion/the-­enlightenment-­of-­steven­pinker/10094966 Hausdorf, Nicolas. “Historiography Wars.” Jacobite, 25 January 2018. https:// jacobitemag.com/2018/01/25/historiography-­wars/ Huertas, Aaron. “A  Field Guide to Jordan Peterson’s Political Arguments.” Medium, 29 January 2018. https://medium.com/s/story/a-­field-­guide-­to-­jordan­petersons-­political-­arguments-­312153eac99a Jacobsen, Sam. “Jordan Peterson May be an Advocate of Free Speech But He is Also Something Far More Sinister.” Medium, 15 February  2018. https:// medium.com/stories-­soas/jordan-­peterson-­may-­be-­an-­advocate-­of-­free-­speech-­ but-­he-­is-­also-­something-­far-­more-­sinister-­6f1f73a73c91 Jung, Carl. Collected Works. Vol. 9. Part 1, Archetypes and Collective Unconscious. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1991 Kelsey, Mark. “Jordan Peterson, the Intellectual Dark Web, and a Converging Rhetorical Vision: A Q-­Method Study.” Masters diss., Regent University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2019. Klein, Alex. “The Academic Who Will Believe Anything.” The Daily Campus, 28  November  2017. http://dailycampus.com/stories/2017/11/28/jordan­peterson-­the-­academic-­who-­will-­believe-­anything Laws, Ben. “Against Pinker’s Violence.” Ctheory, 21 March 2012. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ctheory/article/view/14949 Lemert, Charles. Postmodernism is Not What You Think. London: Routledge, 2015. Lerner, Craig. “Have a Nice Millennium.” Claremont Review of Books, 16 April 2012. www.claremont.org/crb/article/have-­a-­nice-­millennium/ Liston, Daniel. “Discourse of Moral Action? A  Critique of Postmodernism.” Educational Theory 42, no. 4 (1992): 371–393. Lynskey, Dorian. “How Dangerous is Jordan B Peterson, the Rightwing Professor Who ‘Hit a Hornets’ Nest’?” The Guardian, 7 February  2018. www. theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-­dangerous-­is-­jordan-­b-­peterson-­ the-­rightwing-­professor-­who-­hit-­a-­hornets-­nest Lyotard, Jean-­François. The Differend. Phrases in Dispute. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2002. ———. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1987. McGinnis, Nicholas. “Order, but by Subordination: Jordan Peterson’s Reactionary Mind.” Medium, 11 April 2018. https://medium.com/@nicholasmcginnis/ order-­but-­by-­subordination-­jordan-­petersons-­reactionary-­mind-­cc54ed2f99d4

Pinkersonian Post-­Truth 101 McIntyre, Lee. Post-­Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. McManus, Matthew. The Rise of Post-­Modern Conservatism: Neoliberalism, Post-­Modern Culture, and Reactionary Politics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Moyn, Samuel. “Hype for the Best.” The New Republic, 19 March 2018. https:// newrepublic.com/article/147391/hype-­best Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. New York: Penguin, 2018. ———. “2017/06/28: Postmodern NeoMarxism: Diagnosis and Cure.” YouTube video, 33:19. 20 April 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4c-­jOdPTN8&vl=en ———. “Campus Indoctrination: The Parasitization of Myth.” YouTube video, 1:52:48. 16 November 2017. https://youtu.be/VJMy_BWD3CI ———. “Freedom of Speech/Political Correctness: dr Jordan B. Peterson.” YouTube video, 52:07. 22 January 2017. https://youtu.be/aDRgMUoEvcg ———. “Lecture and Q&A with Jordan Peterson (The Mill Series at Lafayette College).” YouTube video, 2:47:35. 20 April  2018. https://youtu.be/ V32WHDuy-­Do ———. Maps of Meaning. The Architecture of Belief. New York: Routledge, 1999. ———. “Marxism: Žižek/Peterson: Official Video.” YouTube video, 2:45:32. 19 April 2019. https://youtu.be/lsWndfzuOc4 Philipp, Joshua. “Jordan Peterson Exposes the Postmodernist Agenda.” The Epoch Times, 4 June 2018. www.theepochtimes.com/jordan-­peterson-­explains-­ how-­communism-­came-­under-­the-­guise-­of-­identity-­politics_2259668.html Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 2002. www.standard.co.uk/go/london/exhibitions/postmodernism-­ va-­review-­7439529.html ———. Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. New York: Penguin, 2018. ———. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 1997. Pomerantsev, Peter. “Why We’re Post-­Fact.” Granta, 20 July 2016. https://granta. com/why-­were-­post-­fact/ “Postmodernism, V&A – review.” Evening Standard, 29 September 2011. Price, Michael. “Why Human Society Isn’t More  – or Less  – Violent Than in the Past.” Science, 17 December  2017. www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/ why-­human-­society-­isn-­t-­more-­or-­less-­violent-­past Proctor, Hannah. “A Brief History of Jordan Peterson.” Tribune, 8 January 2019. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2018/11/a-­brief-­history-­of-­jordan-­peterson Rozner, Gideon. “Inside the Intellectual Dark Web.” Institute of Public Affairs Review 70, no. 3 (2018): 6–11. Shackel, Nicholas. “The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology.” Metaphilosophy 36, no. 3 (2005): 295–320. Smith, James. “Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson: the Missing Link between Neoliberalism and the Radical Right.” openDemocracy, 1 November 2018. www.opendemocracy.net/en/steven-­pinker-­jordan-­peterson-­neoliberalism-­radical-­right/ “Steven Pinker: Counter-­Enlightenment Convictions are ‘Surprisingly Resilient’.” Quillette, 20 April  2018. https://quillette.com/2018/04/20/steven-­pinker-­ counter-­enlightenment-­convictions-­surprisingly-­resilient/ Tallis, Benjamin. “Living in Post-­Truth: Power/Knowledge/Responsibility.” New Perspectives 24, no. 1 (2016): 7–18.

102  Adrian Wesołowski Thagard, Paul. “Jordan Peterson’s Murky Maps of Meaning.” Psychology Today, 12 March  2018. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-­thought/201803/ jordan-­petersons-­murky-­maps-­meaning Torres, Phil. “Steven Pinker’s Fake Enlightenment: His Book is Full of Misleading Claims and False Assertions.” Salon, 26 January  2019. www.salon. com/2019/01/26/steven-­p inkers-­f ake-­e nlightenment-­h is-­b ook-­i s-­f ull-­o f-­ misleading-­claims-­and-­false-­assertions/ Wilson, Jason. “ ‘Cultural Marxism’: A  Uniting Theory for Rightwingers Who Love to Play the Victim.” The Guardian, 19 January  2015. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/cultural-­marxism-­a-­uniting-­theory-­for-­ rightwingers-­who-­love-­to-­play-­the-­victim “Word of the Year 2016.” Oxford University Press. https://languages.oup.com/ word-­of-­the-­year/2016/ Zappone, Chris. “Cultural Marxism – the Ultimate Post-­Factual Dog Whistle.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November  2017. www.smh.com.au/world/ cultural-­marxism  – the-­ultimate-­postfactual-­dog-­whistle-­20171102-­gzd7lq. html

6 Denying the Stolen Generations What Happens to Indigenous History in a Post-­Truth World? Benjamin T. Jones Introduction 13 February 2018 marked the tenth anniversary of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Apology to Indigenous Australians, especially members of the Stolen Generations, on behalf of the federal government.1 In a reflective interview, Yorta Yorta man and chair of the Stolen Generations Reference Group, Ian Hamm, opined that the significance of the apology was in elevating the Stolen Generations narrative from disputed history to accepted fact. He noted, ‘it wasn’t an argument, it wasn’t a debate, it was just: the sky is blue. The grass is green. This happened, and we need to do something about it’.2 The apology was a Labor Party initiative that received bipartisan support from opposition Liberal leader Brendan Nelson. Although a small number of conservative Liberal MPs and former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard boycotted the event, this was framed as a theoretical protest against the logic of one generation apologising for the misdeeds of another. It was not, at least publicly, presented as a challenge to the historicity of the Stolen Generations. The apparent consensus that the Stolen Generations was a grave injustice perpetrated on Australia’s First Nations did have critics, however, and still does. A week after the ten-­year anniversary, tabloid journalist and conservative provocateur Andrew Bolt wrote a column in the Herald Sun claiming that the Stolen Generations is a ‘myth’ invented by the ‘Left’.3 It is one of dozens of articles written by Bolt since 2001 that insist that no Aboriginal children were stolen for racist reasons and that those who were taken were rescued from neglect and abuse.4 This counternarrative to the academic consensus was not invented by Bolt, but he is its most publicly influential and persistent proponent. As such, he provides a useful case study for exploring the interplay of post-­truth and denialism in Indigenous history. This chapter considers two questions faced by historians. First, what is the impact of post-­truth on Indigenous history? The question is potentially jarring in that the profession has broadly retreated from

104  Benjamin T. Jones the Rankean dictate to reveal history ‘as it really was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen) and is largely content to (re)construct the most likely version of events based on the available evidence.5 The once-­ubiquitous custom of writing the history of something has long since been replaced by writing a history, an acknowledgement that the past can never be fully and objectively recovered. But even if truth itself is a concept that historians usually prefer to leave to the philosophers and theologians, a narrative that relies on and values emotion over evidence can reasonably be called post-­truth.6 As the definition offered in the introduction to this book stresses, ‘post-­truth history’ is not a synonym for lies but is chiefly characterised by indifference to truth in pursuit of ideological ends. Second, when does revisionism or downplaying morph into denialism? These are important and complex questions that hold a particular urgency when the content matter they deal with is sensitive, controversial, or easily politicised. The French anthropologist Didier Fassin offers a useful distinction between denial and denialism. The former is a kind of self-­delusion, an ‘empirical observation that reality and truth are being denied’.7 Denialism, he argues, is different in that it is ‘morally sanctioned’.8 He describes it as ‘an ideological position whereby one systematically reacts by refusing reality and truth’.9 Laws against Holocaust denialism in Europe are justified because they meet this criterion. Particularly in France and Germany, a large number of deniers have been prosecuted as the ideological aspect elevates it from self-­delusion to the incitement of hatred against a particular group.10 Even in common law countries that do not have specific laws regarding the Holocaust, denialism can still be prosecuted as a form of hate speech, as seen in the Canadian case of R. v Zundel.11 The distinction between denial and denialism is a vital one. For historians, an inevitable corollary is, how do we respond to all this? In 2005, Bain Attwood published an important book, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History.12 Drawing on Margaret Jacob’s work from the previous decade, Telling the Truth about History, Attwood insists that the notion of truth retains currency in the discipline of history.13 In particular, Attwood sought to repudiate Keith Windschuttle’s first volume of the Fabrication of Aboriginal History, seeing it as politically motivated rather than research based.14 For his part, Windshuttle makes much the same claim, arguing that his revisionism is in response to a politically motivated new orthodoxy. Historians Tim Rowse and Emma Waterson have used Sharon Macdonald’s concept of difficult heritage to explore the contests in framing Indigenous history in Australia.15 Revisionism, when driven by new evidence and improved methods, should be a cause célèbre. But this requires a litmus test to distinguish revisionism from denialism. Especially if we are living through a post-­ truth era, it is imperative that academics be both careful and consistent in their choice of language.

Denying the Stolen Generations 105

Keating and Howard Steve Tesich coined the term ‘post-­truth’ in 1992. In Australia, it was the year when the High Court handed down the Mabo decision. In ruling that terra nullius (land belonging to no one) was legal fiction, a cloud of doubt over the legitimacy of British colonisation formed. 1992 was also the year of Paul Keating’s Redfern Address. As prime minister, he candidly stated that Indigenous Australians had been grievously wronged and that the first step towards healing was an ‘act of recognition’. In a national mea culpa, he went on to say, We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers.16 For some, this was a watershed moment, a historic step towards recognition and reconciliation. For others, it was evidence of a worrying trend that inverts the Australian story. Keating’s critics argued that a new national story had infiltrated the government to turn heroes into villains, pride into shame. The blame for this shift was generally placed at the feet of academics in the 1980s who were interested in The Other Side of the Frontier.17 With the election of John Howard in 1996 came a contest of ideas now known as the History Wars.18 Howard took a particular interest in how history was taught and rejected the ‘black armband’ version that he felt permeated throughout the Keating years of the early 1990s. Months after taking office, he stated, I think there is a yearning in the Australian community . . . for its leader to enunciate more pride and sense of achievement in what has gone before us. I think we have been too apologetic about our history in the past.19 The appeal to emotions is noteworthy. Howard considered the new orthodoxy in Indigenous history to be the result of left-­wing ideologues pushing a negative story on an unwilling nation. History was causing a disproportionate sense of guilt. Howard’s belief that Australian history should be the story of ‘heroic and unique achievement against great odds’ influenced his successors.20 The next Liberal Party prime minister, Tony Abbott, used an anachronistic euphemism in 2014 when he described British colonisation in Australia as ‘a form of foreign investment’. He also said that before the British arrived, Australia was ‘unsettled’ before correcting himself to say ‘barely settled’.21 Both assertions lack historical veracity. Together, they form a teleological narrative where the independent Australian nation

106  Benjamin T. Jones is the inevitable result of British investment in ‘vacant’ land. Amid the debate over the date of Australia Day in 2018, Prime Minister Scott Morrison tweeted, Indulgent self-­loathing doesn’t make Australia stronger. Being honest about the past does. Our modern Aus[tralian] nation began on January 26, 1788.22 The admonishment of those seeking to change the date for not being honest about the past is ironic and perfidious. 26 January 1788 predates five out of six states, nine out of nine parliaments, the flag, the constitution, and even the name Australia. The ahistorical claim that the modern Australian nation began in 1788 glosses over the violent dispossession of the original owners of the land and assumes, not only without evidence but in spite of evidence, that the ultimate goal of the British Empire in founding a penal colony in Sydney was to plant the seed of a new nation. It is not a true story, but it is one with deep reserves of emotional appeal. Could there a be a better example of post-­truth history?

Denying the Stolen Generations The remainder of this chapter looks at representations of and responses to Australia’s Stolen Generations and how the post-­truth environment has steadily eroded public confidence in its historicity. It suggests that there is a symbiotic relationship between downplaying and denying historic wrongs. Although he emphatically rejects the use of the word ‘genocide’, Howard is not a denialist.23 Even while echoing Geoffrey Blainey’s argument that Australia’s moral balance sheet was healthy, he always acknowledged that ‘we have black marks upon our history’.24 He gave a statement of ‘deep and sincere regret’ for the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians in parliament on 26 August 1999.25 Howard rejected an amendment from Opposition Leader Kim Beazley to replace the word ‘regret’ with ‘apology’, on philosophical grounds. The present generations, he insisted, could not apologise for the actions of their ancestors. Conservative columnist Piers Akerman crossed the post-­truth Rubicon into denialism by insisting instead that ‘There’s nobody to apologise to’.26 Even Keith Windshuttle, who has dedicated a book series to downplaying the suffering of First Nations people, is, for the most part at least, a revisionist rather than a denialist. But downplaying and denialism can have a symbiotic relationship, the former paving the way for the latter. If how we feel about history is given equal or greater weight to what facts and evidence reveal, it is not merely rhetorical to speak of a post-­truth world. The Stolen Generations refer to thousands of Indigenous children who were removed from their families by the government mainly between

Denying the Stolen Generations 107 1910 and the repeal of assimilation policies in 1969 (noting that children were removed before and after those dates also). The policies of child removal varied from state to state and changed over the decades but generally involved taking mixed-­race children from their families and communities to be raised by white families or, more often, on Christian missions. In the 1920s and 1930s especially, the policies were at least partially informed by eugenics. It was commonly held that Indigenous people were doomed to die out, but a policy of ‘breeding out the colour’ of ‘half-­castes’ was possible.27 The removal of children broke cultural and kinship lines, and in many cases, the children would never see their family again. Most Australians were unaware that these policies even existed until 1981, when Peter Read coined the phrase Stolen Generations in a significant report on child removal in New South Wales (NSW).28 In 1995, the Keating Labor government commissioned a nationwide investigation resulting in the Bringing Them Home report, put before federal parliament in 1997.29 The report has attracted criticism, much of it ideological, some of it methodological. Even sympathetic readers generally acknowledge its weaknesses and that it ‘greatly exaggerated the numbers of children involved’.30 Perhaps its greatest strength was that it gave a voice to over five hundred Indigenous people. One of the key recommendations was a formal apology to the Stolen Generations on behalf of the Australian government. This was rejected by Howard but was promised by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd leading up to the 2007 election. In 2008, the apology took place. The progression in public memory is one of general ignorance before the 1980s to a central element of Australian history by the turn of the millennium. The 1997 Bringing Them Home report delineated the personal tragedies, the 2002 film Rabbit-­Proof Fence dramatised the injustice and racial pseudoscience, and the 2008 apology was a profound moment of recognition and national healing. So it was extraordinary on 13 March 2018 on the nationally televised Sunrise news programme to hear regular guest Prue MacSween say of the Stolen Generations, ‘we need to do it again, perhaps’.31 Rather than shock, the comment received a sympathetic ‘yeah’ from Sunrise cohost Sam Armitage. Importantly, historians in Australia debate not whether the Stolen Generations happened but whether it qualifies as genocide.32 The United Nations’ definition of genocide specifically includes the removal of children with the intention of destroying an ethic group. Given Australia’s relatively recent acceptance of the pain and suffering endured by the Stolen Generations, it was shocking that, just a decade after the apology, a popular television programme on a major commercial network would casually suggest that a practice, considered by some experts to be genocidal, should be brought back. Some comfort may be taken from the fact that the Australian Communications and Media Authority investigated complaints about the segment and ruled that it was in breach

108  Benjamin T. Jones of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.33 It is worth considering where these ideas came from and how they received such a mainstream platform. MacSween’s comments were not necessarily predicated on racism but rather reflect a revisionist ideology that either downplays or denies the historicity of the Stolen Generations. She qualified her comment with the claim that many of the Stolen Generations ‘were taken because it was for their wellbeing’.34 Andrew Bolt goes further and insists that all removals were for their wellbeing. Like Akerman, Bolt can be considered a denialist rather than revisionist. He does not argue that the suffering of removed Indigenous children is exaggerated or that the welfare operatives had good if misguided intentions. Rather, he has claimed dozens of times in newspaper articles, on radio, and on television that the entire Stolen Generations narrative is a ‘myth’.35 There was no racism involved for Bolt. All forcible removals of Indigenous children were carried out for benevolent reasons to protect them from neglect and abuse. On the neglect and abuse that many of these children went on to experience in missions and foster homes, he is silent. In 2011, Bolt became the first person to be convicted under the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), a law that had been in place since 1975 for publishing two articles claiming that light-­skinned Indigenous people pretend to be black for financial and professional gain.36 He has since waged a vocal campaign to repeal the RDA. Antagonism towards (at least some) Indigenous people is a feature of Bolt’s journalism. He appears to resent that they have a special place in the Australia polis and undermines this by referring to himself as ‘indigenous’, despite his Dutch heritage, on the basis that he was born in Australia.37 Although his views on policy may be considered combative or unhelpful, it is his campaign against the Stolen Generations that moves into denialism, something that is exacerbated but perhaps not born directly out of the post-­truth environment. Politics professor and former editor of conservative magazine Quadrant, Robert Manne is the leading academic expert on the Stolen Generations, at least in popular discourse, and he infuriated Bolt with the inaugural Quarterly Essay in 2001 titled In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right.38 In 2006, Bolt invited Manne to debate the issue on Bolt’s 3AW radio programme. The actual number of the Stolen Generations is impossible to recover, because records are often lost or incomplete and the definition is fiercely contested.39 In one high profile case, Justice O’Loughlin ruled that Peter Gunner was not unlawfully removed, because his mother, Topsy Kundrilba, had put her thumbprint on a document titled ‘Form of Consent by a Parent’.40 Can this be considered informed consent given that the form was in English and Topsy was illiterate? In any case, Bringing Them Home suggested an upper figure of one in three, over a hundred thousand; the Rudd apology suggested up

Denying the Stolen Generations 109 to 50,000; and Manne argues that the figure is closer to 25,000. This was still too high for Bolt, who said to Manne on air, Bolt:

You are the nation’s foremost scholar, allegedly, on the ‘stolen generations’. . . . I won’t ask you to name 25,000. . . can you name just ten? Just ten? Manne: I  can send you material. I  can send you material, Andrew, if you’re interested. Bolt: Name them. Just name them. Manne: Just listen for a sec. You never listen. The policy started in the late 1890s, a man called Walter Roth in north Queensland. I have the names of, I would say, 200 children that he took. . . . Bolt: But can you name for me now ten names. Manne: I don’t have the names in front of me.41 From this radio exchange emerged the ‘name ten’ stunt that illustrates the corrosive mixture of history and post-­truth. Manne responded by sending Bolt a 186-­page dossier listing some 260 names.42 The dossier contains different forms of evidence that historians are accustomed to working with. The first is statistical. A  1994 survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that one in ten Aboriginal people born before 1970 were removed from their parents, compared to 1.6% of those born after 1980. The second kind of evidence is from government archives. The Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board in 1921, for instance, stated that ‘the continuation of this policy of dissociating the children from camp life must eventually solve the Aboriginal problem’.43 Or as Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory Dr Cecil Cook said in 1931, ‘the halfcaste policy in this Territory embraces the collection of all illegitimate halfcastes, male and female under the age of 16 years’.44 Finally, there are the personal testimonies, both from white police who expressed their disgust at carrying out these policies and from the Indigenous people who suffered under them. The Bringing Them Home report included statements from over five hundred Indigenous people telling similar stories of having their families torn apart for ideological reasons. As one interviewee said in the Stolen Generations report, ‘the hurt never goes [but] at least the non-­Kooris concede that the policy happened and that it was wrong’.45 A post-­truth narrative has attached itself to Indigenous history, and some Australians – despite the evidence – no longer believe that the Stolen Generations happened or believe that if it did, they do not believe it was wrong. If we are in a post-­truth world, one of its characteristics appears to be a belief that there is always a different way to view evidence and that it is somehow elitist, even totalitarian, to insist that one version of events is far more likely than others. Could it be that rather than a race-­based policy of child removal before 1970 that 10% Indigenous children were

110  Benjamin T. Jones neglected and that mysteriously that number dropped to 1.6%? Could it be that the government papers that spoke of removing all ‘halfcaste’ children actually meant only the ones who suffered neglect? Could it be that all five hundred Indigenous testimonies in Bringing Them Home were lying? For historians, trained to analyse evidence methodically and critically, this is not a reasonable conclusion, and there is no trained historian who thinks this way. When presented with the dossier, still openly available on The Monthly’s website, Bolt alarmingly dismissed it as ‘bits of paper’ that prove nothing.46

Debating the Phrase It is worth pausing here to reflect on what is meant by the Stolen Generations. Tim Rowse has made the salient point that public discourse has given the phrase dual meanings.47 The first is an emotional and ethical meaning where Indigenous Australians can self-­identify as members. There is a general acknowledgement that most if not all Indigenous Australians suffered in some way from 20th-­century Indigenous policies, be it direct, such as being removed themselves, or something indirect, such as intergenerational trauma. The second meaning is ostensibly empirical but poorly defined. It assumes that a specific type of suffering must be experienced (and proven to have been experienced) to justify membership. This is where the film Rabbit-­Proof Fence, like all historical films, can be problematic. Perhaps more so than any academic book or even Bringing Them Home, this film set in the public mind what it means to be stolen with the traumatic scene of a police officer literally ripping three young girls from their mother’s arms. But if scenes like that are presumed to be the norm, it allows room for revisionists to argue that numbers are wildly inflated or for deniers to paint the entire narrative as fictitious. Aboriginal children were removed by the state and federal governments in a variety of ways. Mark Copland’s 2005 PhD thesis from Griffith University attempts to quantify the number of forced removals in Queensland from 1859 to 1972.48 One of his more significant findings is that a common reason for child removal was not to separate children from parents but rather to reunite them. For instance, a child living with relatives might be forcibly removed to join their parents already living in a state facility. As Rowse states, the phenomenon revealed from surviving records is one of ‘massive institutionalisation of kin-­based groups’.49 He goes on to ask, ‘were children and parents who lived in the same institution separated or together?’50 Windshuttle uses evidence like this to downplay the Stolen Generations. He acknowledges that children and parents would eat and sleep separately, but they would, he imagines, see each other ‘most days’.51 Should these children, removed from their parents only as far as the next dormitory but, crucially, having access to each other monitored and controlled by the state, be included as members

Denying the Stolen Generations 111 of the Stolen Generations? The answer depends on the definition of the phrase. In response to Bringing Them Home, the governing Liberals and opposition Labor interpreted ‘Stolen Generations’ differently. The government rejected both words. The first word was contested because child removal may be warranted and legitimate, whereas the word stolen implies it was always morally wrong. The second word was disputed because it supposedly inflated the number of affected children in the public mind. In his submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs John Herron argued that ‘the phrase “stolen generation” is rhetorical’.52 Labor adopted a more inclusive definition. Neither word was to be taken literally any more than fallen Anzacs from World War I represented a literal ‘Lost Generation’. As a phrase, it provides, in Manne’s words, ‘a kind of moral shorthand, to a common and collective tragedy’.53 On 4 April 2000, Labor senators repeatedly accused Herron and the government of pedantry and insensitivity for its suspicion and narrow interpretation of the phrase. Queensland Labor Senator Jan McLucas asked, ‘What possessed him to make such an unnecessary and inflammatory statement?’ noting that it was incongruous with ‘the government’s professed deep and sincere regret’.54 Herron bluntly responded that ‘Sometimes the truth hurts’.55 Labor kept up its attack the following day. Leader of the Opposition in the Senate John Faulkner asked if Herron would accept that ‘the term “stolen generations” has a significance far beyond rhetoric and semantics’.56 He evaded giving his personal view. Instead, he conceded that it was accepted by ‘the overwhelming majority of people’ but suggested that this was because it was ‘ingrained in the media’.57 In a heated exchange, he went on to wrongly claim that the phrase was relatively unimportant, because it did not appear in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report. South Australian Labor Senator Nick Bolkus interjected: ‘You have not read the report, you buffoon’.58 The phrase is used 27 times.59 To some extent, Windshuttle’s work takes its lead from this parliamentary debate. Like Herron, he sees the phrase ‘Stolen Generations’ as misleading rhetoric. He employs an exacting definition of ‘stolen’ to exclude those who lost access to their children but knew where they physically were. He excludes also those who had given, however poorly informed, some kind of consent to their removal. Losing the ability to pass on traditional languages and customs is deemed irrelevant. When dealing with Australian Indigenous history, as is true of all history, there is always legitimate space for different interpretations of the existing evidence, uncovering new evidence, revisionism, and debate. Windshuttle’s work, ideological in nature but academic in structure, sits on the border of revisionism and denialism. However unconvincing historians and others may find his thesis that Aboriginal history has been ‘fabricated’, he

112  Benjamin T. Jones does engage with the relevant archival and secondary sources. Bolt does not. By dismissing the archival record as ‘bits of paper’ yet rejecting the historical consensus, Bolt crosses the psychological boundary between revisionism and denialism. Despite his misgivings about the phrase or size of the Stolen Generations, Senator Herron explicitly stated in parliament that the separations were a ‘very serious problem’ and not ‘a myth’.60 Yet this is exactly the term Bolt has repeatedly used. By setting an unreachably high burden of proof, he comes to his conclusions before the evidence, not through it. Bolt essentially demands to see documentary evidence that says, ‘this child was removed because of our racism’. Of course, no such document exists any more than there is a Nazi memo stating that ‘we are killing Jews because of our racism’. He has no time or interest in the nuance and interplay of racism and government policy. He insists that the word ‘neglect’ must be assumed to have the same usage on hundred years ago as it does today. The fact that Queensland’s Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act in place from 1865 to 1911 literally defined ‘neglect’ as ‘Any child born of an aboriginal or half-­caste mother’ is simply ignored or dismissed.61 For Bolt, Indigenous children were removed only for valid reasons of care, statistical evidence that contradicts this is faulty, archival records that contradict this are misinterpreted, and oral testimonies that contradict this are untrustworthy.

Symbiosis of Downplaying and Denialism Bolt’s denialism did not spring from nowhere. Some conservative politicians and columnists fiercely contested the historicity of the Stolen Generations even since Bringing Them Home was presented. Although they did not explicitly call the narrative a myth or hoax, they downplayed the seriousness and scope of the removals, emphasised the cases where removal may have been warranted, and resisted the suggestion that racism was involved in shaping policy. Conservative Senator Eric Abetz criticised the coauthor Sir Ronald Wilson for taking Aboriginal testimonies at face value. He said in parliament, ‘without actually examining the evidence in detail in relation to each individual case it is very difficult to be able to establish whether the view that was submitted to you, undoubtedly as the witnesses understood it, was honest’.62 Wilson noted the impracticality with limited time and money to scrutinise five hundred testimonies but also highlighted the insensitivity of suggesting so many similar stories might not be honest. He noted, ‘we often had to wait some minutes before an interview began . . . till the tears stopped’.63 Manne’s replacement as Quadrant editor, P.P McGuinness, was not a denialist but another downplayer. He began an editorial in 1999 with a series of rhetorical questions. ‘Were there any “stolen children” ’? he asked; ‘undoubtedly there were’.64 He also concedes there ‘undoubtedly’

Denying the Stolen Generations 113 were ‘racists among the white policy-­makers’.65 Having accepted that the Stolen Generations are not entirely a myth, McGuinness dedicates the rest of the article to downplaying the dominant narrative. Some stolen children do not constitute a generation, and some racist bureaucrats do not mean the policies were racist. Where Abetz questioned the honesty of the testimonies in Bringing Them Home, McGuinness suggested they might be suffering from ‘false memory syndrome’.66 With no evidence to support his claim and no training in psychology to identify such a phenomenon, he compared Aboriginal testimony to naïve children who could be ‘ruthlessly exploited by cynical psychotherapists’.67 A  large number of Stolen Generations claims, he suggested, were as plausible as claims of ‘alien abductions’ or witnessing ‘Satanism and other vile practices’.68 The idea gained some traction with former governor-­general Bill Hayden, who also suggested that faulty memories were at play.69 Abetz and McGuinness are careful not to outright deny that Indigenous children were ever removed in unjust circumstances. They do not claim that the Stolen Generations are a hoax. They question the evidence and downplay the extent of the suffering. There is, however, a cross-­pollination of ideas where downplayers act as enablers for deniers. In Australia, it is clear that several prominent voices in politics and the media found it easy to believe that Indigenous people who claimed to have been removed under racist government policies were either lying or delusional. Undermining Aboriginal testimony was coupled with a meme of incompetence perpetuated by the right-­wing media. This idea suggests that First Nations were poor and neglectful parents, and it should not be a surprise that many have had their children removed. Kenneth Minogue declared in Quadrant in 1998 that ‘from the no doubt limited perspective of the surfer on the beach the Aborigines are a pretty incompetent lot, who are difficult to help’.70 The opening three lines of the article are ‘So-­called indigenous peoples’, which perhaps inspired Bolt to later reject the taxonomy by including himself as ‘indigenous’.71 The following year, Quadrant published an article by Reginald Marsh suggesting that Indigenous children were not stolen but rescued, another idea Bolt would run with. Long before Bolt’s ‘name ten’ stunt, Frank Devine and Michael Duffy used Sydney’s influential Daily Telegraph to regularly downplay the Stolen Generations, the latter suggesting the number of genuine cases could be ‘as low as several thousand’.72 Piers Ackerman suggested the inflated numbers were motivated by a hunger for public money (a common claim among Holocaust deniers). He wrote in 2000, ‘It’s the buck, not the sentiment that counts’.73

Conclusion With such a precedent, we may well ask whether Bolt’s denialism is anything new. I suggest that it is different in both its audacity and its impact.

114  Benjamin T. Jones Is post-­truth a useful concept for historians, and have we entered a post-­truth world? Again, I suggest yes and yes. While I certainly do not agree with Matthew d’Ancona that we entered a new era in 2016, if you stretch it back another decade, a case can be made that we do live in a world where information is consumed differently and without the traditional signifiers of entertainment and education, opinion and editorial, lay commentator and expert. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006 – the combined impact of these social media sites on how we consume not only news but history also can hardly be overstated. Rather than read a book by a historian, it is far quicker and easier to find an article on Facebook or watch a video on YouTube, and of course they are free as well. Regarding the Stolen Generations, I found a 13-­minute video denying its historicity that was frequently shared in the comments section of Bolt’s articles.74 The content was taken almost exclusively from Windshuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History  – a book published through his own Macleay Press. The video had well over 3000 views, which is roughly the number of sales that an academic history on the Stolen Generations might hope to reach – but unlike a history book that would require years of research, the video would have taken an hour perhaps to make and it is one of thousands. Those of us who teach history know how difficult it can be sometimes to get even enrolled history students to complete set readings, how much more so the general public when there is a seemingly endless supply of short free videos promising to give us the gist of what happened. The digital age has brought with it a democratisation of information. It is easy and cheap, if not free, to both produce content and disseminate it widely. Digital technology has effectively removed the traditional signposting of expert knowledge. Anecdotally, growing up in Sydney in the 1990s, I remember my English teacher telling us that we can discern quality journalism from infotainment at a glance. Of the city’s two daily newspapers, Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald was distinguished by its broadsheet format, whereas the Rupert Murdoch-­owned Daily Telegraph was tabloid size.75 When being shared on Facebook or Twitter, however, no such marker exists, and it is the headline rather than the domain name that is emphasised. Digital technology allows blogs, personal websites, and outright fake news to adopt the presentation of mainstream media sites and with it the assumed authority and trustworthiness.76 With books also, on-­demand e-­printing gives self-­published works financial viability and an outward appearance every bit as sophisticated as an academic or mainstream press. With an oversupply of information and a degree of effort involved in discerning expert knowledge from uninformed opinion or deliberate misinformation, the temptation is to click on the headlines that feel right rather than to seek the sources more likely to be right. This is the essential definition of post-­truth.

Denying the Stolen Generations 115 When Steve Tesich first used the word in 1992, he offered an Orwellian vision of the future unanchored by facts. He wrote, We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-­truth world. Telling the truth about Indigenous history is important not only from the vantage point of social justice but also for Australian democracy more generally. With an oversupply of information and an endless reserve of online commentators, there is a tendency to assume that the truth must be somewhere in the middle of two strong positions. But for those who do not welcome the post-­truth world and maintain that facts should trump feelings, it is a tendency that must be resisted. Whether the topic is climate change, refugee policy, the Anzac legacy, or the date of Australia Day, the truth is what can be supported by evidence, not the median point of the loudest voices. Fake history, like fake news, is obviously not a new phenomenon. But the proliferation of agenda-­laden history and the ability for ideologically driven revisionist histories to cloak themselves in the garb of serious academic work and to convince not only sympathetic groups but powerful political leaders also is unprecedented. This presents a challenge to historians to take a more active role in disseminating their own research to a mainstream audience. Rather than speaking only at conferences with other academics and publishing articles in journals read only by fellow historians and hidden behind expensive paywalls, there is an urgent need for historians to explain their work and methods and resist popular assaults on truth and memory. Among other recommendations, the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart called for a Makarata or truth-­telling commission.77 It is a worthy goal and an opportunity for Indigenous leaders, members of the government, and historians to work together to tell the truth about Indigenous history. It is a project that I truly hope succeeds, because to allow denialism to twist and distort the story of the Stolen Generations is to inflict a second wave of suffering on the people who have already suffered the most.

Notes 1. This chapter deliberately capitalises the word ‘Indigenous’ in recognition of the collective identity of First Nations in addition to tribe-­based identities. In an Australian context, the issue of capitalising both ‘Indigenous’ and

116  Benjamin T. Jones ‘Aboriginal’ has become politicised and contested. Increasingly, in Australian academic usage, capital letters are a mark of respect unless referring generally to indigenous people around the world. 2. Wahlquist, “Rudd’s Apology.” 3. Bolt, “Aboriginal Kids Dying.” 4. Robert Manne estimates that between 2001 and 2006, Andrew Bolt wrote at least 70 articles claiming the Stolen Generations is a myth. Manne, “Name Ten.” See also, Bolt, “Why I Won’t Change.”; Bolt, “Compo.”; Bolt, “How the ‘stolen generations’ Myth Kills.” 5. The word ‘gewesen’ can also be translated into English as ‘essentially’ or ‘actually’ with important repercussions to the phrases’ meaning. Gilbert, “What Ranke Meant,” 393. 6. This definition is contested, but several thinkers consider the emphasis on emotion over evidence to be the principle trait of post-­truth. See McComiskey. 7. Didier Fassin, When Bodies Remember, 115. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Kahn, Holocaust Denial, vii. 11. Ibid., p. viii. 12. Attwood, Telling the Truth. 13. Jacob, Telling the Truth. 14. Windshuttle, Fabrication, Van Diemen’s Land. 15. Rowse and Waterson, “Difficult Heritage.” 16. Keating, “Redfern Park Speech.” 17. Reynolds, The Other Side. 18. Macintyre and Clark, The History Wars. 19. Hansard (House of Representatives), 30 October 1996, p. 4. 20. John Howard, Sir Thomas Playford Lecture, 5 July 1996, pp. 1–2. 21. Hutchens, “Tony Abbott.” 22. Baxendale, “Scott Morrison.” 23. Davidson, “John Howard.” 24. Blainey, “Drawing Up”; House of Representatives, Hansard, 30 October 1996, p. 4. 25. Editorial, “A Nation Shocked.” 26. Akerman, “There’s Nobody.” 27. ‘Breed out the colour’ is a now-­infamous phrase used by Cecil Cook to describe his policy as protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory. As Gregory Smithers notes, however, Cook’s motivations were complex, and he believed himself to be pursuing a progressive and ‘humane’ policy. See Smithers, Science, 340. 28. Read, Stolen Generations. 29. Bringing Them Home. 30. Manne, “In Denial,” 29. 31. Carmody, “So Many Mistruths.” 32. See, for instance, Moses, “An Antipodean Genocide?”; Short, “Australia”; Moses, Genocide and Settler Society. 33. Brook, “Sunrise Provoked.” 34. Carmody, ‘ “So Many Mistruths.” 35. Bolt, “Aboriginal Kids Dying.” 36. “Bolt Breached.” 37. Morris, “Andrew Bolt’s Claim.” 38. Manne, “In Denial.” 39. Tim Rowse has a useful chapter on the ‘politics of enumerating the Stolen Generations’. See Rowse, Rethinking Social Justice, 80–98.

Denying the Stolen Generations 117 0. Buti, “The Stolen Generations.” 4 41. Bolt, “Be a Manne.” 42. The dossier is still available on The Monthly website. Manne, “The Stolen Generations.” 43. Board for the Protection of Aborigines, “Report,” 5. 44. Letter from Dr  Cecil Cook to Rev. W. Morley, 28 April  1931, in Manne, “The Stolen Generations.” 45. Read, The Stolen Generations. 46. Manne, “Name Ten.” 47. Rowse, Rethinking Social Justice, Chapter 5. 48. Copland, Calculating Lives. 49. Rowse, Rethinking social Justice, 86. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 87; Windshuttle, The Fabrication. 52. Herron, “Submission to the Senate,” 18. 53. Manne, “In Denial,” 82. 54. Hansard (Senate), 4 April 2000, 13259–13260. 55. Ibid. 56. Hansard (Senate), 5 April 2000, 13400. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 13401. 59. Bringing Them Home. 60. Hansard (Senate), 5 April 2000, 13400. 61. Chesterman and Galligan, Citizens Without Rights, 56. 62. Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, Monday, 4 September 2000, 744. 63. Ibid. 64. McGuinness, “Poor Fella,” 2. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 4. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Manne, “In Denial,” 82. 70. Minogue, “Aborigines,” 15. 71. Ibid. 72. Macintyre and Clark, The History Wars, 157. 73. Manne, “In Denial,” 82; Daily Telegraph, 3 August 2000. 74. The Truth about the Stolen Generations. 75. The Herald is now owned by Nine Entertainment and also publishes in tabloid format. 76. The fake news site abcnews.com.co infamously imitated the official US ABC News site abcnews.com. Kessler, “The Fact Checker’s guide.” 77. Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Bibliography Akerman, Piers. “There’s nobody to apologise to.” Daily Telegraph, 17 December 2007. Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacobs. Telling the Truth about History. New York: Norton, 1994. Attwood, Bain. Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005.

118  Benjamin T. Jones Baxendale, Rachel. “Scott Morrison Hits Out at Byron Shire Council Australia Day Date Change.” Australian, 24 September 2018. Blainey, Geoffrey. “Drawing up a Balance Sheet of Our History.” Quadrant 37, no. 7–8 (July–August 1993): 10–15. Board for the Protection of Aborigines, Report of Board for the period 1st July 1920 to 30th June 1921. Legislative Assembly, New South Wales, 1921. Bolt, Andrew. “Aboriginal Kids Dying to Validate ‘stolen generation’ Myth.” Herald Sun, 21 February 2018. ———. “Be a Manne and name just 10.” Herald Sun, 28 June 2006. ———. “Compo proves stolen generation is a myth.” News.com.au, 17 March 2009. Accessed 19 May  2019. www.news.com.au/opinion/compo-­proves-­ stolen-­generation-­is-­a-­myth/news-­story/d83f8650a78cac9de9170dcaa80fd7e2 ?sv=fcb671a9819c93b6b8cd8498f3f2075c ———. “How the ‘stolen generations’ Myth Kills.” Herald Sun, 16 May 2013. ———. “Why I Won’t Change.” Herald Sun, 25 February 2004. “Bolt Breached Discrimination Act, Judge Rules.” ABC News, 29 September 2011. Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, April  1997. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997. Buti, Antonio. “The Stolen Generations and Litigation Revisited.” Melbourne University Law Review 32, no. 2 (2008): 382–421. Brook, Stephen. “Sunrise Provoked ‘Serious Contempt on Basis of Race’.” Australian, 4 September 2018. Carmody, Broede. “ ‘So many mistruths’: Sunrise Cops Heat over Aboriginal Adoption Segment.” Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 2018. Chesterman, John, and Brian Galligan. Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Copland, Mark. Calculating Lives: The Numbers and Narratives of Forced Removals in Queensland 1859–1972, PhD thesis, Griffith University, 2005. Davidson, Helen. “John Howard: There Was No Genocide against Indigenous Australians.” Guardian, 22 September 2014. Editorial. “A Nation Shocked by Tales of Sorrow.” Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 2008. Fassin, Didier. When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Gilbert, Felix. “What Ranke Meant.” The American Scholar 53, no. 3 (Summer 1987). Hansard (House of Representatives). 30 October 1996. Hansard (Senate). “Questions Without Notice, Aboriginals: Stolen Generations.” 4 April 2000. ———. “Questions Without Notice, Aboriginals: Stolen Generations.” 5 April 2000. Herron, John. Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee. Howard, John. Sir Thomas Playford Lecture, 5 July 1996. Hutchens, Gareth. “Tony Abbott says Australia Benefited from Foreign Investment because It Was ‘unsettled’ before the British.” Sydney Morning Herald, 3 July 2014. Kahn, Robert A. Holocaust Denial and the Law: A  Comparative Study. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Denying the Stolen Generations 119 Keating, Paul. “Redfern Park Speech, 10 December 1992.” Australasian Legal Information Institute. Accessed 25 September 2018. http://classic.austlii.edu. au/au/journals/IndigLawB/2001/57.html. Kessler, Glenn. “The Fact Checker’s Guide for Detecting Fake News.” Washington Post, 22 November 2016. Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Free Press, 1993. Macintyre, Stuart, and Anna Clark. The History Wars. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003. Manne, Robert. “In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right.” Quarterly Essay 1 (2001): 1–113. ———. “ ‘Name Ten’: The Journalism of Andrew Bolt.” Monthly, 17 October 2011. Accessed 27 February 2019. www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-­ manne/2011/10/24/1319413522/name-­ten-­journalism-­andrew-­bolt ———. “The Stolen Generations: A  Documentary Collection.” Monthly. Accessed 27 February 2019. www.themonthly.com.au/sites/default/files/stolen. pdf McComiskey, Bruce. Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition. Louisville: Utah State University Press, 2017. McGuinness, P. P. “Poor Fella My ‘Stolen Generation’.” Quadrant 43, no. 11 (November 1999). Minogue, Kenneth. “Aborigines and Australian Apologetics.” Quadrant 42, no. 9 (August 1998). Morris, Shireen. “Andrew Bolt’s Claim to Indigeneity, Petulant at Heart, Obscures Facts.” Australian, 13 May 2016. Moses, A. Dirk. “An Antipodean Genocide? The Origins of the Genocidal Moment in the Colonization of Australia.” Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 1 (2000): 89–106. ———. Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. New York: Berghahn, 2004. Read, Peter. The Stolen Generations: The removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969. Sydney: New South Wales Department of Aboriginal Affairs, 1981. Reynolds, Henry. The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia. Melbourne: Penguin, 1981. Rowse, Tim. Rethinking Social Justice: From ‘peoples’ to ‘populations’. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012. Rowse, Tim, and Emma Waterson. “The ‘difficult heritage’ of the Native Mounted Police.” Memory Studies, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018766385 Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, Monday 4 September 2000. Short, Damien. “Australia: A  Continuing Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research 12, no. 1–2 (2010): 45–68. Smithers, Gregory, D. Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780–1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. “The Truth about the Stolen Generations.” YouTube, Accessed 5 March 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-­3e5YgTTKs “Uluru Statement from the Heart.” Referendum Council. Accessed 24 June 2018. www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-­05/Uluru_Statement_ From_The_Heart_0.PDF

120  Benjamin T. Jones Wahlquist, Calla. “Rudd’s Apology, 10 Years On: The Elusive Hope of a Breakthrough Moment.” Guardian, 12 February 2018. Windshuttle, Keith. The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: The Stolen Generations, 1881–2008. Sydney: Macleay Press, 2009. ———. The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Van Diemen’s Land 1803–1847. Sydney: Macleay Press, 2002.

7 The Oldest Post-­Truth? The Rise of Antisemitism in the United States and Beyond Gerald J. Steinacher

‘The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history’. George Orwell

Introduction Antisemitism, the negative stereotyping and hatred of Jews, has overshadowed Western history for 2000 years. In the 20th century, antisemitism led to the Shoah, the systematic state-­sponsored murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies. In recent decades, antisemitism diminished significantly in the Western world, and there was hope that this plague would soon be consigned to the past. On the contrary, the past few years have witnessed a drastic increase of antisemitism in Western societies, often paired with far-­right activism, racism, and xenophobia. In 2017 in Charlottesville, there were hundreds of marchers giving Nazi salutes, waving swastika flags, and shouting ‘white lives matter!’, ‘Sieg Heil’, and ‘Jews will not replace us’.1 One of the white nationalists murdered counter-­protester Heather Heyer and injured many others. One year later, in October 2018, an antisemite attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people. This was the bloodiest antisemitic motivated attack in the history of the United States. In 2019, there was a subsequent mass shooting targeting the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California, which left one dead and three wounded. The attacker was a declared white supremacist and an antisemite. Research data show a strong rise of antisemitism in the United States in recent years. According to the Anti-­Defamation League (ADL), the number of antisemitic attacks in the United States surged by 57% in 2017. With a total of 1986  incidents reported that year, this number represented the biggest single-­year increase in reported anti-­Jewish hate since the ADL began gathering such data 40 years ago. University campuses are not safe spaces either: The ADL reported 204 incidents on US college campuses in 2017, an 89% increase from the previous year.2 Although each of these incidents is deeply troubling, let us briefly look at a few of the most recent. In July 2018, hundreds of Omaha residents

122  Gerald J. Steinacher were troubled over Nazi literature left in several Little Free Libraries. This hate material included reprints of children’s books from the Nazi era that promoted antisemitism. Around the same time, posters showed up on poles in Omaha neighbourhoods calling for the local citizenship to denounce illegal immigrants to the authorities. In July 2018, a swastika was chemically burned into the grass at War Memorial Park in Omaha.3 University campuses around the country registered a significant rise in attacks on Jews. A Holocaust scholar at Columbia University found her office walls painted with two huge red swastikas and a slur, ‘Yid’ (Jew). At Duke University, a swastika was smeared over a monument honouring the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. A Jewish fraternity at Pennsylvania State University was vandalised and its menorah stolen just weeks after the Pittsburgh attack. At a number of universities in California and elsewhere, flyers were posted holding Jews responsible for the sexual abuse allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. During the most recent US presidential campaign, rising antisemitic sentiment became detectible in many places, including the University of Nebraska. In December of 2016, local newspapers reported on an incident at the University of Nebraska–Omaha. Someone had carved a swastika into a bathroom wall along with the messages ‘Make America great again’ and ‘Kikes to the gas!’ – ‘Kikes’ being a racial slur for Jews.4 In Europe and the United States, the rise of antisemitism was and is intimately connected with white nationalism. White nationalism is a widely used euphemism for white supremacy. Promoters of this ideology often embrace racism (ideas of nature-­given racial hierarchy and the belief of ‘white’ Christian European dominance), ethnic nationalism (nationality/citizenship is bound to ethnicity), and antisemitism (hatred of Jews). The alternative right (alt-­right) is a loose coalition of more or less extreme right-­wing groups that share some or all of the views just mentioned. The roots of racism and bigotry go far back to the beginnings of the European colonisation of what is now called the United States. The genocide of native peoples, slavery, lynching, eugenics, and discriminatory immigration laws are just a few examples of that. And violence was always in the mix. In recent years, the majority of domestic terrorism acts were committed by white supremacists. The most recent occurred in August 2019 with mass shootings in Gilroy (California), Dayton (Ohio), and El Paso (Texas). The shooter in El Paso, who killed 22 people with an AK-­47-­style rifle, targeted explicitly Mexicans and other Latinos in a shopping mall close to the Mexican border. The ‘manifesto’ that he posted just before the attack is full of hate language against immigrants, referring to an ‘invasion’. He also stated that people should not blame US President Donald Trump for the blood bath. The Gilroy shooter seemed to have shared antisemitic, neo-­Nazi material on the Internet.5 In October 2019, during the high Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, a heavily armed man attacked a synagogue in the German town of Halle. He killed two

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 123 bystanders near the temple and confessed later that he was motivated by antisemitic and extremist right-­wing views. In the aftermath of El Paso, President Trump condemned ‘racism, bigotry, and white supremacy’. In the same speech, he called for immigration reform. Trump rarely takes a clear stance against white supremacy – quite the opposite, in fact.6 After the violent neo-­Nazi rally in Charlottesville, President Trump infamously stated that there were fine people on ‘both sides’. Historian Deborah Lipstadt asks, ‘Why was Trump suggesting that there was moral equivalency between racists and the counterdemonstrators?’ . . . ‘Only one side carried Confederate flags and flags with Nazi-­like and swastika-­inspired symbols. Only one side shouted racist and antisemitic insults’.7 And it was a white supremacist who murdered counter-­protester Heather Heyer. Trump’s lax reaction to antisemitism is somewhat surprising given that some of his closest family members are Jewish. Trump’s son-­in-­law is a practising Jew, and his daughter has converted to Judaism. Trump obviously tries hard not to alienate racists, white nationalists, and antisemites, because they remain strong among his supporters.

Antisemitism and Post-­Truth Antisemitism is not easy to define, and there are many ways to focus on various elements constituting it. The ADL summarises it as follows: The belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish. It may take the form of religious teachings that proclaim the inferiority of Jews, for instance, or political efforts to isolate, oppress, or otherwise injure them. It may also include prejudiced or stereotyped views about Jews.8 Although the ADL definition of antisemitism is correct, hatred may not be the only factor at play. But other definitions view antisemitism as a cold way of thinking about the world rather than raw emotion. This latter view is probably most famously represented by the Israeli philosopher Yehezkel Kaufmann, who in 1936 wrote that It is customary to define the word ‘anti-­Semitism’ as ‘hatred of Jews’, but this definition is not accurate. Anti-­Semitism is not Jew-­hatred as such. It is the rationalisations men develop who are hostile to the Jew, to justify their hostility. Antisemitism is, thus, not the emotion, but the ideas revolving around it, in some cases even developing into a kind of ‘scientific system’.9 In the context of discussions about post-­truth, antisemitism is very relevant. It is not just about lies and hatred for political or religious gain; rather, sophisticated long-­standing conspiracy theories lie at the heart of it. Antisemitism is more than a lie, it is a narrative of alternative truth.

124  Gerald J. Steinacher An argument can be made that antisemitism is one of the oldest and continually existing examples of post-­truth in history. It is also one of the most enduring and hateful. Historian Dina Porat summarised it concisely: ‘Denying, distorting, and especially inverting have been techniques of antisemitism since antiquity, and have aimed at creating images of Jews that are the opposite of what is found in reality’.10 When studying antisemitism, one can learn little – if anything at all – about Jews. But we learn a lot about the hate fantasies and negative stereotypes of non-­Jews about Jews. Antisemitism operates by using fictional allegations, which is one reason why fighting it with factual arguments is often so difficult. Historian Doris Bergen highlights this point when she writes, ‘Prejudices are habits of thought, they are not reasoned responses to objective realities’.11 Post-­truth works along the same lines. ‘It’s official: Truth is dead. Facts are passe’, The Washington Post wrote in November 2016 in response to the decision by Oxford Dictionaries to choose ‘post-­truth’ as the word of the year.12 The dictionary defines ‘post-­ truth’ as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. ‘Post-­truth’ or the other fashionable terms like ‘alternate facts’ or ‘fake news’ were traditionally often referred to as fabrications or lies. But the Oxford definition of post-­truth puts its emphasis not on lying but on “emotion and personal belief”. Post-­truth is much more than a fashionable name for ‘lying’. Some academics do indeed think of post-­truth as lying, but others have explicitly stated that post-­truth is not the same. The French philosopher Mazarine Pingeot, for example, says that ‘the danger of post-­truth is not the lie, which in itself may even constitute a form of freedom from factuality, but indifference to the distinction between the lie and the truth’.13 The post-­truth decision by Oxford happened shortly after the US presidential election in 2016 and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. These events illustrate a perceived crisis of truth in Western democracies. Political leaders and particularly those from populist parties often have a suspect relationship with truth: They feel entitled both to their opinions and to their own facts. The philosopher Immanuel Kant defined enlightenment as humankind’s ‘release from [our] self-­incurred tutelage’. Thus, according to Kant, knowledge about the true nature of the world is achieved through reason and courage. In other words, people should use their mind by thinking critically. Post-­truth operates not with facts and reason but with emotions and personal beliefs. This chapter will make two major arguments: 1. Post-­truth is not new: antisemitism, especially when it manifests itself in Holocaust denial and Jewish global conspiracy, has exhibited the typical characteristics of post-­truth discourse for a long time. 2. Recently, many far-­right groups have attempted to make their brand more palatable by communicating a seemingly pro-­Israel stance.

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 125

A Short History of Antisemitism In Antisemitism: Here and Now, Deborah Lipstadt, one of the most renowned scholars on this topic, writes, As horrific as the Holocaust was, it is firmly in the past. When I write about it, I am writing about what was. Though I remain horrified by what happened, it is history. Contemporary antisemitism is not. It is about the present. It is what many people are doing, saying and facing now. That gave this subject [of antisemitism] an immediacy that no historical act possesses.14 Given recent events, Lipstadt’s concerns do not need to be explained further. But what is it, and why does it keep coming back? Here is not the space to discuss in detail the long history of antisemitism, but some basic background is required. In the year 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, which had been the religious and political centre of Judaism for centuries. This event meant the end of the Jewish uprising and the eventual dispersion of most survivors all over the Roman Empire, marking the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora, life as a religious minority without a state. Around that time, small groups of Jews formed communities. They believed in Jesus of Nazareth as the long-­expected prophetic messiah. These Judeo-­Christians were initially a small sect, but they quickly grew in number because they were also missionising among gentiles. Around the year 380, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. While non-­Christians were persecuted and killed, the Jews remained the only religious minority tolerated (if only barely) in the Christian world. St Augustine, an influential theologian of the early Church, laid the basis for a widely shared practice. He argued that Jews should be despised and kept in misery, but not killed. They should not be killed, he reasoned, because there was hope for their ultimate conversion. As a result, Jews were often segregated into ghettos, banned from many professions and from owning land. The Middle Ages saw the creation of vicious allegations against Jews, some of which are still present. Church leaders accused the Jews of being in league with Satan and for conspiring against Christians. Unsurprisingly, Jews soon became scapegoats for all ills, all things that could not easily be explained and were therefore particularly frightening. In the context of post-­truth, four manifestations of historical antisemitism are especially relevant to the subject of this paper: blood libel, accusations of host desecration, ‘Jewish global conspiracy’, and Holocaust denial. These are all fabrications almost immune from facts and can therefore be argued to be post-­truth. Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian children (mainly boys), slaughtering them in religious rituals during Passover, and drinking or eating their blood. Jews

126  Gerald J. Steinacher were accused of stealing or buying hosts and then sticking knives and hot nails into them. In Catholic belief, the host literally represents the body of Christ. In other words, Jews were accused of mimicking and ‘re-­enacting’ the crucifixion of Jesus. What followed such unfounded and horrible allegations were often massacres (pogroms) against the nearest Jewish population. The last massacre against Jews, based on false ‘blood libel’ charges, occurred in Kielce (Poland) in 1946, when 42 Jews were murdered. In Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Jews constituted only about 1%–2% of the total population. In other words, Jews were members of a tiny religious minority. In the United States today, Jews account for less than 2% of the population. With the Enlightenment, Jews were given rights of citizenship and allowed to leave their ghettos (though not until 1917 in Russia). However, religious antisemitism did not disappear but was instead flanked by a secular version of antisemitism. Against the background of pseudoscientific theories about race, Jews were seen not merely as adherents of a different religion but as a separate ‘race’. For the ‘modern’ antisemite, conversion or assimilation was not an option that would solve ‘the Jewish question’.15 The term ‘antisemitism’ was eventually coined in 1870 by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904) as the ‘scientific’ term for the (secular) ‘theories’ about the nature and role of Jews in society and history. To this day, antisemitism contains a mix of religious, racist, and political charges and arguments.16 With European immigration, antisemitism came to the Americas, reflecting many of the centuries-­old stereotypes and accusations common from the ‘old world’, including the ‘blood libel’. One famous US case was that of Leo Frank, who was lynched in Georgia in 1915 for allegedly murdering a Christian girl. One long-­lived conspiracy theory claims that Jewry is plotting to take over the world and dominate Christians.

The Jewish World Conspiracy As pointed out earlier, the idea of Jews being a malevolent force conspiring to control the world is old and rooted in Christian antisemitism (also referred to as anti-­Judaism). One of the most widely distributed antisemitic lies is based on the so-­called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic forgery put together by the Russian secret police and first printed in 1903/1905.17 It recounts the ‘minutes’ of a series of alleged meetings of anonymous Jewish leaders and is set around the first Zionist congress in Basel (Switzerland) in 1897. These Jewish leaders were allegedly plotting to bring Christians under their worldwide rule. To achieve that goal, the conspiracy theory states that Jews undermine Christian societies with ideas of socialism and liberalism. The forgers did not invest much time: they mostly plagiarised from a number of French and

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 127 German books, just switching the main characters. Despite being repeatedly exposed as a complete fabrication, it was quickly translated into all major world languages and became classic antisemitic propaganda. In the United States, it was none other than automobile pioneer Henry Ford who published the Protocols in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, as a serial starting in 1920. Under the title ‘The International Jew: The World’s Problem’, Ford accused Jews of controlling the media and financial systems in order to enslave (white Christian) Americans.18 Hitler admired Ford, and the Nazi government awarded the prominent American the highest order for a non-­German. He was a US hero to many and at the same time a significant force for antisemitism in the United States. In October  2018, flyers were posted at a number of universities in California and elsewhere holding Jews responsible for the sexual abuse accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Politicians of Jewish background such as US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer were shown as caricatures standing around Kavanaugh and rubbing their hands. They were signified as Jews with a large Star of David on their foreheads. The flyer states, ‘every time some anti-­white, anti-­American, anti-­freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it’.19 As absurd as the whole thing looks and is, there is an underlying history and message behind these antisemitic themes and depictions of Jews. The aforementioned antisemitic flyer distributed in California again reflects this entrenched belief and applies it to current issues. Jews are depicted as plotting against Americans, and the Christian Kavanaugh is their latest ‘victim’. No evidence is provided to support these absurd claims. For the antisemites, it was enough ‘evidence’ that there are critics of Kavanaugh among Democrats who have a Jewish background. The Jewish conspiracy is accepted as a fact and can be applied to any current issue. These views are also dangerous because they often lead to violence and murder. In April 2019, a man with an assault-­style rifle killed one worshipper and wounded three others in the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California. The attacker, a declared white supremacist, wrote in an open letter that he was fighting back against the Jews because they were plotting a genocide of the white European race. In these antisemitic fantasies, Jews are not conspiring with Satan anymore, but they still want to harm gentiles and bring evil to the world.

The Jewish Bogeyman Like antisemites of any era, Ford actively sought the personification of the Jewish enemy. He found it in Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish lawyer and farmer’s union activist. When Sapiro sued Ford for libel, hate speech itself was on trial. Ford used his influence to try to demonise Sapiro. But Sapiro was not intimidated, and as a result, Ford eventually gave in

128  Gerald J. Steinacher and settled out of court. In 1927, Ford closed the Dearborn Independent, shuttering its antisemitic crusade.20 Nowadays, antisemites pursue a similar strategy. Prominent community leaders of Jewish background are demonised and presented as ‘evidence’ for the ‘Jewish world conspiracy’. Well-­known Hungarian-­American philanthropist George Soros is the ‘all-­powerful’ Jewish bogeyman for modern antisemites. The current right-­wing government in Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán uses ‘international Jew’ Soros repeatedly as a hated scapegoat for all kinds of problems (especially regarding issues of immigration): ‘It shows the enduring power of the myth of the omnipresent, omnipotent Jew on the far-­right of European politics’, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote.21 Protester signs in Hungary show Soros’s image with devil horns added to it, and billboards in Budapest read ‘Stop Soros’. But in the United States too, Soros became a target for haters. In 2018, President Trump and his allies insinuated that Soros was the financier of the migrant ‘caravan’ from Central America. For believers of this conspiracy theory, Soros’s (and the Jews’) ‘masterplan’ involves replacing European-­Americans with non-­white people. Certain alt-­right communities even believe that Jews should be held to account for larger shifts in demography, including interracial marriage, feminism, and the emergence of the larger queer community.22 This ‘replacement’ conspiracy theory is a good case for a post-­truth story. It shows that post-­truth is not just about lies but about rather sophisticated alternative ‘explanations’ of phenomena. In July 2019, the White House invited conservative and right-­wing journalists for a social media summit. Among the invitees was the author of an antisemitic cartoon depicting Soros as an instrument of the Rothschilds who was also pulling the strings of the ‘puppets’ of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and retired general David Petraeus, who had both fallen out of favour with the president.23 The image of the Jewish ‘puppet master’ pulling the strings is an old cliché, and the Rothschilds were blamed as the masterminds of alleged Jewish conspiracies in previous centuries.24 It comes as no surprise that Soros is also a popular target of Breitbart News. The right-­wing outlet became widely known during the tenure of its former executive and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.25 Soros is not only a businessperson but also the founder of the Open Society Foundation and as such an admirer of Austrian-­British philosopher Karl (Charles) Popper, who argued for an open society, where everyone is valued, where critical thinking is encouraged, and where the rule of law is respected. Its enemies have a different vision of society: not everyone is valued, critical thinking is hindered, and the rule of law is not respected.26 Soros adds to Popper’s concept by stressing the importance of truth and facts in an open society. Free elections or the freedom of the press are under siege if facts are constantly and systematically manipulated or do not matter at all. Soros concludes that with the end of truth

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 129 comes the end of democracy. It comes as little surprise that Soros and his brainchild, the Central European University in Budapest, are under intense attack by right-­wing politicians in Europe and the United States. As of 2019, the Central European University in Budapest was forced to leave that city because of the massive pressure from the current right-­ wing Hungarian government. Charles Popper stated that democracy is a great experiment with flaws and that it is impossible to always foresee what can undermine it. Importantly, we now witness ‘the first expulsion of a university in the European Union’, as the Austrian liberal newspaper Der Standard put it.27 This is a bad sign for Europe’s state of democracy and a bad sign for European Jews.

Holocaust Denial The 2016 film Denial received a lot of international attention. The storyline is based on the trial between US historian Deborah Lipstadt and the British Holocaust denier David Irving. On the surface, this was a defamation/libel trial only. But much more was at stake because crucial facts on the murder of 6  million European Jews were challenged by deniers. In other words, truth itself was put on trial when Irving sued Lipstadt in a British court. In 1994, Lipstadt, a professor at Emory College in Atlanta, published the book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which she labelled Irving a Holocaust denier because he questioned numbers and methods of the genocide. Irving, who had a certain prominence as a Hitler biographer even outside of right-­wing circles, sued Lipstadt for libel.28 The film dramatises the trial, which went on for four years and ended in 2000 with Lipstadt winning. The agreement on certain basic facts of the present and the past is a precondition for a functioning society. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but not entitled to their own facts. Lipstadt points out that Holocaust denial is similar to denying other central historical events. For her, the whole trial initially felt unreal: ‘That would be the equivalent of the scholar of ancient Rome debating whether the Roman empire ever existed or the French historian proving that there really was a French Revolution’.29 Holocaust denial is not based on facts but is, instead, irrational. It should come as no surprise that Holocaust denial is deeply rooted in antisemitism. Dina Porat, a prominent Israeli Holocaust scholar, wrote on the underlying motivation of deniers: It is indeed denial in and of itself, in various forms and degrees, that they want to achieve, or is it actually the twisting and inversion of the image of the Jew, so that it might continue to fulfill the task it has always fulfilled: to serve as the dark negative counter-­mirror of one’s own positive image, regardless of reality?30

130  Gerald J. Steinacher For Porat, Holocaust denial is usually also a part of antisemitism. In addition, it is also an important ingredient of a white supremacist, racist, and neo-­fascist working agenda.31 David Duke, the former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is also a Holocaust denier.32 It is not surprising that during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, of which Duke was one of the organisers, antisemitism featured prominently. Since the 1970s, Holocaust denial is on the rise, and today it is no longer limited to fringe groups on the extreme right. Lipstadt points out that nationalists as well as racists and antisemites are confronted with a problem: Since World War II, ‘Nazi’ has been a bad word, particularly because of the unprecedented crimes they committed.33 There is now a tendency among right wingers and white nationalists to distance themselves from Hitler and the Holocaust so as to make far-­right ideologies more acceptable to mainstream society. One example is demonstrated in events connected to the conservative student organisation Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Founded in 2012, TPUSA’s stated goal is to appeal to young conservatives, especially on college campuses, to push back against liberal views. In December 2017, the New Yorker reported that this conservative nonprofit was accused of ‘racial bias and illegal campaign activity’.34 In February 2019, a video became public that showed the organisation’s communications director, Candace Owens, talking about Hitler and nationalism: ‘If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well – okay, fine. The problem is that he . . . had dreams outside of Germany [and] wanted to globalize’. Owens’s statement from a December 2018 event in London drew a lot of attention and criticism. In a congressional hearing about the rise of white nationalism, Owens, who is African American, defended and clarified her statement by saying that she tried to separate the term ‘nationalist’ from its associations with Hitler and the Nazis, adding, ‘He wasn’t a nationalist. . . . He was a homicidal, psychotic maniac’.35 But Owens got the facts wrong. The first concentration camps in Germany were established in 1933, only weeks after the Nazis took power. So, the ‘problem’ with the Nazis was not ‘globalisation’ but rather the inherent racism and violence. When right-­wing populist governments in various countries reference the Holocaust, they work hard to make it fit into their narrative of the past. One case is Poland, where the nationalist government in 2018 passed a controversial law that would punish anyone with up to three years in prison who blamed the ‘Polish nation’ for the Holocaust. Following an international outcry, the law was amended, making it a civil rather than a criminal offence. Poland suffered terribly under the Nazi occupation, but there is also the fact that many Poles were involved in persecuting Jews during the Holocaust. As is so often the case, this law is a matter of interpretation, and it remains to be seen whether independent historians seeking the truth will be punished by it.36 In Hungary and other Central

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 131 and Eastern European countries, there is a tendency to lump together the crimes of the Nazis and Communists and to present themselves as victims (and victims only) of both dictatorships.37 The Holocaust happened, but the perpetrators remain nameless and abstract. Another relatively common phenomenon in some Eastern European countries is the idealising of Nazi collaborators as ‘anticommunist freedom fighters’.38 Far-­right political parties in Germany (especially in the Eastern states) emphasise the suffering and the victim status of the German civilian population during World War II. Allied bombing raids (Dresden) and the brutal expulsion of millions from eastern parts of prewar Germany are central elements of this narrative. Under the motto ‘others suffered too’, this revisionist view has the tendency to downplay guilt and responsibility and take away the uniqueness of the Holocaust.39 The passage of time seems to make it easier for deniers and minimizers. We are now at the point when the last survivors are quickly passing away. It is only a matter of time before there are no more Holocaust survivors or other witnesses among us. Without contemporary witnesses of these events, contemporary history will become history. In the words of Lipstadt, ‘For them [the future generations] it will be part of the distant past and consequently, more susceptible to revision and denial’.40 With the distance of time, there is the potential for the Nazi past to become more normalised. Gavriel Rosenfeld gets right to the point when he states that Overturning the sense of the past’s exceptionality is one of several goals that define the broader phenomena of normalisation. Normalisation is a relatively new concept that historians and other scholars have increasingly employed to understand how and why perceptions of the past shift over time.41 Perceptions of the Holocaust are no exceptions. Popular works of fiction play an increasingly important role in our perception of the past. The alternate history television series The Man in the High Castle presents a world in which the Nazis won and shared control of the United States with the Japanese. In Timur Vermes’s bestselling book Look Who’s Back, Hitler returns from the dead to present-­day Berlin.42 With initially no memory of his previous life, Hitler goes on to become a successful comedian. But soon enough, his ‘role’ is being himself. In a novel by British author C.J. Sansom, Dominion, Great Britain is reduced to a Nazi satellite state. These books and films often come with a warning of a possible re-­emergence of fascism with a contemporary appearance. These fictional narratives and representations of historical events in new form have an impact on a wide audience. Most people get their knowledge about the Holocaust from films, documentaries, and even more so from (semi-­)fictional movies and novels. For nonexperts,

132  Gerald J. Steinacher it is often difficult to put these narratives into a wider historical context. But historians are often left to react to those popular cultural narratives of a past instead of shaping them. Alvin H. Rosenfeld argues that the historian’s role and even memory itself is supplanted by the arbiters of popular culture.43 In addition, Nazi history and the Holocaust are frequently material for science fiction novels, horror movies, video games, and re-­ enactment games. The difference between historical facts and fictional/ semi-­fictional representations start to blur. These relatively new forms of ‘storytelling’ are largely unchartered territories in regard to Holocaust memory, and it remains to be seen what long-­term consequences they will have.44 To be sure, Holocaust deniers are a minority in the Americas and Europe. In the past few decades, remembering the Holocaust and drawing moral lessons from it have been central elements in Western democracies.45 Holocaust denial is punishable by law in over 20 countries, Germany being one of the strictest countries enforcing them. There is a growing number of memorials, museums, and research centres dedicated to the history of the Nazi regime and the Shoah. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI visited Israel’s Holocaust Museum and memorial at Yad Vashem and honoured the victims.46 Holocaust education is now required in more and more states in the United States (as of 2019, 12 states have already enacted the necessary legislation, and others are currently working on it). The bipartisan consensus on the importance of Holocaust education is a bright light among the troubling evidence of rising antisemitism in our midst. In an increasingly polarised society, common ground about how to commemorate the Holocaust and what to learn from it is anything other than taken for granted. What makes things even more complicated is antisemitism hidden as a critique of Israel, both from the political right and from the political left. “Pro-­Israel and Antisemitic” Dilemma Theodor Herzl of Vienna, one of the fathers of modern political Zionism, hoped that a Jewish state would end antisemitism. Sadly, he was wrong. The foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 merely changed certain aspects of antisemitism. In recent years, critiques of Israel with more antisemitic or less antisemitic undertones have occurred frequently on both the political (far) right and the political (far) left. Since the 1960s, European and American leftists have often sided with the Palestinians and supported their ‘struggle for liberation’. In recent years, the best-­known leftist group attacking Israel has been BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. BDS criticises Israel for its current politics regarding the Palestinians. Of course, not every critique of Israel is automatically antisemitic. Every government can and should be criticised if democratic standards are transgressed or if human rights violations occur.

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 133 But the criticisms and demands by BDS go far beyond that by putting in question the very existence of Israel.47 With such demands, the BDS is clearly antisemitic in its nature and stated goals. Also, antisemitism and Holocaust denial are common in the Arab and Muslim worlds, claiming that the Holocaust is a Jewish hoax to legitimise Israel.48 Although attacks on Israel and antisemitic rhetoric from the political left have not changed significantly in recent decades, the situation on the political right mutated to a remarkable degree. That the far right shows public support for Israel and defends its statehood is the most significant change in recent years. Although in past decades classical antisemitic rhetoric and a hate of Israel normally went hand in hand, this is not automatically the case anymore. A number of examples spring to mind: In 2017, Donald Trump announced the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This was a controversial decision given that East Jerusalem is still considered occupied territory according to the United Nations. Trump and his allies repeatedly echoed support for Israel and attacked Democrats in the United States as being antisemitic because of their criticisms of Israel. In a tweet in August 2019, the president quoted the conspiracist Wayne Allyn Root, who claimed that George Soros staged the events in Charlottesville. Root went on to say that the Israeli Jews love Trump ‘like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God’. Trump lost no time reposting this message on Twitter. The notion of a reborn Christian saviour who returns to Israel echoes ancient beliefs about the role that Jews play in the ultimate triumph of Christianity.49 The conservative evangelical Christians in the United States also support the return of Jews to Israel, because in their belief, it would hasten the second coming of Christ. In that event, of course, Jews would have to convert or perish. In other words, being pro-­Israel does not always necessarily mean embracing and accepting Jews in their own right.50 Anti-­Defamation League (ADL) director Jonathan Greenblatt found the references to Trump as the second ‘messiah’ truly ‘breathtaking’ and went on to say that is the height of hypocrisy to use Christian theology to bully Jews and to push out some messianic [messaging]; literally it is hard to think about something less kosher [than] telling the Jewish people you are the King of Israel and therefore we should have some fidelity for some reason.51 Messiah or not, Trump’s support of Israel and repeated attacks on Muslims reflect the views of significant segments of religious Christians in the United States. Further, this first revision of pro-­Israel sentiment that masks a true desire for Christian supremacy allows for the fostering of a second revision (and even erasure) of actual historical events.

134  Gerald J. Steinacher Many white supremacist and neo-­Nazi leaders are increasingly supporters of Israel. They support the state of Israel as a place where Jews can ‘go back where they came from’ and leave white Christian societies alone. Some right-­wing antisemites now point to ‘the solution of the Jewish question’, arguing that their fellow citizens of Jewish background should be sent (‘back’) to Israel. The tendency to conflate Jews and Israelis insinuates that the real homeland for all Jews is Israel. In April 2019, Trump told American Jews that the prime minister of Israel is their leader.52 These insinuations are reminiscent of classic antisemitic charges of dual loyalty or disloyalty of Jews used for almost 2000 years in Europe.53 This phenomenon is not restricted to the United States. Far-­ right leaders in Europe and the United States repeatedly express support for Israel. The former head of the far-­right Austrian Freedom Party, Heinz-­ Christian Strache, visited Israel and paid tribute to the Austrian victims at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.54 But at the same time, right-­wing leaders like him play into antisemitic tropes that argue that Jews are the masterminds behind the refugee crisis affecting Europe over the past few years. The right-­wing leader talked about a ‘population shift’ threatening the West, referring to conspiracy theories about white Christian Europeans being replaced by Muslims and people of colour. Strache’s party officials made headlines due to their antisemitic statements and language used while in power in Austria (as the junior partner in coalition with the conservative Austrian People’s Party).55 French right-­wing populist Marine Le Pen has tried to detoxify her party by rejecting overt antisemitism while denying the role of the French State in the Holocaust. Poland’s Law and Justice Party has put much effort into publicising its ‘pro-­ Zionist’ credentials, such as President Andrzej Duda’s much-­publicised 2017 visit to Israel’s legendary officer Yoni Netanyahu’s grave in Israel and his 2018 visit to the Warsaw Jewish cemetery, laying wreaths at the tombs of the Warsaw Uprising’s last commander, Marek Edelman, and the commander of the Jewish Military Union, Paweł Frenkel. And yet Duda also publicly denies the full involvement of Poles during the wartime massacre at Jedwabne and has, as mentioned already in this chapter, signed the controversial ‘Holocaust law’ that initially criminalised arguments blaming the Polish nation for co-­responsibility for the Holocaust. There are, no doubt, many more examples of this new ‘Pro-­Israel and antisemitic’ dilemma, as the Israel daily Haaretz put it in 2017.56 These few examples show a discernible change in the type of antisemitism appearing in recent years. It is especially important because it shows that antisemitism may in some quarters be less blatant than its historical antecedents and yet be hidden in the superficial clothing of pro-­Israeli sentiment. Importantly, this pro-­Israelness is deceptive, and the same people/movements will simultaneously advance other forms of antisemitism.

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 135 The question, though, is whether this “pro-­Israel but antisemitic” view constitutes post-­truth. Why does this seemingly contradictory view not provoke cognitive dissonance? Perhaps this pseudo-­pro-­Israeli rhetoric is directed at the feelings of European nationalists rather than at their reason. They see a politician visiting Israel or supporting Israel with words and feel that the politician cannot be antisemitic. And is there any reason why Duda visits the graves of Zionists and not Jewish-­Polish anti-­Zionist leaders, Orthodox Jews, or Polish-­Jewish cultural figures? It seems to me that the choice of contemporary European nationalism venerating figures associated with Zionism (seen as Jewish nationalism) is not coincidental. Could the rationale constitute post-­truth? Historically, nationalist and fascists movements (like Mussolini’s) at times uttered support for Zionism. In the end, it was a mere tactic or practical move and not a change of heart of how they viewed Jews.

Conclusion Antisemitism is one of the oldest hatreds and reasons for fake news. It has been around for almost 2000 years. Although the basic ideas of this hatred still lie at the core of what we observe, there have been changes in the post-­truth era. Initially, the despising of Jews was based on religion and ultimately goes back to the Jewish view that Jesus was not the promised Messiah. For Christians, this was reason enough for the discrimination and persecution of their Jewish neighbours. In the 19th century, antisemitism became secularised, and religion was replaced by ‘race’. Jews were then considered a separate race by many gentiles. The longest-­living innovation was the conspiracy theory that Jews were constantly plotting to take over the world. In the post-­truth world, this allegation is alive and well but adapted to current topics and issues. From the antisemitic perspective, Jews are behind the immigration of non-­Europeans (non-­white people) to the United States and other Western countries, behind feminism, behind the acceptance for LGBTQ communities and behind pandemics. Ultimately, the Jews are accused of planning a ‘genocide’ of white Christians by replacing and outnumbering them with non-­Europeans. These antisemitic conspiracy theories always needed a Jewish bogeyman, a face representing these dark forces allegedly at work. For antisemite and alt-­right minds, this is George Soros. The Jewish Hungarian-­American businessperson is blamed for almost everything: the refugee crisis in Europe, immigrant caravans in Central America, and the climate change ‘hoax’. In this alternative ‘truth’ of antisemitism, the Holocaust is often downplayed to a minor event if not denied directly. The demonisation of Israel remains common and can be found in many political parties on the right and the left. Recently, many far-­right groups have attempted to make their brand more palatable by communicating a seemingly pro-­ Israel stance. While many of these trends are new variations on an old

136  Gerald J. Steinacher tune, the post-­truth world is a world of mass media and the Internet. Distinguishing factual news from fake news is a challenge. The stakes are high in that fake news all too often leads to real hatred and even violence, as the events like the one in Pittsburgh have clearly demonstrated.

Acknowledgements If not stated otherwise, all the views and opinions expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I thank Marius Gudonis, Benjamin T. Jones, Ari Kohen, Steven Wees, Robert Lipscomb, Mark Gudgel, Stas Nikolova, Anne Johnson, and other colleagues in the United States, Europe, and Australia for helping me write this piece.

Notes 1. Astor, “White Nationalists.” 2. Astor, “Anti-­Semitic Incidents.” 3. Nelson, “Veterans.” 4. Ruggles, “UNO.” 5. Baker, “The Gunman at a California Garlic Festival.” 6. Astor and Stevens, “Democrats Condemn Trump.” 7. Lipstadt, Antisemitism: Here and Now, 53. 8. Anti-­Defamation League, “Anti-­Semitism.” 9. Kaufmann, “Anti-­Semitic Stereotypes in Zionism.” 10. Porat, “Holocaust Denial,” 468. 11. Bergen, War and Genocide, 3. 12. Wang, “ ‘Post-­truth’ Named 2016 Word of the Year.” 13. In Pingeot Mazarine’s “Pour mieux saisir la post-­ vérité, re-­ lire Hannah Arendt,” from The Conversation France published online on 20 January 2017 (quoted in Gudonis, “How Useful is the Concept of Post-­Truth,” 146) 14. Lipstadt, Antisemitism, ix. On the most current developments in the United States, see also Weiss, Anti-­semitism, 19. 15. For more on the ‘Jewish question’ see Judaken, “Antisemitism and the Jewish Question.” 16. Efron et al., The Jews. See also Wistrich, Antisemitism, the Longest Hatred. 17. See also the exhibition “A  dangerous lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which opened in 2006 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, accessed 2 September 2019, www.ushmm.org/ information/exhibitions/museum-­exhibitions/a-­dangerous-­lie-­the-­protocols-­ of-­the-­elders-­of-­zion. For more on the history of anti-­Semitism see Rosenfeld, Deciphering. 18. See more in Lipstadt, Denying, 41. 19. Bauer-­Wolf, “Surge.” 20. For more on this topic see Woeste, Henry Ford’s War. 21. Hoare, “Move Over Soros”; See also Porat, “Holocaust Denial,” 471. 22. Stern, “The Repackaging of Hate and Anti-­Semitism in Our Post-­Truth Era.” 23. Tibon, “White House Disinvites Artist.” The White House disinvited the cartoonist at the last minute after heavy criticism from American Jewish groups. 24. This imagery is all too familiar to antisemites, but they did not stop at hateful images and words. In October 2018, a pipe bomb was found in the mailbox

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 137 of Soros’s house in a New York suburb. Soros was one of 13 prominent Trump critics who were targeted by a domestic white terrorist. Swaine et al., “Florida man charged.” 25. For Breitbart’s articles about Soros, see www.breitbart.com/tag/george-­ soros/, accessed 3 September 2019. 26. See Karl Popper’s influential book The Open Society and Its Enemies first published in two volumes in 1945. 27. Taschwer, “Die erste Vertreibung.” 28. Lipstadt, Denying. 29. Lipstadt, Denying, xiii. 30. Porat, “Holocaust Denial,” 472. 31. Lipstadt, Denying, 5. 32. Duke’s most-­recent and explicit comment on the Holocaust can be found on his radio show. In one episode, he states that the Red Cross inspected the camps and found no evidence of mass murder. Rense Radio Network, accessed 19 October 2019, http://renseradioarchives.com/archives/dduke/082219.mp3. 33. Lipstadt, Denying, 117. See also the British-­American film Denial (2016). 34. Mayer, “A Conservative.” 35. Amatulli, “Rep. Ted Lieu Plays Candace Owens’ Hitler Remarks.” See also Anti-­ Defamation League ADL website, “Turning Point USA,” accessed 14 June 2019, www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/turning-­point-­usa. For the website of “Turning Point USA,” see www.tpusa.com/ 36. Aderet, “ ‘Orgy of Murder’.” 37. See, e.g., the Museum, “House of Terror in Budapest.” Their website states, “Having survived two terror regimes, it was felt that the time had come for Hungary to erect a fitting memorial to the victims, and at the same time to present a picture of what life was like for Hungarians in those times.” See www.terrorhaza.hu/en, accessed 14 September 2019. 38. Porat, “Holocaust Denial,” 479. 39. See more on recent trends in Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler. 40. Lipstadt, Denying, xi. 41. Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler, 7. 42. See also the German novel Eric-­Emmanuel Schmitt, Adolf H.: Zwei Leben (Berne: Ammann 2008). Based on the idea of ‘Look who is back’ there is also a 2018 Italian satirical comedy film about Benito Mussolini by the title ‘I am back’ (‘Sono tornato’). See “Lui è tornado.” 43. Rosenfeld, The End, 2. 44. For more on this subject see Crim. Planet Auschwitz. 45. See also Marrus, Lessons. 46. Porat, “Holocaust Denial.” 47. Lipstadt, Antisemitism, 171. 48. Kuentzel. “The Roots,” 394. 49. McCarthy, “ ‘I am the Chosen One’.” 50. For more see Ariel, An Unusual Relationship. 51. “ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.” 52. Staff “Trump tells US Jews.” 53. “ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.” 54. More on the recent history of the FPÖ see Reiter, Die Ehemaligen. See also Steinacher, “The Limits of Integration.” 55. Gensing “Strache und der ‘Bevölkerungsaustausch’.” On 27 January 2012, the international commemoration day for the liberation of Auschwitz – the Viennese right-­wing student organisations orchestrated a highly controversial prom in Vienna. There had been a number of scuffles between the students and counter-­protesters, and a few people were injured. Demonstrators

138  Gerald J. Steinacher outside the hall shouted ‘Nazis leave!’ FPOE party leader Heinz-­Christian Strache was reported to have said that the protests against the prom reminded him of the pogroms of November 1938 (Kristallnacht). He went on to say that ‘we [the right-­wing activists] are the new Jews’. For more, see Karner, “Multiple Dimensions and Discursive Contests in Austria’s Mythscape,” 193–210. 56. Pfeffer, “Pro-­Israel and Anti-­Semitic.”

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The Oldest Post-­Truth? 139 Crim, Brian. Planet Auschwitz: Holocaust Representation in Science Fiction and Horror. Rutgers University Press, 2020. Efron, John, Matthias Lehmann, and Steven Weitzmann. The Jews: A History. New York: Routledge, 2019. Feldman, Ari. “White Supremacist at University of Nebraska ‘Poses Clear Threat to Minorities’.” Forward, 14 February 2018. Gensing, Patrick. “Strache und der Bevölkerungsaustausch.” ARD, Tagesschau.de. Accessed 1 July 2019. www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/bevoelkerungsaustausch-­ strache-­101.html. Gudonis, Marius. “How Useful is the Concept of Post-­Truth in Analysing Genocide Denial? Analysis of Online Comments on the Jedwabne Massacre.” Zoon Politikon 8 (2017). https://doi.org/10.4467/2543408XZOP.17.006.9265. Hayden, Michael Edison. “Nebraska White Supremacist who Praises Violence Poses Unique Challenges to Campus Free Speech.” Newsweek, 13 February 2018. Hoare, Liam. “Move Over Soros: Meet the Anti-­Semites’ New ‘Dirty’, ‘All-­powerful’ Jewish Bogeyman.” Haaretz, 26 May 2019. Accessed 1 July 2019. www.haaretz. com/world-­news/.premium-­move-­over-­soros-­meet-­the-­anti-­semites-­new-­all-­ powerful-­jewish-­bogeyman-­1.7286028. Judaken, Jonathan. “Antisemitism and the Jewish Question.” Chap. 20 in The Cambridge History of Judaism: Vol. 8: The Modern World 1815–2000, edited by Michael B. Hart and Tony Michels, 559–588. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Karner, Christian. “Multiple Dimensions and Discursive Contests in Austria’s Mythscape.” In The Use and Abuse of Memory: Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics, edited by Christian Karner and Bram Mertens. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2013. Kaufmann, Yehezkel. “Anti-­ Semitic Stereotypes in Zionism: The Nationalist Rejection of Diaspora Jewry.” Translated by Jacob Sloan. Commentary, March 1949 [originally published in Be-­Havle Ha-­Zeman, Tel Aviv, 1936]. www. commentarymagazine.com/articles/anti-­semitic-­stereotypes-­in-­zionismthe­nationalist-­rejection-­of-­diaspora-­jewry/. Kohen, Ari, and Gerald J. Steinacher, eds. Antisemitism: From the 1930s to Today: Contemporary Holocaust Studies  – Vol. 2. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. Kuentzel, Matthias. “The Roots of Antisemitism in the Middle East: New Debates.” In Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives, edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, 382–401. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Lipstadt, Deborah. Antisemitism: Here and Now. Melbourne: Scribe, 2019. ———. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Free Press, 1993. “Lui è tornato vs Sono tornado.” YouTube video, 25:15, posted by “Mortebianca,” 27 May 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHU0YSTwkxo. Marrus, Michael R. Lessons of the Holocaust. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. McCarthy, Tom. “ ‘I am the Chosen One’: With Boasts and Insults, Trump Sets New Benchmark for Incoherence.” The Guardian, 21 August 2019. Accessed 19 October  2019. www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2019/aug/21/trump-­press­conference-­greenland-­jewish-­democrats.

140  Gerald J. Steinacher Mayer, Jane. “A Conservative Nonprofit That Seeks to Transform College Campuses Faces Allegations of Racial Bias and Illegal Campaign Activity.” The New Yorker, 21 December 2017. Nelson, Andrew J. “Veterans Cover Swastika Site with US Flag and Recite the Pledge.” Omaha World Herald, 28 July 2018. Pfeffer, Anshel, “Pro-­Israel and Anti-­Semitic: Israel’s Dilemma with the European Far-­Right.” Haaretz, 16 March 2017. Accessed 16 October 2019. www. haaretz.com/israel-­news/.premium-­pro-­israel-­anti-­semitic-­israel-­s-­european-­ far-­right-­dilemma-­1.5449254. Porat, Dina. “Holocaust Denial and the Image of the Jew, or ‘They Boycott Auschwitz as an Israeli Product’.” In Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives, edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, 468–481. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Reiter, Margit. Die Ehemaligen. Der Nationalsozialismus und die Anfänge der FPÖ. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2019. Reitman, Janet. “How Law Enforcement Failed to See the Rise of White Nationalism.” New York Times Magazine, 4 November 2018. Rosenfeld, Alvin H., ed. Deciphering the New Antisemitism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is being Normalized in Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Rossman-­ Benjamin, Tammi. “Academic BDS and the Calculus of Hypocrisy.” Inside Higher Ed, 20 March  2019. Accessed 14 September  2019. www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/03/20/scholars-­w ho-­s upport-­b ds-­ are-­denying-­academic-­freedom-­students-­opinion. Ruggles, Rick. “UNO Finds Swastika, ‘Make America Great Again’ Carved into Bathroom Wall.” Omaha World Herald, 5 December 2016. Serwer, Adam. “White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots.” The Atlantic, April 2019. Accessed 1 July 2019. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/ 04/adam-­serwer-­madison-­grant-­white-­nationalism/583258/. Staff, Toi and AP. “Trump Tells US Jews that Netanyahu is ‘Your Prime Minister’.” Times of Israel, 7 April 2019. Accessed 19 October 2019. www.timesofisrael.com/trump-­tells-­us-­jews-­that-­netanyahu-­is-­your-­prime-­minister/. Steinacher, Gerald J. “The Limits of Integration: Nazi officials and their New Political Careers after 1945 in West-­Germany and Austria.” In After Nazism: Relaunching Careers in Germany and Austria, edited by Susanna Schrafstetter and Jürgen Zarusky. (German Yearbook of Contemporary History – Vol. 5). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. Stern, Alexandra Minna. “The Repackaging of Hate and Anti-­Semitism in Our Post-­ Truth Era.” 31 October 2018. Accessed 15 October 2019. www.beaconbroadside. com/broadside/2018/10/the-­repackaging-­of-­hate-­and-­anti-­semitism-­in-­our-­ post-­truth-­era.html. Swaine, Jon, Erin Durkin, and Richard Luscombe. “Florida Man Charged with Sending 13 Pipe Bombs to Trump Critics.” The Guardian, 27 October 2018. www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2018/oct/26/suspicious-­package-­pipe-­bombs­latest-­found-­cory-­booker-­florida Taschwer, Klaus. “Die erste Vertreibung einer Universität in der Europäischen Union.” Der Standard, 2 August 2019.

The Oldest Post-­Truth? 141 Tibon, Amir. “White House Disinvites Artist Who Drew ‘Blatantly anti-­Semitic’ Cartoon.” Haaretz, 11 July 2019. Accessed 15 October 2019. www.haaretz. com/us-­news/white-­house-­disinvites-­artist-­who-­drew-­blatantly-­anti-­semitic-­ cartoon-­following-­backlash-­1.7487669 Wang, Amy B. “ ‘Post-­Truth’ Named 2016 Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries.” Washington Post, 16 November 2016. Accessed 19 October 2019. www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-­fix/wp/2016/11/16/post-­truth-­named-­ 2016-­word-­of-­the-­year-­by-­oxford-­dictionaries/. Weiss, Bari. How to Fight Anti-­Semitism. New York: Crown, 2019. Wistrich, Robert S. Antisemitism, the Longest Hatred. New York, Pantheon, 1992. Woeste, Victoria Saker. Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle against Hate Speech. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.

8 Post-­Truth and the Construction of Representations of the Past The Theory of the Two Demons and the Case of Argentina Daniel Feierstein The Theory of the Two Demons The theory of the two demons endeavours to explain the genocidal process as a confrontation between ‘two violent actors’. The emergence of the term stems from a dispute over the representations of the past in post-­dictatorial Argentina, beginning in the 1980s, but the logic inherent in this type of discourse has much older origins and can serve to analyse the effects of such representations in disputes over the present and, in particular, their resignification in so-­called post-­truth discourse.1 One aspect of post-­truth discourse that has been identified by scholars in the field – notably the Spanish and French philosophers Fernando Broncano and Mazarine Pingeot  – is the observation that post-­truth is not necessarily synonymous with an outright lie. Both philosophers emphasise post-­truth’s epistemological accent of indifference to truth.2 This study of Argentina’s theory of the two demons shows that one way such indifference may manifest itself is through spurious reinterpretation of accepted facts motivated by extra-­scholarly (often ideological) concerns. Before analysing the theory of the two demons in more detail, let us briefly summarise the events of 1976–1983 that constitute the Process of National Reorganization. In 1976, a new military coup ushered in the last dictatorship in Argentina. Like the Chilean case, this dictatorship was characterised by its neoliberal economic orientation, which the investigative journalist Rodolfo Walsh managed to describe in his ‘Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta’ shortly before being gunned down in a confrontation with soldiers.3 This orientation distinguished it from previous Argentine dictatorships. A  further distinctive feature was the treatment of the ‘subversive offender’: victims were frequently secretly kidnapped and tortured and then either released or murdered. They became known as the ‘desaparecidos’, or disappeared ones. This tactic would serve as a model in several Latin American countries, where oppressive regimes shared many characteristics. The Argentine case, though, is distinguished by the sheer systematicity of repression and

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 143 extermination, as revealed in the extensive network of over seven hundred clandestine detention centres throughout the country.4 The practice of kidnapping minors was also significant: of the five hundred known cases, only about one hundred children have since been reunited with their birth families.5 The case of Argentina is characterised by a powerful intelligence network, which worked clandestinely and in conditions of significant autonomy with respect to the legal repressive apparatus. Of particular importance was the 601 Intelligence Battalion, made up of around 4000 civil agents, responsible for the ‘export’ of the Argentine modus operandi to Central American countries and playing a key role in the design of the Condor Plan, the repressive coordination throughout the American Southern Cone.6 In a characterisation that describes the profound terror-­induced reconfiguration of the social, economic, and political profile of Argentine society, the armed forces referred to this period as the Process of National Reorganization that was supposed to transform the values and identity of the entire population. Murder through enforced disappearance has been documented in around 13,000 cases, although many human rights organisations and investigators estimate the total number of victims (those killed or missing, kidnapped children, and concentration camp survivors) at more than 30,000. At the end of the dictatorship, different versions of collective memory came into conflict. Opposition to the legitimacy of the dictatorship and its ‘dirty war against subversion’ was later confronted with the theory of the two demons, which stated that the armed forces merely responded excessively to violent leftist guerrilla subversion and that both groups should be condemned equally despite their qualitative differences. Unfortunately, the term ‘dirty war’ is still widely used in English-­ language books on the subject to describe Argentine state-­sponsored terrorism of 1976–1983. The term was, in fact, employed by the military junta as a means of legitimising indiscriminate aggression against so-­called subversives: ‘war’ falsely suggests a symmetrical confrontation, and ‘dirty’ validates actions that are unconnected with war, such as child abductions and sexual violence against detainees. Thus, the characterisation of events in Argentina as a ‘dirty war’ itself exemplifies the two demons’ form of historical disinformation.7 The main argument of the theory of the two demons lies in the position of society that indicates and denounces the demons: despite having nothing to do with them, it is perceived and constructed as a victim of both. The fundamental political procedure is this concealment of the conflict by constructing a social ‘neutrality’, namely the one of the ‘common people’.8 It is precisely this need for ‘collective exculpation’ that secures its high level of acceptance. Many sectors of the population demonise both types of violence and find themselves in the comfortable role of ‘ubiquitous

144  Daniel Feierstein victim’ – they can even condemn either violence with a hint of ‘impartiality’, as if they had not lived in the society that they speak about. The phrase which opens the prologue to the Argentine report ‘Nunca más’ [Never again]9 exemplifies this logic: ‘During the 1970s a terror emanating from both the far right and the far left convulsed Argentina’. This equivalence does not state that the rightist and leftist perpetrators of the violence acted in the same way or that they were equal but rather considers their responsibilities as two sides of ‘the same violence’, the two ‘extremisms’. One side unleashed the horror; the other intensely exacerbated it. Interestingly, despite the fact that the existing source material on the historical period in Argentina does not confirm this causal concatenation, it is nevertheless accepted by vast sectors of the population and even in most academic and journalistic works. The decision to establish a system of concentration camps in Argentina and to trigger the annihilation of significant portions of the population could not have been aimed principally ‘to defeat the guerrillas’, because it was actually taken before the existence of such armed insurgent organisations. In the Argentine Armed Forces’ own documents and action plans, their objectives were much broader, and their ‘target’ (in military terms) was ‘the population as a whole’, with the objective of ‘transforming its ethical-­moral values’ and re-­establishing what they identified as ‘occidentalidad cristiana’ (Christian Westernism).10 Guillermo O’Donnell accurately described these procedures as a system of ‘liberation of micro-­despotisms’:11 the possibility that each figure of power (at work, in the family, on the street, at school) would be authorised to display discipline, discretion, and even caprice or sadism to their subordinates. Parents, managers, police officers, teachers, and directors were not only authorised but also encouraged to participate in the recomposition of a principle of tyrannical authority, which had been questioned in Argentine society by a plebeian rebellion with Peronist social values and which condensed decades of struggles conducted by previous anarchist, communist, and socialist organisations. Rodolfo Walsh had detected the structural nature of these mechanisms of repression in his Carta abierta de un escritor a la Junta Militar (A Writer’s Open Letter to the Military Junta) when he argued in March 1977 that ‘we should seek in the economic policy of this government not only the explanation of their crimes but also a greater atrocity that punishes millions of human beings with planned misery’. The work of Aspiazu, Basualdo, and Khavisse12 would demonstrate years later that the transformation of the Argentine economy had nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of armed insurgent organisations but rather constituted the central determinants of annihilation – that is, the structural transformation of Argentine society requiring a preparatory terrorist sociopolitical reorganisation. In modern legal terms it could be

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 145 characterised as a ‘partial destruction of the Argentine national group itself’, a description that fits Jewish-­Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin’s 1943 definition of genocide: the ‘destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group . . . [and] the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor’.13 The theory of the two demons enjoyed preponderant support in 1980s Argentine society because it allowed large groups to circumvent their own responsibilities and involvement in the events by consigning the problem to extremisms (otherwise known as ‘demons’), thereby emphatically ejecting it from the definition of Argentine identity. The population that conceived itself as ‘ordinary people’ then felt entitled to judge those who compromised themselves politically in defence of their ideals, apostrophising them as a generic condemnatory ‘violence’. In turn, those who faced injustice were equated with those who defended order, and both were said to appeal to ‘violence’ to achieve their objectives. Furthermore, both were immediately delegitimised, despite the fact that the ‘violence’ that these narratives refer to unify qualitatively different events such as the seizure of a factory or university, participation in a strike, a large-­scale confrontation in the streets with security forces, a military encampment, an assault on a bank, the execution of torturers or political dissidents, the disappearance of people in a concentration camp system, rape, the kidnap of minors, torture, or extrajudicial killing by ejecting people at high altitude from military aircraft into the ocean. Everything seems to be captured by the signifier ‘violence’, and this is one of the most perverse and enduring moral equivalences of the theory of the two demons. In spite of this, the original version of the theory tries to recognise many of the victims of repressive violence, albeit at the price of blurring their identity and eulogising them. This effective operation has fractured the universe of victims between a ‘terrorist, delirious, demonic, messianic’ minority, constituting a violent extremism, and a majority of ‘people without links to the savages’, characterised by prosaic and benign vocabulary (as in the following expressions: ‘sensitive adolescents’; people that ‘were fighting for a simple salary improvement’; ‘boys [muchachos] from the student centre’; and ‘suspicious professions’).14 One may empathise with the victims of repression in the theory of the two demons but at the cost of depoliticising some of them, demonising the members of leftist armed organisations, and, above all, making the links between both groups invisible. It has been this functionality that explains the relative success of this vision for more than a decade and its persistence in the present.15 Collective memories are constructed not only through conflict over the meaning of the past but also through compensatory psychological defences that avoid conflict or cognitive dissonance, thereby allowing a person to face the present without being challenged by the past.16

146  Daniel Feierstein

The 1990s and Disputes Over Representations of the Past Towards the middle of the 1990s, the deep hegemony of the theory of the two demons in Argentina began to crack with the emergence of a new generation, the most visible expression of which was the political group HIJOS (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence) in 1995, composed of the children of the desaparecidos (disappeared detainees). Most immediately, the emergence of HIJOS provided the possibility to begin working on the concrete consequences suffered by these children. But it also gave a voice to a broader generation of people, far beyond those whose families were directly affected by the genocide. From early on, the Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas (Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons) or the Asociación de Ex Detenidos Desaparecidos (Association of Former Disappeared Detainees) sought to break the processes of the depoliticisation of the victims and recover the identity of the disappeared, unlike the more ‘professional’ organisations, such as Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center for Legal and Social Studies), which focused mainly on the denunciation of state ‘illegalities’.17 The process of identity restoration gained further impetus from the emergence of the second generation, which experienced its political baptism in the ‘escraches’ (direct action)18 organisation concerning unpunished perpetrators of genocide and which appeared publicly mobilised to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the military coup on 24 March 1996. For this new generation, there was no need to enact nationwide collective exculpation, because they were not present at the time of the original conflict and, as a result, their needs were different. The search for the identity of their parents led these children not only to rescue everyday elements (photos, family mementos, nicknames, and tastes) but also to become politically active, trying to connect with those members of the previous generation who continued to claim a dissident identity and whose more homogeneous nucleus was composed of the survivors themselves. This need for and interest in the past of their parents also played a role in the possibility of slowly eroding the fundamental principles of the theory of the two demons and to rethink the strategies with which to fight injustice, especially in a context of criminal impunity and profound economic adjustment prone to the rise of poverty.

Kirchnerism and State Approval for the Questioning of the ‘Two Demons’ Following the deep sociopolitical crisis of December 2001, the government of Néstor Kirchner – who received only 22.2% of the 2003 presidential vote, the lowest of any previous president – sought to obtain the

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 147 support of many hitherto-­opposing organisations and sectors of society. The democratisation of the Supreme Court of Justice, annulment of impunity laws, and reopening of trials of genocide perpetrators were made with strong support from the population, thus relegitimising the politicians who implemented these changes. The new prologue to the Never Again report, written in 2006, duly confronted the theory of the two demons. Just as famed novelist Ernesto Sabato spoke to society through the 1983–4 CONADEP commission that investigated forced disappearances, so too did Eduardo Luis Duhalde and Rodolfo Mattarollo  – secretary and under-­secretary of Derechos Humanos de la Nación (Human Rights of the Nation) and lawyers of political detainees in the 1970s – embodying the visions that emerged out of the crisis of 2001.19 The new prologue stated that It is necessary to clearly establish – because the future must be built on firm foundations – that it is unacceptable to attempt to justify state terrorism, like a game of opposing instances of violence, as if it were possible to look for a justifying symmetry in the action of individuals faced with the Nation and the State’s failure to meet its inalienable responsibilities [to guarantee the safety of its own population].20 Likewise, another cause has been proposed for the dictatorial regime, which does not explain it as a ‘response to the insurgent challenge’. The new prologue argues that ‘The military government set out to impose a neo-­liberal economic system and to demolish the social triumphs of many decades, the removal of which popular resistance had prevented’.21 Whereas the first prologue presented a society devoid of social conflict and assaulted by two symmetrical forces of violence, the second prologue presents the same society as being solely the victim of state action. One of the silenced points will be any opinion on the characteristics of the insurgent struggle, a fact that, a few years later, would bolster attempts to update and ‘reload’ the theory of the two demons.

The Two Demons (Reloaded) One of the first to observe a challenge to the meanings of the Dirty War that had become predominant since the 2001 crisis was the journalist Germán Ferrari in Símbolos y fantasmas [Symbols and Ghosts], a book published in 2009.22 Ferrari identified a ‘reaggiornamento’ (bringing up to date)23 of the theory of the two demons that no longer only interprets realities – as did the original version of the two demons – but also creates facts in a negationist mode of genocide, resembling post-­truth discourse. The construction and equalisation of the two demons is no longer declaratory; it is not enough to affirm that Argentina was convulsed by

148  Daniel Feierstein two forces of terror. Now the perpetrators themselves are being transformed into ‘victims’. If an equivalence can be made between the state-­ administered disappearance of a dissident and the guerrilla execution of a torturer (e.g. Police Commissioner Alberto Villar was executed by popular resistance organisations), a guerrilla becomes as murderous as a soldier, and both are as much victims as they are perpetrators. The power of this new version stems from how difficult it is to reveal the operation that hides in that initial premise of equivalence – that both dissidents and guerrillas are assassinated violently – and that is apparently impervious to contradictory evidence. This strategy of equating victims included the creation of organisations, assisted by legal professionals, to unite relatives of ‘victims of terrorism’. The most emblematic has been the CELTYV (Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims). As of 2015, with the professional leadership of Victoria Villarruel, the centre – having a lot of media visibility, particularly on prime-­time television and radio – denounced the ‘oblivion’ of these ‘denied victims’ (casualties resulting from organised insurgent activity).

The Arrival of Cambiemos The dispute over historical meanings, which had begun around 2008, would need several years to move beyond the political margins. The influence of the continental political climate would be important because of the institutional breakdowns in Paraguay, Honduras, and Brazil; electoral defeats in Argentina and Chile; and political crises in Venezuela and Ecuador. The assumption of the government of President Mauricio Macri in Argentina would allow for the emergence of narratives that had been incubating for a decade. The newspaper La Nación constituted its first open platform. Dozens of columns on the subject had already been published here since the beginning of the process of judging the perpetrators of genocide in 2005. But on 23 November 2015, the day when the results of the presidential and legislative elections were known, the newspaper upped the ante and published an editorial under the title ‘No more revenge’, stating that the cause of human rights cannot be supported with lies . . . or with new violations of human rights. The time has come to put things in their place and this implies ending the suffering of the convicted, the accused and even suspects of the commission for crimes during the period of subversive repression, as well as ending the persecution of judicial magistrates in activity or retirement. The anonymous editorialist stresses the need to move forward with the ‘complete truth’.

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 149 The offensive quickly spread to the entire mass media, especially the broadcasts of América TV and the articles in Infobae (news website and newspaper), where between 2016 and 2018 the revision of what happened in the 1970s became a popular central theme. The Dirty War now featured in debates, books (from Random House and Planet, two of the most important publishers in Argentina), and a great deal of radio broadcasting. In all of these cases, the protagonists included the new ‘victim organisations’ (e.g. the CELTYV), the ‘carapintadas’ (e.g. Aldo Rico and Juan José Gómez Centurión)24 and journalists such as Ceferino Reato (who interviewed the former general Jorge Rafael Videla shortly before his death and authored several books that argued for the concept of ‘complete memory’). First, regarding government decisions, state offices investigating repression had their budgets slashed, followed by the dismantling of entire bodies, such as the one that investigated crimes in the Central Bank and the Securities Commission, and the axing of budgets for others, notably in the Ministries of Justice and Defence or in the Human Rights Secretariat. The government also reduced economic support to public prosecutor’s offices, under the pretext of budget cuts or the alleged ‘Kirchnerist militancy’ of their workers.25 Second, those judges that were reluctant to carry out the trial and conviction of the perpetrators of genocides received an implicit nod from the government to increase the use of house arrest, reduce pretrial detention, increase the number of acquittals, or delay proceedings. It is true that there were no specific instructions from the executive in this direction, but the significant increase in the percentage of acquittals and rulings granting house arrests between 2016 and 2019 indicates that judges seem to have been guided by a new ‘climate of the era’. Third, Argentina’s Supreme Court, in a split decision, agreed to a new doctrine of application of the so-­called 2x1 law. The massive May 2017 protests against this ruling led government officials and the president to declare their opposition to it, to the enactment of a law limiting its application in cases of crimes against humanity, to its annulment by the lower courts, and finally to a new judgment of the Supreme Court, which definitively reversed the previous ruling. Fourth, statements questioning the accepted estimates of the number of victims of the Argentine genocide and urging the need to ‘recover a complete memory’ from some middle-­ranking officials  – such as Darío Lopérfido and Juan José Gómez Centurión, but also from Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj – were encouraged. One could list other government decisions, but what is clear is that the official line produced fertile ground for the reloaded meanings of the theory of the two demons. These identified the main government officials (the president and the chief of staff) as ‘neutral’ before disputants

150  Daniel Feierstein and willing to participate in mediation, with the idea of ‘guaranteeing a memory, a truth and certain judicial proceedings’ (i.e. seeking trials against the perpetrators and the survivors for the alleged violations that the latter may have committed), which implies granting the same ethical position and visibility to the perpetrators as to their victims. Duality is one of the fundamental elements of any theory of the two demons. Furthermore, these are two elements that are causally related. Duality shares in both versions of the theory the fallacy of linking one instance of violence to the other, concealing the strategic meanings of repressive violence, ignoring the qualitative differences with any other form of violence, and concealing structural violence (i.e. the economic decisions that affect large swathes of the population, resulting in hunger, malnutrition, and poverty). In the case of the original version of the two demons, the comparison was the price to pay to legitimise the judgment against genocide perpetrators and the exculpation of the ‘rest of society’. In the reloaded version, by contrast, the comparison seeks to relegitimise the oppressors themselves, transforming them into ‘victims of the other violence’. The notion of equivalence extends to the field of responsibilities: if some are judged, so too must others be. Such comparison or equivalence clearly aims to minimise and relativise genocide and often goes hand in hand with proposals for ‘reconciliation’. The difference in context and objectives then produces two orders of meaning. The original version of the theory of the two demons was a limited and problematic step in the attempt to illuminate some of the characteristics of repressive violence and to legitimise judgment on it – the theory was even partisan (in favour of the military government) in order to exculpate the ‘common people’. The reloaded version is part of a negationist strategy.

The Discussion About the ‘Numbers’ of Victims An important element of the reloaded version of the theory of the two demons is the questioning of the estimated figures of genocide victims, seeking in this way to minimise or relativise the social condemnation of those responsible for repressive actions. Placing doubt on the number of victims at the end of the dictatorship – estimated by some human rights organisations at 30,000 – constitutes an attack on symbolic elements (e.g. the 30,000 figure, the white head scarves symbolising a baby’s nappies worn by mothers of child abductees, etc.) constructed in over 30 years of struggle against impunity. This so-­called debate about the number does not seek precision, nor is it based on benign motives. Its objective is to undermine many of the achievements in the struggle for the construction of a collective memory concerned with human rights protection since it suggests that many

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 151 victims do not deserve to be treated as such and that repression was neither as extensive nor as serious as is commonly believed. It is often stated, without any argument, that ‘there was no systematic plan’.26 It also implies that there were ‘other victims’ who did not attract the same attention from society. Finally, the scepticism over numbers also seeks to delegitimise the social recognition of human rights organisations, by suggesting they manipulate information that renders them untrustworthy. The strategy links the foregoing delegitimisation to present denunciations, as in the cases of, among others, the 2017 disappearance of Santiago Maldonado and the murder of Rafael Nahuel in the same year. The negationist campaign included the foregoing statements and the publication of the book Mentirás tus muertos in 2015 by José D’Angelo, who presents himself as a ‘soldier and journalist, carapintada and participant in the repression of the attempt to capture the La Tablada barracks’.27 The book’s narrative is simple but effective: it seeks to ‘close’ the issue of the number of victims of the genocidal dictatorship, using the conclusions of the lists drawn up in 1984 by CONADEP. It is important to clarify that these lists certainly contained errors, due to the terror of the time and the lack of state information. It is equally certain that the list was not exhaustive. These new ‘downward calculations’ also eliminate from the estimated numbers those who were killed and those who survived the persecution, stating that the victims ‘would not be more than eight thousand’. The following questions help paint more global picture of the complexity of the discussion: What types of victimisation does the estimate of 30,000 account for? How and under what assumptions was it constructed? What different issues does it involve? How are these issues trivialised when the negationist narrative suggests that historical realities can be settled with a ‘final number of victims’?28

What Is Meant by the Figure of 30,000? In the discussion about the numbers, there is a question that only seems obvious: who is included in the total number of victims of the Argentine genocide? The Argentine genocide had four categories of direct victims, beyond whom the consequences of the tragedy spread throughout the rest of the population. If we include, for the sake of simplification, only those people directly physically affected, by state or para-­state violence, this population can be divided into the following groups: 1. Victims of murder (bodies were delivered to families or abandoned at the scene). 2. Victims of disappearances (people kidnapped and sent to clandestine detention centres, without information on their whereabouts).

152  Daniel Feierstein 3. Political prisoners (legally detained and placed at the disposal of the executive power or the justice system). 4. Children who were kidnapped and appropriated by families close to the perpetrators or given illegally for adoption (while some have been identified, most continue to live with false identities without knowing their origin and without their families knowing their whereabouts). Among the people who were kidnapped and who disappeared, some were eventually released, and others remained missing. Since the end of the dictatorship, the prestigious Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) and other nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have made an important contribution in recovering and identifying a significant number of those who were murdered, including bodies that had been secretly buried or that had washed up on coasts, having been thrown into rivers and seas. Finally, and in large part due to the persistent work of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and the creation of the National Bank of Genetic Data, more than a hundred child abductees have managed to recover their identities and meet with their families. Thanks to this process, we continue to find adults who had been abducted as children right up to the present day. All this is clearer today, after decades of research. During the dictatorship itself, when estimates of victims were being calculated, many of the released were still noted as missing, and in numerous other cases, reports had not been filed (in fact, new reports about missing people from the era come up to this day). The estimate of 30,000 victims was based on the totality of reports that were available towards the end of the 1970s, taking into account the testimony of some freed from concentration camps, declarations by oppressors – either in public or in their own places of detention – and other documentary or testimonial sources that were collected in difficult conditions of exile or persecution. However, if we sum up the distinct categories of victims (murdered, disappeared, released, and abducted children), the estimate fairly accurately aligns with the data available today. The second relevant clarification is that there are many reasons for the endemic levels of the underrecording and underreporting of victims, making it difficult to ascertain a definite number of victims in a genocide. One can include among others the impossibility of dealing with the trauma that the destruction process entails; the devastation of entire families that prevented anyone from coming forward with the facts; the fear of family members, friends, or neighbours that a report could invite further persecution or at least the stigmatisation of the family affected; disputes within the same conservative families from the shame associated with a disappearance or involvement with insurgent political organisations; and a lack of confidence in the state apparatus. Thus, there is no complete list of the 6  million Jews killed in the Shoah, the 1.5  million

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 153 Armenian victims of Pan-­Turkism, the 2 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, or the 250,000 Guatemalans killed between 1954 and 1996 under the National Security Doctrine. While all these figures are usually scrutinised, no one has ever obtained more reliable estimates that would justify modifying those first approximate symbolic constructions. In genocidal processes, we can only count on estimates, which are constructed from the verified number of victims and calculations that extrapolate the total number from this verified one. In the Argentine case, the estimate of 30,000 included all those who had suffered the process of kidnapping and disappearance (without the estimator knowing who would subsequently be released), the abducted children, and those who were murdered directly. Political prisoners, unless they had gone through a previous process of forced disappearance, were not included in the calculations. Neither, of course, did they include exiles, ‘insiliados’ (fugitives), or people dismissed from their jobs for political motives. From this clarification, we can conclude that the estimate of 30,000, calculated in the difficult conditions of the struggle against a genocidal dictatorship, nonetheless appears today to correctly account for the sum of the disappeared, the murdered, the survivors, and the child abductees. If we analyse a graph measuring the number of reports over time, from the dictatorship to the present, and then add the possible cases that fail to be reported or that will never be known, it is possible that the actual number is quite close to the estimate. With all this in mind, it is perhaps pertinent to ask what extra-­scholarly purpose an obsessive scrutiny of the precise number of victims serves.

Conclusion The reloaded version of the theory of the two demons is a heuristic case that allows us to think about other ways of articulating post-­truth strategies. It is an attempt to ‘reinterpret’ facts through distortions, manipulations, denials, and relativisations. But above all, it is the endeavour to transform a system of emotions from compassion with the genuine victims of genocide towards a compassion that is redirected towards ‘invisible victims’ of ‘terrorist violence’, necessitating a ‘complete truth’ that can give a more ‘neutral’ account of the events of the past. Its meaning is articulated in the effects that it seeks to produce in the present, as a relegitimisation of repression in contexts of sociopolitical and economic crisis. As many of the authors who work with concepts of post-­truth have found, this is not about obvious lies but rather about reinterpretations that do not constitute any sort of legitimate historical revision interested in the truth. What is fallacious about the reloaded version of the theory of the two demons is not only distortion and manipulation but also an ethical repositioning that equates victims with victimisers by making spurious use of the complexity of all historical processes.

154  Daniel Feierstein Paradoxically, this reloaded version inherits the problems of the original: if a victim of genocide is defined exclusively by angelic innocence, the demonstration of the political and even armed activity of a person would logically invalidate their status of victim, thereby equating them with their victimisers. Similarly, contemporary Holocaust denial seeks to point out the relevant role played by the Jews in European revolutionary movements in decades before the Shoah or contemporary Turkish negationism that continually identifies supposed incessant Armenian rebellions to characterise the period of genocide as civil war. To refute these post-­truth arguments, it is counterproductive to insist on victim angelisation in any of the original versions of the theory of the two demons. Indeed, some Jews played a crucial role in European revolutionary movements, some Armenians fought for their autonomy under the Ottoman Empire, and Argentine popular organisations opposed successive dictatorships, some even organising armed groups. However, none of these actions is comparable to the organisation of an annihilation machinery such as the one deployed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators, Pan-­Turkism, or the last Argentine dictatorship. The ‘violence’ that negationists invoke to equate ‘the two groups’ does not mean that these groups committed the same acts or did so for the same objectives. A torturer is not equivalent to a rebel, nor is a state that deploys hundreds of concentration camps throughout its territory equivalent to any organisation that struggles for the autonomy, justice, or social achievements of its people, even if that struggle manifests some level of violence. Refutation of post-­truth discourse needs to simultaneously deal with both empirical facts and sets of interpretations. If we fail to perceive the ethical and political objectives of post-­truth discourse, we risk being dragged into an unsavoury game in which the purveyor of post-­truth imposes discussions that insidiously lead towards negationism. These include discussions on the final number of victims, the supposed legitimacy of violence in different historical situations, and the supposed equivalence of the placatory yet qualitatively different uses of violence (i.e. state terrorist violence and guerrilla anti-­dictatorship violence). Since post-­truth seeks to transform the key terms in the debate, it is only by maintaining an ethical-­political perspective – allowing us to understand the fundamental difference between systematic state violence and the disordered complex modes of action of the insurgency – that we will be able to successfully confront the objectives of the denialist project. Translated by Marius Gudonis

Notes 1. While the case of Argentina will be analysed here, this logic of representing the past – that ultimately ‘all massacres were violent’ invoking a ‘complete

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 155 memory’ of this past  – can be found in many genocidal events, including those of Pan-­Turkism, Nazism, or Rwanda. With regard to views on post-­ truth discourses, it is interesting to consult, among others, Harsin, “Regimes of Posttruth”, de Saint-­Laurent et  al., “Collective Memory and Social Sciences in the Post-­truth Era” and Kalpokas, A Political Theory of Post-­Truth. 2. Broncano, “Posverdad”; Pingeot, “Pour mieux saisir la post-­vérité.” 3. Rodolfo Walsh’s ‘Carta abierta de un escritor a la junta militar’ from 24 March  1977 can be consulted at http://conti.derhuman.jus.gov.ar/_pdf/ serie_1_walsh.pdf. For an analysis of the objectives and economic consequences of the last military dictatorship, see Azpiazu et al., El nuevo poder económico en la Argentina de los años 80. 4. Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. 5. According to estimates by the organisation Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. 6. Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-­Communist Crusade. 7. Feierstein, “Guerra sucia”; Robben, Argentina Betrayed, 62–63. 8. It is worrying that in the 21st century, works have begun to appear from historians and sociologists who assume this category of ‘ordinary people’, thereby historicising a period and taking a certain characterisation of history for granted. In other words, such academics fail to realise that there could be ‘ordinary people’ who had no connection whatsoever with the social conflict of their time, ‘ordinary people’ defined as ‘the middle classes that did not engage in politics or who were part of power groups’. See, in particular, the work of Carassai, Los años setenta de la gente común. For a more nuanced perspective that reviews and contrasts different visions of historians and social scientists on the issue, see Aguila, “Violencia política, represión y actitudes sociales en la historia argentina reciente.” 9. The Nunca Más report was produced by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), created by the first Argentine post-­ dictatorial government to investigate repressive actions. CONADEP was the documentary centre for the 1985 Trial of the Military Juntas and constituted the antecedent of the Truth Commissions created years later in other countries. 10. See, for example – among many other materials, not only public ones but also those that have been recovered having been for the most part confidential and secret – the Regulation of Psychological Operations of the Argentine Army, approved in November 1968 (RC5.1); the Action Plans of the Ministry of Planning sanctioned in 1977 and 1978; or the documents RC 9.1 and RC 9.2 of the Argentine Army. 11. See O’Donnell, “¿Y a mí, qué mierda me importa?” 12. Azpiazu et al., El nuevo poder económico en la Argentina de los años 80. 13. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 79. The classification of the Argentine case as genocide has been debated for decades. For more information, see Feierstein, Genocide as Social Practice. To date, 11 Argentine courts have recognised the classification of genocide in more than 30 cases, which constitutes a minority, albeit a highly significant one, of the cases with judicial rulings. 14. These are the terms that the prologue to Never Again refers to. Another classic text that includes these central motifs of the theory of the two demons is Giussani, Montoneros. Suggesting the key argument that one model of violence leads to another, the book stigmatises the experience of the Montoneros organisation with abundant disqualifying adjectives and articulates a constant equivalence between their ‘fascination with violence’ and the ‘violence’ implemented by the forces of repression. 15. Some of these political manipulations in the prologue of Never Again were pointed out in Crenzel, Memory of the Argentina Disappearances.

156  Daniel Feierstein 16. Conceptualising disputes over memory only in terms of ‘entrepreneurs’ and struggles for meaning – as Elizabeth Jelin does in State repression and the labors of memory  – diverts attention from those elements that are neither explicit nor rational and yet fundamental to understanding the causes of hegemonies. These include analogies in which different collectivised or sedimented stories can enter; the psychological defences that spring into action with each analogy; and other identification systems that are not necessarily conscious but that still play their role in memory formation and can even be exploited by disputants through processes of awareness. Memory work involves many more dimensions than those of a political struggle, even though it clearly ends up in the role of wrestling with the present. While such work undoubtedly constitutes a political struggle, it is determined by many other elements that a person must be explicitly and consciously aware of. 17. The case of the organisation Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons is emblematic, since the political issue appears explicitly in its name and structure. That is perhaps why they had much less visibility in the 1980s: they put a subject on the agenda that eluded most neutral visions of the repressive actions. 18. The term ‘escrache’ arose from Buenos Aires slang of the era to describe the organisation of demonstrations in front of the homes of genocide perpetrators in order to peacefully repudiate their presence in the neighbourhood. 19. Eduardo Luis Duhalde had belonged to Peronismo de Base (Bedrock Peronism) in the 1970s. He had stood out as a defence lawyer for political detainees from various organisations (both Peronist and Marxist). After the end of the dictatorship, he served as a judge in the Courts of the City of Buenos Aires and as a human rights consultant to the UN. Rodolfo Mattarollo had also worked as a lawyer for political prisoners in the 1970s and later in exile, along with Duharte and others, cofounded the CADHU (Argentine Commission for Human Rights). He also had an extensive career in the UN and other regional, national, and international organisations. Both were accused of being the authors of the new prologue, although, as in the case of the first, it too was not signed. 20. CONADEP, “Prólogo,” 8. 21. Ibid. 22. Ferrari, Símbolos y fantasmas. 23. Ferrari clearly identifies that this use of the two demons is not equivalent to its original version and therefore conceptualises it as a ‘theory of the two re-­aggiornamentized [modernised/updated] demons’. I prefer to use the term ‘reloaded’ because, beyond the cinematographic reference to The Matrix, the concept of reloading allows us to understand that while the actors and intentions are not the same, this is not merely an ‘aggiornamiento’ to a new context and needs. The arguments of the two demons are ‘reloaded’ so that they may be used by other sociopolitical factions and for other objectives. 24. The carapintadas were a group of mutineer officers of the Argentine armed forces, who staged revolts against the first post-­dictatorial government in the late 1990s. As a consequence of such pressures, a period of impunity emerged in Argentina, which lasted from 1987 to 2005. One might have expected that from an ethical perspective, these officers’ pasts would have delegitimised their subsequent opinions on ways to settle issues in a democracy. And yet in 2015, they reappeared both as civil servants – in the administration of President Mauricio Macri – and as media pundits. Some of them endeavoured to seek public office, most notably Aldo Rico, who was elected as parliamentary deputy and then mayor of San Miguel in the 1990s.

Post-­Truth and Representations of the Past 157 25. For more details on these policies, see Taboada, “Macrismo y Derechos humanos.” 26. In statements to the TV programme ‘Debo decir’ (I must say), for Canal América, the former carapintada Juan José Gómez Centurión, appointed head of customs by the Macri government, declared that ‘there was no systematic plan for the disappearance of people’ during the dictatorship and that ‘8 thousand truths are not the same as 22 thousand lies’ (i.e. only 8,000 people disappeared), thus questioning the symbolic figure of 30,000 victims of the Argentine genocide. 27. D’Angelo, Mentirás tus muertos. 28. Sadly, some academics fall prey to the same illusion, product of their positivism, that they can arrive at a reliable, definitive result, the ‘final number’, while ignoring the difficulties of any genocidal process. These difficulties include the logical consequences of terror on the community, resulting in a high level of underreporting and the post-­traumatic response of many victims who do not want to talk about their experiences again, in many cases not even to their families but even less in front of the state apparatus (responsible for these practices) or in front of the media. There is also the despicable and unjustifiable allegation that because of existing economic reparations, all victims and family members would leave aside their political objections or traumatic situations and would go en masse to claim the money offered by the state as ‘compensation’ for their supposedly empirically unverifiable suffering.

Bibliography Aguila, Gabriela. “Violencia política, represión y actitudes sociales en la historia argentina reciente.” In Pensar con la Historia desde el siglo XXI: XII Congreso de la Asociación de Historia Contemporánea, edited by Pilar Folguera, Juan Carlos Pereira, Carmen García, Jesús Izquierdo, Rubén Pallol, Raquel Sánchez, Carlos Sanz and Pilar Toboso, 5569–5588. Madrid: UAM Ediciones, 2015. Armony, Ariel C. Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-­Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984. Athens, OH: Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 1997. Azpiazu, Daniel, Eduardo M. Basualdo, and Miguel Khavisse. El nuevo poder económico en la Argentina de los años 80 Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2004. Broncano, Fernando. “Posverdad: epistemología política de la indiferencia a la verdad.” PúblicoGT, 2018. https://publicogt.com/2018/02/22/posverdad­epistemologia-­politica-­de-­la-­indiferencia-­a-­la-­verdad/. Calveiro, Pilar. Poder y desaparición: Los campos de concentración en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2006. Carassai, Sebastián. Los años setenta de la gente común. La naturalización de la violencia. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI 2013. CONADEP. “Prólogo.” In Nunca más. Edición del 30 Aniversario del Golpe de Estado. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 2006. Crenzel, Emilio. Memory of the Argentina Disappearances: The Political History of Nunca Más. Translated by Laura Pérez Carrara. New York: Routledge, 2012. D´Angelo, José Mentirás tus muertos: Falsedades y milliones detrás del mito de los 30.000 desaparecidos. Buenos Aires: El Tatú Ediciones, 2015.

158  Daniel Feierstein de Saint-­ Laurent, Constance, Ignacio Brescó de Luna, Sarah H. Awad, and Brady Wagoner. “Collective Memory and Social Sciences in the Post-­ Truth Era.” Culture  & Psychology 23, no. 2 (2017): 147–155. https://doi. org/10.1177/1354067X17695769. Feierstein, Daniel. Genocide as Social Practice. Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas. Translated by Douglas Andrew Town. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. ———. “ ‘Guerra sucia’: la importancia de las palabras.” Nuestras Voces, 14  August  2016. www.nuestrasvoces.com.ar/a-­vos-­te-­creo/guerra-­sucia-­la-­ importancia-­las-­palabras/ Ferrari, Germán. Símbolos y fantasmas. Las víctimas de la guerrilla: De la amnistía a la “justicia para todos”. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2009. Giussani, Pablo. Montoneros: La soberbia armada. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-­ Planeta, 1984. Harsin, Jayson. “Regimes of Posttruth, Postpolitics, and Attention Economies.” Communication, Culture  & Critique 8, no. 2 (2015): 327–333. https://doi. org/10.1111/cccr.12097. Jelin, Elizabeth. State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Translated by Judy Rein and Marcial Godoy-­Anativia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Kalpokas, Ignas. A Political Theory of Post-­Truth. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. La Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 2013. www.abuelas.org.ar/. Lemkin, Raphaël. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944. Pingeot, Mazarine. “Pour mieux saisir la post-­vérité, relire Hannah Arendt.” 20 January  2017. Accessed 14 December  2019. https://theconversation.com/ pour-­mieux-­saisir-­la-­post-­verite-­relire-­hannah-­arendt-­71518. Robben, Antonius C. G. M. Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Taboada, Adriana. “Macrismo y derechos humanos. Hacia la impunidad y el negacionismo.” Tela de Juicio. debates en torno a las prácticas sociales genocidas 2 (2017): 19–34. Walsh, Rodolfo, Edgardo Vannucchi, and Eduardo Jozami. “Carta abierta de un escritor a la junta militar, Rodolfo Walsh, 24 De Marzo De 1977: Propuestas para trabajar en el aula.” Recursos para el aula (2010). http://conti.derhuman. jus.gov.ar/_pdf/serie_1_walsh.pdf.

9 The Post-­Truth Environment Indian Politics and History Education Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber Introduction When Oxford Dictionaries declared ‘post-­truth’ its 2016 word of the year, a debate was brought to popular attention, one that had started around two decades earlier. Described as an environment where emotion is more powerful than evidence in shaping public opinion, the word was popularised after Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum. In both instances, the concept of truth appeared to be diminished. The discussion around the term ‘post-­truth’ is closely linked to a changing societal environment, especially the development of new communication technologies and social media. With the Internet as a major platform for the dissemination of news that had been rising in popularity since the 1990s, coupled with various web browsers and search engines, the virtual world has accelerated the blurring of lines between truth, half-­truths, and fake news. These categories have always existed, but the growing use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to share news has exacerbated this issue and further eroded the traditional markers between credible and suspect sources. Such conditions have contributed to the spread not only of misinformation (news that is inaccurate) but also of disinformation (news that is deliberately inaccurate and designed to deceive). This can be broadly termed ‘the post-­truth environment’. The term ‘post-­truth’ appears to have been coined in 1992 by Steve Tesich. It was first used in a political context to describe half-­truths or fake news that appeal to the emotions of US society.1 As John Corner points out, it is ‘necessary to note the differences between the “post truth” label and “fake news” despite the lines of interconnections’.2 Today, post-­ truth describes an environment where the use of lies or half-­truths is met with a rising indifference to truth.3 A major reason for this development might be the oversupply of information in the 21st century: there are too many sources and too many methods to find information with varying levels of credibility, depending on who funded a given study and how the eye-­catching headline was selected.4 Additionally, on a more abstract

160  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber level, there is postmodern relativism with its reflexive approaches and the acceptance of different positions in a democratic environment, which can lead to the impression that ‘everything goes’.5 The field of epistemology questions the simple notion of truth as ‘conformity to fact or actuality’.6 The process of cognition implies that all ‘facts’ are perceived as such and are in this process linked to a perspective/standpoint. ‘Facts’ are linked/combined to make sense to oneself and an auditor and in this way are interpreted. If something is ‘based on evidence’, it means that one has some (perceived) ‘facts’, which by linking them together would support one’s interpretation. In the process of cognition, it seems that the perception of facts/reality comes first, followed by their interpretation. However, because perception depends on pre-­knowledge, which makes it possible to link the perceived facts to previous experiences/concepts, the worldview (in the broader sense) of the perceiver acts as a filter. In this way, perception is selective – in the backdrop of the pre-­knowledge, it is looking for facts to support one’s pre-­view or prejudice. If this fails, the result could be cognitive dissonance  – opening the way to new cognition  – if the incongruity is not dismissed as irrelevant. By its nature, any evidence in a historical context – and in others too – is incomplete. Every interpretation uses assumptions and abstract categories, which are not directly observable as ‘facts’, to build up hypotheses and theories. What, then, is ‘fake’? Is it prior constructs that are needed to form images or only that which one consciously knows is not a ‘fact’ (i.e. something presented as a fact but known to be uncertain or even invented)? Whereas some discard any unpleasant results  – even when based on evidence – as ‘fake’ (e.g. climate change denial), we restrict the use of the term to the purposefully designed statements, wrongly attributed as ‘facts’. Lazer et al., restricting the term to ‘fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organisational process or intent’, point to overlapping with other categories like misinformation and disinformation, where the second is characterised by purposefulness.7 A ‘fake’ comes near to or is a special form of the more general term ‘lie’, understood as ‘a false statement purposely put forward as truth’.8 Thus, by definition, the lie is connected to truth. In post-­truth, however, ‘the difference between truth and falsity is not relevant any more’.9 Arguing with facts and evidence will not convince a post-­truth mind. Additionally, given the definition of a lie, does spreading information when one does not know if it is right or wrong make one a liar? Silence is not a lie in the form of an explicit statement.10 Nevertheless, silence about something or omission can transfer truth into half-­truth or even less. In some societies, silence could be a result of shame. For example, in Germany for many years after World War II, discussion about the Holocaust was a taboo. In other situations, not mentioning specific

The Post-­Truth Environment 161 traumatic aspects of history is done deliberately to handle conflicts. The reason behind this is to not sprinkle salt into a raw wound and instigate a new fight. But the memory certainly remains alive at the personal or the societal levels. On a different note, silence in the form of omissions of unpleasant events is also used as a means to construct collective memory in a desired way. Such fake constructs can be considered lies, when and where truth matters. Although the concept of post-­truth is used mainly to discuss contemporary events, history is often a relevant field in the political sphere. Collective memory is reconstructed where history is presented in the form of master narratives. The past is glorified; one identifies with national heroes. Actors are judged according to their assumed motivations, but not their actions. Saint-­Laurent et al. note, however, that they do so in an almost caricatured propagandistic manner, not bothering with the details of any specific narrative or with historical analogies where there is some pretence of similarity. In the post-­truth era, collective memory seems to have lost touch with historical facts.11 This chapter will cover the roles of ‘half-­truth’, ‘lies’, and ‘purposeful silence’ in day-­to-­day politics and the politics of history, especially in the form of school history, with a deeper focus of their influence on the collective memory in India. Although the basic education programme ‘Education for All’, led by UNESCO, could not reach all its targets in India, the number of Internet users has risen manifold.12 Also, in a short time, politicians discovered how to manipulate public opinion by using a gold mine of techniques found in social media. Falsehood spreads like lightning: farther, faster, and deeper. The effects were more pronounced for political news than other forms.13 This practice of spreading post-­truth and hate speech was followed in the 2019 Indian election, the world’s largest ballot, with 879 million eligible voters.14 All the major Indian parties have sophisticated disinformation strategies, which include posting false and manipulated photos and videos, and coordinating posts across a network of paid acolytes and volunteers. This phenomenon has put social media platforms, especially Facebook, which has said it does not want to stifle free expression, in an awkward position. Furthermore, national politics is alternating between the Congress-­led moderately secular government and a government led by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or a BJP nationalist majority government. Both parties have specific aims, goals and agendas. Education has become a soft target to propagate the political agendas targeting the minds of school children. History and social sciences constitute the richest pasture for such exercises.

162  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber An important question to consider is whether lies and the other elements found in post-­truth discourses are new or if they are a new way of framing an old phenomenon. Those elements and their purposeful application have a long-­standing history. In the Mahabharata, the Hindu epic of ancient India, one finds, for example, the use of intentional falsity in the form of half a statement, ‘Aswathama hata (iti Gaja-­nar-­o-­vah kunjar-­o-­ vah)’, swallowing the rest of the information. As a political weapon, this is legitimised and even praised by society. This chapter discusses cases that might be termed post-­truth in Indian day-­to-­day politics and in the broader field of memory politics, especially in the sphere of education. In the political sphere, it examines the demonetisation in India and the 2019 election. In the educational field, the political interference in school textbooks is discussed (specifically, Gujarat, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and three generations of NCERT books). Additionally, two special cases are considered: the topic of Akhand Bharat (Greater India) and ‘Hitler mania’. While many of the elements discussed have long histories, it is argued here that a combination of factors exacerbated by the widespread use of the Internet and social media has created an environment that can be considered post-­truth.

Post-­Truth and Its Impact on the Political Environment in India At its most dramatic, the post-­truth world is seen as a switchover from a society of facts to a society of unlimited and ungraded information/ data. In this environment, confusion abounds surrounding the exact status of knowledge and numbers in public life, and there is a palpable sense that truth itself is being abandoned. In a Trumpian era, the success of spreading post-­truth appears to have influenced many other players in different countries. One prominent case is India where many people became unhappy with the inept dynastic ruling of the Gandhi family of the Congress party with a meek Manmohan Singh as prime minister. The electorate demanded a stronger leader. At this juncture, the BJP started selling the idea of Ram Rajya, a well-­ruled happy state, with Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. The election propaganda was full of promises to retrieve the lost glory of India, provide achhe din (better days), bring back black money that had been deposited abroad, and curb terror funding and counterfeiting. These promises had an enormous impact on voters, as an effect of political attitude formation, especially where a large percentage of voters are semi-­literate. The BJP won the election. After gaining power, the ruling party used social media to manipulate opinions with half-­truths. Demonetisation is one such example of a half-­truth. In November  2016, overnight 500-­rupee and 1000-­rupee currency notes were demonetised. The main objective behind demonetisation was

The Post-­Truth Environment 163 to purge black money – income which is not shown while paying income tax  – from the economy and to curb corruption and counterfeiting.15 Indians believed and cooperated with the demonetisation programme, hoping to abolish local black money and bring back the black money saved in foreign banks to use for the country’s developmental projects. But those pre-­election promises were forgotten later. Demonetisation was projected after the election as a strategy to digitalise India – a country where, according to the 2014 World Bank Global Findex Data, only 4% of all wage recipients (over the age of 15) use a bank account. This study negates the claim of demonetisation’s having a positive impact on making a digital India:16 The 31 December 2016 address to the nation by Modi was a classic case of demagoguery.  .  .  .  [It] was filled with half-­truths that were clearly aimed at assuaging the huge hardships that had been caused to virtually each and every citizen of the country by his arbitrary and sudden decision to cancel the legal tender status of high-­ denomination currency notes on 8 November.17 Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee commented earlier, Why this (demonetisation) was done is still not very clear to me. What the benefits of this will be are not clear to me. What the damages of this will be are very clear to me.18 Two years later, on 14 February, shortly before the Indian 2019 election, a suicide bombing took place at the disputed border region of Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of being responsible for the attack.19 The citizens of India, being hurt by the initial news of the attack by Pakistan, applauded the surgical strike that followed by the Indian Army. According to The New York Times, the clip that circulated of the surgical air strike on Facebook and other social media, was taken from a video game. Photographs of dead bodies supposedly killed in the attack stemmed from a 2015 heat wave incident. Thus, much of the breaking news was false news.20 According to the executives of Facebook, the impact of this fake news was like an avalanche: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before  – the scale of fake content circulating on one story’, tweeted the journalist Trushar Barot.21 Facebook tried to deal with this extraordinary situation by deleting hundreds of fake accounts and misleading posts sent by BJP and Congress supporters. Facebook reported that ‘We removed 687 Facebook Pages and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour in India. The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts’.22 The task of checking the posts or news in many languages used by millions of Indians was a mammoth one. These posts bewildered not only Facebook’s automated

164  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber screening software but also its human moderators, as both operate in English. Goel and Frenkel note that ‘Many problematic posts come directly from candidates, political parties and the media. And on WhatsApp, where messages are encrypted, the company has little visibility into what is being shared’.23 In recent years, all the major political parties have paid cyber brigades, who use sophisticated disinformation strategies in coordinated actions across the country, to post false and manipulated audiovisual content. This practice posed a challenge for Facebook.24 The Pulwama terror attack and following events went in favour of Narendra Modi and the BJP. After the incident in Kashmir, the popularity of the BJP almost doubled from 8.8 crore (88 million) members in 2015 to 15 crore (150 million) in 2019.25

How Does Politics Influence School Education? In politics, fake news is mostly produced for short-­ term objectives, like winning an election. In contrast, political interference in education intends to influence society by disseminating an ideological perspective as unquestioned truth in the medium and long run from one generation to the next. To a large degree, these efforts are connected to identity politics.26 While post-­truth may be considered either a new phenomenon or a phenomenon with vastly increased influence in the Internet age, political interference in public education has a long history. Textbooks, being the medium of dissemination, have been aptly described by Charles Ingrao as ‘weapons of mass instruction’.27 Education is in the Concurrent List of the Indian Constitution.28 In 1986, the National Policy of Education (NPE) was announced to introduce uniform education all over India. All the federal states were obliged to remain within the tenets of the National Curriculum Framework. The national curricula are designed under the auspices of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which is an extended arm of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), government of India (GOI).29 The functional head of the NCERT is a director, appointed by the ruling government. The teachers and academics responsible for designing the national curricula, textbook preparation, and textbook implementation are nominated by NCERT functionaries. Thus, nominated experts can introduce agendas of the ruling party into the educational programme. The NCERT is aware of the pivotal role played by textbooks in India, as in many other countries. The textbook is still the only accessible and affordable resource for education for all and is thus one of the primary instruments for equality. As we have shown in previous research, school textbooks are ‘purposeful texts’ because they are produced with both pedagogical and political aims that are described explicitly or implicitly in syllabi.30

The Post-­Truth Environment 165

Figure 9.1  Structure of Indian School Education. Source: Illustration by Basabi Khan Banerjee

New governments can change the education policy, resulting in changes in national curricula, textbooks, and, at times, the examination system. The steps constituting education policy change are as follows: • Revision of curricula is taken up by the new government. • The personnel and head of institutes like NCERT, CBSE,31 and ICHR32 are appointed mostly by the ruling party. • Curricula are prepared. • Curricula are placed in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament, for approval, where the majority of members are from the ruling party or a coalition. • Newly introduced textbooks and other instructional materials are generally in line with the ruling parties’ perspectives. • Projects of the new governments are passed, which are geared to the priorities of the ruling party. With the change of government in 1999, resulting in a Hindu nationalist party–led ruling coalition, a revision of history and other textbooks was carried out. Eventually, the structure and interpretations of the same events in the second-­generation books changed, producing a mammoth national and international controversy about the ‘saffronisation’ of textbooks.33 With the comeback of the Congress-­led United Progressive

166  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber Alliance (UPA) in 2004, the revision of textbooks was one of the first priorities. This time, the newly appointed NCERT director introduced a pedagogical approach with discussion of perspectives and interpretations in the third generation of textbooks. The curricula and textbooks are again under the process of revision by the current BJP-­led government, with Narendra Modi as the prime minister, who first came to power in 2014. Textbook writers employ different strategies to communicate messages, some of which are as follows: • (Prescribed) interpretations. • Forged evidence. • Silence. • (Selective) purposeful omissions or euphemisms.

Strategy 1: (Prescribed) Interpretations The same data can often support several, contradictory interpretations. Although textbooks can show multiple points of view, often only one is presented as authoritative. This includes the selection and omission of facts and their interpretation and appraisal. In many cases, the desired view is subject to political interference, where the message is already prescribed in the curricula/syllabi or where authors are selected who possess the ‘right’ political affiliation. Only a pedagogical approach which takes into account the multitude of perspectives and which questions and discusses evidence and controversial interpretations with the students can be a remedy against this one-­sided indoctrination. In the 1970s, the concept of multi-­perspectivity was introduced into national history didactics to make students aware of the existence of different positions.34 Later, it was propagated by the Council of Europe and NGOs like Euroclio (European Association of History Educators) also as a means to approach conflicting histories.35 However, this practice has to be selective too. It can add some facets and reduce the importance of author’s texts, but it seldom abolishes the latter.36 In India, NCERT textbooks published between 1986 and 1999 clearly privileged a leftist interpretation. For instance, the Russian Revolution and left-­wing actors play a significant role, the influence of socialist ideas is highlighted, and interpretations of historical events follow a materialist reading to a substantial extent. Thus, when the new Hindu nationalist government started to change curricula and textbooks in 1999, nationalist-­oriented writers and politicians branded the textbooks ‘Marxist’ and attacked their authors for holding a non-­Indian perspective. The minimisation of atrocities towards Hindus committed by Muslims or under Muslim rule became a subject of contestation.37 Ancient history also became a field for reinterpretation. To prove that Hinduism dates back to the ancient Indus civilisation, a hypothesis that is mostly rejected by serious historians, a textbook author

The Post-­Truth Environment 167 of the second NCERT series named the stone statue of a man – found in Mohenjo Daro and often described as ‘Priest-­King’ – a Hindu ‘Yogi figurine’, as if this were a matter of fact. Another ‘terracotta female figurine with vermillion in hair parting’ has been dubiously used to date the practice used by Hindu women back to ancient times.38 As Guha observed, the discipline of archaeology has been increasingly exploited for meeting the demands of religious nationalism in India, for offering material proof for the primordiality of Hindu dharma, and for substantiating claims that the ‘Vedic Hindu’ had an indigenous origin within the subcontinent.39 The events around the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992, under the pretext that it was built over an older Rama temple, received worldwide attention. Whether the mosque had been built by demolishing a Ram temple is still debatable. But with this idea, Hindu nationalists could mobilise Hindus all over India and even abroad, raising the popularity of BJP and helping it come to power in 1999.40 In 2015, the national institute Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) was set up in Delhi to encourage historical research and to revise and correct NCERT history textbooks. A five-­day workshop was organised, which was attended by historians and others, in which some important decisions were made. Saradindu Mukherjee, one of the newly inducted members of ICHR, accused the Congress-­led UPA of being ‘the most anti-­Hindu government to rule India since the decline of the Mughals’. Mukherjee claimed, ‘Jinnah was highlighted at the expense of Bose in the Class XII history textbook, and that the textbook had ignored anti-­Hindu violence for the last 1400 years’. He also demanded that the distorted history in textbooks necessitates an apology from NCERT.41 This exemplifies the direct connection between education and the stand of the government.

Strategy 2: Forged Evidence Not all interpretations can be entirely supported by evidence. Sometimes, links are missing and can be presumed by academically sound hypotheses. Data are nonetheless invented to support an argument in some cases and then presented as real and true. Here, invented ‘facts’ as ‘proofs’ are used for an ideologically tinted statement. For example, the Sanskrit textbook ‘Sukritika’ – volume 3, meant for class 8 students – states that India won the 1962 Sino-­Indian war. In reality, the Chinese army was victorious, killing about 4000 Indian soldiers. It left a deep scar in the Indian psyche. As a result, thousands of Indian pupils are growing up with this distorted history.42 In Rajasthan, a class 10 physical and health textbook aimed at 16-­year-­olds mentions that a meat diet is unhealthy and fails

168  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber to list meat as a source of protein, fat, and minerals. It also mentions the prayers to be recited before a meal and the notion that Western culture has both decimated families and taken away sanskaar (culture) from India’s youth.43 These kinds of texts not only are unscientific but also propagate hatred against some practices, people, and cultures instead of inculcating tolerance in pupils’ minds.

Strategy 3: Silence The strategy of silence is often used to avoid politically undesirable topics. It is an attempt to take them away from public discussion and in the long run even from public memory. Silence can, however, be justified in several ways, not only politically. Often, pedagogical concerns are mentioned: not to confront children with the horror of historical atrocities, not to open conflicts inside the classroom on socially contentious issues, etc. But from a pedagogical point of view, tabooing controversial topics is usually not a solution, because it prevents a society from coming to terms with its past. Silence is a strong weapon that is used to fiddle with the truth. This method has been adopted by the Congress, BJP, and Communist parties during their power. During Congress rule, the main criticism of history textbooks was that they did not handle the topic of the Partition of India and its aftermath in the appropriate dimension and in the right pedagogical manner. The textbooks were mostly silent about the huge uprooting and transfer of about 14 million people across the border,44 the pre-­and post-­partition riots, the deaths, and the associated trauma.45 The Calcutta Massacres of 16–19 August 1946, for instance, are missing. This one-­sided violence resulted in up to 10,000 deaths, with many more wounded.46 After the Partition in August  1947, ethnic killings continued on a huge scale. The victims were Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. The government led by Prime Minister Nehru did not include the Partition in history textbooks with appropriate gravity and importance. The aftermath of the Partition was not included at all in the books. This version of ‘history’ ended with independence. The next important activity of the newly formed government was the making of the constitution of independent India. This topic later became a part of civics. This omission was justified on feeble grounds: children should not be exposed to such ‘bitter truths’; they will know about the past when they grow up; or, one should not develop an enemy picture of the neighbouring countries.47 But in a few NCERT books, the Partition was narrated as a national disaster, with high emotions. In a similar manner, the Anti-­Sikh Riots did not find a place in history textbooks. In 1984, the murder of Mrs Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, by her Sikh guard could be discussed in this context. Riots broke out in many parts of India, killing up to 10,000 people from the Sikh community between 1 and 3 November.48 But there was no mention of that

The Post-­Truth Environment 169 incident in any textbooks, be it civics (as it was known at that time) or history in the later revisions. The topic was not discussed in classrooms, and as Krishna Kumar has argued ‘children are deeply aware of social conflicts, but they seldom find opportunities to express their anxiety’. Schools were shut for a few days during the riot. After they were reopened, the incident was not formally discussed inside classrooms, where both Sikh and Hindu pupils were sitting.49 This pedagogical approach was rectified in the NCERT textbooks of the third generation. In the federal state of West Bengal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its allies, ruled for 34 years, between 1977 and 2011. History textbooks generally failed to mention that the leader, Subhas Bose, met Hitler in Germany to ask for help during India’s freedom movement. Those who did only made casual references. The 1979 Marichjhapi Massacre, when police opened fire, killing many protesting Dalit refugees on the government’s order, also did not find a place in the school history textbooks. Sajal Basu’s summary for the West Bengal human rights record was the only academic reference for over a decade.50 As a high percentage of the intellectuals were affiliated with the ruling party, this silence could be explained. However, the West Bengal Human Rights Commission is the state-­level chapter of the National Human Rights Commission. Since it is beyond the direct influence of the state government, the Marichjhapi incident could be mentioned in the report.

Strategy 4: (Selective) Purposeful Omissions or Euphemisms Sometimes, instead of silencing a whole topic, stakeholders (politicians and others) may seek to omit certain uncomfortable aspects of it that counter their interpretation. For example, topics like the 1984 riots or the 2002 riots in Gujarat were not part of the NCERT textbook until new pedagogy was introduced in 2005–6. However, again in 2017, NCERT was reported to be under pressure to change a title of a text from ‘Anti-­Muslim Riots in Gujarat’ to ‘Gujarat Riots’ and to scrap a citation in which the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the National Democratic Alliance, during a public meeting, requested Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, not to discriminate on the basis of religion, caste, or creed when it comes to ruling and to observe the principle of government neutrality.51 In the context of deletion, political scientist Yogedra Yadav writes that It is our duty to future generations to tell them the truth without any exaggeration or euphemisms. That is what we have done. That is why we brought the unpleasant truth of the Emergency, the 1984 riots and the 2002 riots on record. Any selective editing will be unbalanced.52

170  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber According to the report from The Wire, NCERT was asked to incorporate a massive process of deletion, revision and ‘corrections’ in the textbook Politics in India Since Independence as it fails to satisfy the visions of ‘various Hindutva-­oriented organisations and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the apex body which conducts school and competitive examinations. Speaking anonymously, one senior official of the CBSE opined that the 2002 riots need only a brief reference’.53 Instead of omitting an aspect entirely, euphemism can be a way to avoid unpleasant content. The example of Nathuram Godse, the murderer of Mahatma Gandhi is instructive. Godse was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and the nationalist paramilitary group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Shortly after independence, on 30 January 1948, he shot Gandhi three times at point-­blank range. The records of Gandhi’s secretary, Pyarelal Nayyar, note that ‘Members of the RSS at some places had been instructed beforehand to tune in to their radio sets on the fateful Friday for the “good news” ’.54 But during the BJP-­led NDA government, while rewriting textbooks, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948 was ‘a glaring omission’ in the history textbooks of class 9, which created a huge furore.55 That publication had to be taken out from the market. Soon after, a revised version was produced.56 The similar omission was found in a recent textbook, where ‘the new social science textbook for Class 8 in schools of Rajasthan does not mention the assassination of the father of the nation’.57 These repeated cases of ‘forgetting’ to mention the event point to the difficulty nationalists have in reconciling their conception of history that affirms Godse’s act with the mainstream conception that still venerates Gandhi. None of the strategies mentioned here are explicitly post-­truth. All have been employed in textbook writing for a long time and during various regimes. In controversies about textbook representations, a battle for truth – for the right way to present the topics, facts, and interpretations  – played the major role. In the Indian case, during 1998–2004, the struggle in the ‘saffronisation’ of education produced substantial volumes of a ‘list of errors’ in the new generation of textbooks, marking the wrong and setting it right.58 Also, in a tit for tat, ‘saffron’ historians surveyed the older books for mistakes (as per their perception).59 They put forward their explanations to criticism, trying to prove the critics wrong.60 One cannot miss  the concern for truth in this debate, even if arguments might be questionable. The way to substantiate the claims made in the books to support the new version of history as the master narrative, which was previously a counter-­discourse, is, however, pointing towards a laxer handling of ‘truth’ in favour of speculations. Whether this marks an indifference to truth or just a lack in academic arts might be questioned. Also, school textbooks, as educational media, claim to present the truth, and they cannot be indifferent to it. The authors can and might

The Post-­Truth Environment 171 present false history, as several of our examples demonstrate. This might support the argument that it is the environment that places the cases in post-­truth contexts, not inherent claims or qualities. The cases are not just mistakes which have to be revised. In the sociopolitical setting in which the books are produced and used, it is not the quest for truth that drives these authors but the propagation of their worldview – indifferent to academic evidence – which they consider the ‘truth’.

Partition and the Akhand Bharat: A Politicised and Glorified Memory Game Partition of the country in 1947, which followed independence, is still an oozing wound for Indians. The majority of the Hindu Indians protested against the division of India. They felt cheated by accepting independence from the British at the cost of dividing India into two countries, India and Pakistan (East and West). But Pakistan had rejoiced this parting decision of the British, which resulted in a separate land for the Muslims. The Partition caused massive displacement, uprooting, trauma, and the killing of thousands of Muslims, Hindu, and Sikh Indians. It is still the largest mass migration in human history, which had resulted in around 14 million displaced people.61 With the fragmented land, the new nation had to reorient itself to the newly born additional challenges, including rehabilitating the huge number of refugees, the constant flow of illegal migration across its borders, and the emergence of cross-­border terrorism. A huge mass of the population was sad and angry. The BJP took advantage of the popular dissatisfaction with the Partition and related issues. In the absence of the British, a new enemy emerged, namely the Islamic State of Pakistan. The BJP and other Hindu nationalist parties argued that since the country was divided on religious lines by the British and an Islamic state was founded for the Muslims, was it not logical that India should be the land only for Hindus – a Hindu rashtra (Hindu nation)? Their second demand was the abolition of sharia law for Muslims and the establishment of one law for the entire country. But the new government of India declared itself a secular country. It allowed Muslims, who were living in the area of India, to continue to be so. This policy became a serious bone of contention between the ruling Congress party and the Hindu nationalist groups. Frustration arose with the passage of time. BJP took advantage of the situation and made Akhand Bharat, undivided India, an agenda for their election in the 1970s. The concept of Akhand Bharat dates back to the 3rd century BCE, when a Hindu emperor, Chandragupta Maurya, expanded his empire to a vast territory comprising the modern-­day nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, Tibet, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and most of India. The BJP tried to implant this idea of lost land into the minds of Indians. Never before has ancient India been glorified to such an extent as it is

172  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber now by the BJP. In 1965, Jansangh passed a resolution that ‘Akhand Bharat will be a reality, unifying India and Pakistan’.62 Although the RSS and BJP leaders are still for the reunification of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the idea of Akhand Bharat is unrealistic for present-­ day India. On 20 March 2018, the Times of India published a cartoon depicting Prime Minister Modi as an artist painting a map of Akhand Bharat (AB), a greater India akin to the European Union or the United States. Despite its implacability, this idea was used as a weapon by populist leaders of the BJP, who used such memories like other populist leaders. It shares features with Trump’s election slogan ‘make America great again’ in that it appeals to emotions and an easily distorted collective memory of the past for political gain. Although Akhand Bharat is a decades-­old concept, the revival of it can be considered an element in today’s post-­truth discourse.

Hitler Mania in India In general, national politics promotes patriotism among citizens. If, however, political stakeholders notice a deficiency in national behaviour, they will often look abroad for good examples to show ‘fellow citizens’ what could be achieved. In India, during Congress rule, superstition was rebuffed, and a scientific outlook was promoted.63 In this regard, Europe  – and the West in general  – were set as models to show what could be achieved when science and rationality are employed in sectors like agriculture and industry. School textbooks were praising these aspects in their presentation of the geography of Europe or the history of industrialisation.64 With governments of Hindu nationalist orientation in power, this outlook was toned down and changed, leading to the accusation of promoting superstition.65 The shortcomings of society are now seen in other fields. One aspect is the ‘shortcomings’ of the ‘weak’ democratic system – in contrast to a rule by a strong leader. A favourite example for the latter is Adolf Hitler.66 Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, has been translated into many Indian languages. The book is popular mostly among young males in the age group of 17–35. The Times of India conducted a survey among young students in the top colleges in Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai on their perception of Hitler: 17% of interviewees opined strongly that India needs that kind of leader.67 Shrenik Rao writes that Admiration for Nazism  – often reframed with a genocidal hatred for Muslims – is rampant in the Hindu nationalist camp, which has never been as mainstream as it is now. Ironically, Hitler – the genocidal maniac who murdered more than six million Jews, who propagated a Nazi ideology that promoted hatred, Aryan racial puritanism

The Post-­Truth Environment 173 and white supremacy – continues to find many followers in India, a nation of predominantly brown-­skinned people.68 This is certainly unnerving, but is it the result of formal education or societal narratives?69 In the absence of other resources, textbooks still play a pivotal role in Indian education, both for pupils and for teachers. Reading and memorising text is still a popular learning method. In a recent study, the authors of this chapter analysed a sample of textbooks in history and the social sciences to better understand ‘Hitler mania’ among contemporary Indian youth. The portrayal of Hitler in some books is ambiguous. In several cases, the invasion of countries and mass killing are described as ‘achievements’ of Hitler and Nazi rule. The positive framing of Nazism, the establishment of a totalitarian system, and the ‘deportation’ of Jews would be shocking to most Western readers.70 A Tamil-­Nadu textbook states the following ‘achievements’ of Hitler: [He] believed in action, force and terrorism. There was no scope for public liberty. . . . He created a strong, unified and highly centralized despotic state. In the economic field, his work was commendable.71 The Labour Front looked after the general welfare of the workers. Strikes and lock-­ outs were outlawed. He made Germany self-­sufficient. . . . Rearmament programme of Hitler gave employment to many people. Many schools were opened and illiteracy was eradicated. The children were trained in the Nazi culture.72 While the descriptions are not necessarily pro-­Nazi, the positive spin has dubious historicity. Further, the focus on ‘one leader’ alone as the personification of a system, is misleading. Another aspect of the presentation of Hitler is the personal characteristics that make a leader: Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people. . . . Hitler devised a new style of politics. He understood the significance of rituals and spectacle in mass mobilisation.73 Other books depict these traits not only as capabilities but also as positive qualities: Hitler’s extraordinary and immensely impressive personality made a significant contribution to Nazism. He was an able statesman and

174  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber possessed all the qualities of leadership. His fiery speeches kept his audience spell bound.74 Significantly, most books ascribe a preponderant individual role to Hitler alone. The historical developments connected with his name are thus presented as intentional, according to his will. In this conception, the leader makes history and is the real protagonist, not just one actor in a complex play. The characterisation of Hitler and the Nazis in Indian textbooks reveals a spectrum from profound condemnation to appreciation and admiration. Nevertheless, the positive portrayal in some school textbooks, replete with euphemisms and half-­truths, surely plays some role in Hitler mania. To address Nazism, especially in a post-­truth environment, one needs a far deeper and broader understanding of the topic instead of focusing on one individual. However, the desire for a ‘strong man’ is presumably based on sociopolitical developments in India, which goes beyond the focus of the present chapter.

Conclusion Post-­truth, as discussed here, uses manipulating strategies  – including lies, half-­truths, or omitting information, disassociating it from historical truth. The strategies appeal to emotions, often with political goals. Thereby, the notion of truth is destabilised and made to seem irrelevant. Enlightenment rationalism has failed to counter the vague emotional connection of the feeling of being left out or maltreated and been replaced by the desire to ‘regain some elusive past greatness [which] outweighs any argument based on verifiable facts’.75 This chapter has dealt with fake news, half-­truths, lies, and silence in India. While each of these have a long history, their impact in a post-­truth environment is arguably greater than before. In the political sphere, demonetisation, the ‘surgical strike’ on Pakistan in 2019, the call for Akhand Bharat, and Hitler mania have been discussed as examples of post-­truth. In the education sphere, textbooks produced by the Union and state-­level governments were analysed to exemplify the attempted political agenda that amounts to post-­truth. Political deception is nothing new. Sometimes it is even applauded, if the falsity is carefully crafted and if one is not caught out. To come to power, some people reason that all is fair in love and war. Even in ancient India, as narrated in the Mahabharata, one finds the use of intentional falsity, legitimising these strategies even today. The crucial point is that with the availability of modern technology, information or newsbytes can spread like wildfire. Also, the canvas of false propaganda is so expansive that it is instantly heard and viewed by millions across the globe. In India, too, IT and social media have a broad distribution, and political parties have their cyber armies for propaganda. The target groups

The Post-­Truth Environment 175 consume whatever they are fed with, without having any wish to pursue the truth, and they multiply false information through redistribution. The fourth estate, which used to be the safeguard of a democracy, is often no more neutral than its online counterpart and has played an important role in disinformation. They rather help to strengthen the opinion of the ruling or the favourite party in forming public opinion and political attitudes. In India, during demonetisation, textbook controversies, and the government-­proclaimed surgical attack, the media was not neutral, and some supported government claims. In India, the present political and societal developments have produced a setting that some Indian authors have identified as contributing to post-­truth actions. Indifference to truth is a matter of serious concern, because it facilitates populist leaders who use the collective past and a selective public nostalgia as a tool to create a vision of the present. In this process, the political leaders foster their image as saviours. Post-­truth is used in the political spheres of India as short-­term strategies to come to power and to rule. It is thus questionable how democratic the world’s largest democracy actually is. For example, in the case of India’s 2016 demonetisation, the false promises to bring back hidden black money to the open market, to tackle counterfeiting, or to stop terror funding was spread across India by the media, resulting in strong public opinion in favour of the policies. But these fakes in day-­to-­day policies are part of a larger political game, including memory politics with longer-­term efforts to change the collective outlook and memory of society. The mobilising effects of bringing the mythological past to the present by faked evidence can be seen in the Ayodhya Babri Masjid–Ram temple affair, which increased the popularity of the Hindu nationalists and helped them to win state and later national elections. In the education sphere, within a longer time frame, memory politics instrumentalises education. The revision, correction, or rewriting of history is one such example. The techniques used, like reinterpretation, faking evidence, silence, and partial omissions, are not restricted to post-­ truth developments. Biased and false information have a long history in India’s school education, where school textbooks provide schemas, as medium-­and long-­term strategies, on which public discourses may rely. The political agenda in education is not even confined to postcolonial India, where textbooks often represent, explicitly or implicitly, the agenda of the ruling government. In the colonial period, textbooks were also the carriers of the colonisers’ agenda. But since 1999, blatant speculations and perversions, which one finds in some books, resemble those of post-­truth policy. They reach public attention and help in mainstreaming the Hindu national perspective. The rising acceptance of populist leaders by the population, idealising them as saviours, and the propagation of strong leadership by foreign examples find their expression in the recent Indian Hitler mania. It found

176  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber its way into several school textbooks and into the minds of a substantial part of the country’s youth. False information and fake interpretations have encouraged a longing for bold national heroes and strong leaders, who offer prospects for a bright future. This is part of the post-­truth universe. The silence about certain problematic pages of history and the attribution of desirable qualities to historic tyrants has led to a total distortion of public memory, exemplified by the removal of the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi from an NCERT book of social science by RSS cadre. The uncritical reception of half-­truths and fake news can flourish when there is only a partial understanding of a topic. It remains to be seen how education forms and is formed by post-­truth developments. The speed of spreading information, fake or true, by social media, no doubt plays an important role, although to what extent they are present in classrooms is another question.

Notes 1. Grech, “Fake News,” 118. 2. Corner, “Fake News,” 1100. 3. Gudonis, “Concept of Post-­truth,” 145–150. 4. Davis, “The Age of Post-­Truth Politics”; Iyengar and Massey, “Scientific Communication in a post-­truth Society.” 5. See also Quintana Paz, “Post-­Truth as a Feature of Hypermodern Times,” 146–147. 6. Webster’s, “Truth,” 1140. 7. Lazer et al., “Science of Fake-­news,” 1095. 8. Webster’s, “Lie,” 691. 9. Quintana Paz, “Post-­Truth as a Feature of Hypermodern Times,” 145. 10. Websters, “Silence.” 11. Saint-­Laurent et al., “Collective Memory,” 149. 12. India is a participant of the UNESCO led programme “Education for All.” 13. Vosoughi, Roy and Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online.” 14. Goel and Frenkel, “India Election.” 15. Nithin et al., “Has Demonetisation Pushed Digitalisation in India?” 67. 16. Ibid., 67. 17. “Post-­truth India,” 7. 18. TT Bureau, “Cash Recall.” 19. Goel and Frenkel, “India Election.” 20. Davis, “The Age of Post-­Truth Politics.” 21. Barot, “Tweet.” 22. Gleicher, “Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.” 23. Goel and Frenkel, “India Election.” 24. Ibid. 25. Pandey, “BJP Adds 4 Crore Members in a Month.” 26. Cf. Naseem and Stöber, “Textbooks, Identity Politics and Lines of Conflict.” 27. Ingrao, “Weapons of Mass Instruction.” 28. For administrative purposes, under the Constitution of India, various subjects were brought under the Union List, the State List, and the Concurrent List (Joint List). The Concurrent List has subjects like education, newspapers, economic planning, and so on which could be of common concern to

The Post-­Truth Environment 177 both the central government and the state government. Therefore, both the central government and the state government generally cooperate and make joint decisions (at times by means of debates and discussions). 29. The NCERT was created by the government of India as an apex institute in the area of school education, which was entrusted with the task of designing the national curriculum and syllabi for all school stages and of preparing model textbooks. The federal states could adopt, adapt, or partially follow the National Curriculum that the NCERT had proposed, though they were not obliged to do so. 30. Banerjee and Stöber, “The Portrayal of the ‘Other’,” 143. 31. CBSE – Central Board of Secondary Education, India. 32. ICHR – Indian Council of Historical Research, India. 33. Banerjee, “West Bengal History,” 3; Gottlob, “Changing Concepts of Identity.” 34. See, for example, Bergmann, “Multiperspektivität;” von Borries, “ ‘Multiperspectivity’ ”. 35. Stradling, Multiperspectivity in History Teaching; Hamer, “The Image of the Other”. For a country-­specific overview, see Cajani, Lässig, Repoussi, eds., Palgrave Handbook. Critics of the concept emphasise that the students should have to learn ‘how history really was’; advocates also often admit, for example, that multi-­perspectivity might be too demanding, especially for younger students, who are in need of a synoptic narration of events, as one of the coauthors of this chapter (GS) learned in many discussions. 36. There are rare examples of textbooks where the learning content is presented only through different materials (sources) but not narrated by the textbook authors. Even in those, the sources, for example, have to be selected and framed (in introductions and questions). 37. Jain, Flawed Narratives. 38. Lal et al., India and the World, 85. 39. Guha, “Negotiating Evidence,” 399. 40. Berenschot, Riot Politics, 25; Brass, Politics of India, 15–16; Jaffrelot, “The Hindu Nationalists and Power.” 41. Mukul, “Scrap Reference to ‘Anti-­Muslim’ Riots.” 42. Yousuf, “India Won’ 62 War”; Menon, “History Found in India’s New Textbooks.” 43. Basu, “Rajasthan’s Textbooks.” 44. “Rupture of South Asia,” 59. 45. In some State Board books, it was partially handled, narrated in a detached way, or given a passing mention – not a silence but also not a discussion. 46. Sinha, “Legacy of British Colonialism.” 47. As a senior faculty of the NCERT, Banerjee, one of the authors, was acquainted with the policy and processes of the NCERT. 48. Singh, The History of the Sikhs, 378. 49. Kumar, Learning from Conflict, 5. 50. The massacre is analysed by Mallick, “Refugee Resettlement in Forest Reserves,” 112, as well as by Chowdhuri, “Space, Identity, Territory”; Sengupta, “Forgotten Massacre”, points to the silence in a more recent publication. 51. Mukul, “Scrap Reference to “Anti-­Muslim’ Riots.” 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Kulkarni, “History Shows.” 55. Mukherjee et al., “RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi,” 49. 56. Co-­author Banerjee’s personal knowledge from direct involvement as faculty member at the NCERT during that time.

178  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber 7. Menon, “History Found in India’s New Textbooks.” 5 58. See, for example, Habib et al., History in the New NCERT Text Books. There are several other publications on the debate by ‘leftist’ academics between 2000 and 2005, mostly published by SAHMAT, New Delhi. Also, the (English language) press took it up and gave the arguments a broad publicity. 59. Jain, Flawed Narratives. 60. Lal et al., History in the New NCERT Textbooks. 61. “Rupture of South Asia,” 59. 62. Dhamija, “Dream of Greater India.” 63. National Curriculum Framework for School Education; Kulkarni, “History Shows,” 40. 64. Stöber, “Textbook Images of the Other.” 65. Thus, several problematic issues found their way into the textbooks, which are not in accord with scientific knowledge. The promotion of vegetarianism mentioned earlier is one example. 66. The authors of this contribution have further explored this aspect in a recently published article: Banerjee and Stöber, “ ‘Hitlermania’.” 67. Joshi, “Hitler as Hero.” 68. Rao, “Hitler’s Hindus.” 69. In democratic societies, both are of course not independent from one another, given that public discourses influence textbook authors and given that concepts learned at schools might be a base for the development of one’s own worldview. 70. Malik, Saraswati History XII, 244. On page 63 of Malik et al., Saraswati Social Science IX from 2018, there are no ‘achievements’ any more, but ‘Nazi barbarities’. 71. Subramanian et al., Social Science, 29. 72. Ibid. 73. Juneja et al., India and the Contemporary World IX, 57. 74. Malik, Saraswati History XII, 243. 75. Gross, “Dangers of a Post-­truth World,” R1.

Bibliography Banerjee, Basabi Khan. “West Bengal History Textbooks and the Indian Textbook Controversy.” Internationale Schulbuchforschung 29, no. 4 (2007): 355–374. Banerjee, Basabi Khan, and Georg Stöber. “ ‘Hitlermania’: Nazism and the Holocaust in Indian History Textbooks.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 12, no. 1 (2020): 43–73. ———. “Living in Harmony? ‘Casteism’, Communalism, and Regionalism in Indian Social Science Textbooks.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 6, no. 2 (2014): 42–86. ———. “The Portrayal of the ‘Other’ in Pakistani and Indian School Textbooks.” In (Re)Constructing Memory: Textbooks, Identity, Nation, and State, edited by James H. Williams and Wendy D. Bokhorst-­Heng, 143–176. Rotterdam: Sense, 2016. Barot, Trushar. “Tweet from 17 February 2019.” https://twitter.com/Trushar. Basu, Indira. “Rajasthan’s Textbooks Are Now Weapons of Government Propaganda.” The Quint, 16 June  2016. Accessed 30 June  2019. www.thequint. com/news/india/rajasthan-­education-­bjp-­narendra-­modi-­propaganda. Berenschot, Ward. Riot Politics. London: Hurst & Company, 2011.

The Post-­Truth Environment 179 Bergmann, Klaus. “Multiperspektivität.” In Handbuch der Geschichtsdidaktik, vol. 1, 216–218. Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1979. Borries, Bodo von. “ ‘Multiperspectivity’ – Utopian Pretension or Feasible Fundament of Learning in Europe?” In History for Today and Tomorrow. What Does Europe Mean for School History? edited by Joke van der Leeuw-­Roord, 269–295. Hamburg: Körber-­Stiftung, 2001. Brass, Paul R. The Politics of India Since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Cajani, Luigi, Simone Lässig, and Maria Repoussi, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Conflict and History Education in the Post-­Cold War Era. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2019. Chowdhuri, Debdatta. “Space, Identity, Territory: Marichjhapi Massacre, 1979.” The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 5 (2011): 664–682. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2011.569333. Corner, John. “Fake News, Post-­truth and Media-­political Change.” Media Culture and Society 39, no. 7 (2017): 1100–7, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443 717726743. Davis, William. “The Age of Post-­Truth Politics.” The New York Times, 24 August 2016. www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/opinion/campaign-­stops/the-­age-­ of-­post-­truth-­politics.html. Dhamija, Bhanu. “Dream of Greater India: Forget Akhand Bharat or Hindu Rashtra, Bharat Mahasangh of Like-­minded Nations Is a More Feasible Goal.” The Times of India, 20 March 2018. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/ toi-­edit-­page/dream-­of-­greater-­india-­forget-­akhand-­bharat-­or-­hindu-­rashtra-­ bharat-­mahasangh-­of-­like-­minded-­nations-­is-­a-­more-­feasible-­goal/. Gleicher, Nathaniel. “Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior and Spam From India and Pakistan.” Facebook Newsroom, 1 April 2019. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/04/cib-­and-­spam-­from-­india-­pakistan/. Goel, Vindu, and Sheera Frenkel. “In India Election, False Posts and Hate Speech Flummox Facebook.” The New York Times, 1 April  2019. www.nytimes. com/2019/04/01/technology/india-­elections-­facebook.html. Gottlob, Michael. “Changing Concepts of Identity in the Indian Textbook Controversy.” Internationale Schulbuchforschung 29, no. 4 (2007): 341–353. Grech, Victor. “Fake News and Post-­truth Pronouncements in General and in Early Human Development.” Early Human Development (December  2017): 115, 118–120. Gross, Michael. “The Dangers of a Post-­ truth World.” Current Biology 27 (2017): R1–R4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.034. Gudonis, Marius. “How Useful Is the Concept of Post-­ Truth in Analysing Genocide Denial? Analysis of Online Comments on the Jedwabne Massacre.” Zoon Politikon 8 (2017): 141–182. https://doi.org/10.4467/2543408X ZOP.17.006.9265. Guha, Sudeshna. “Negotiating Evidence: History, Archaeology and the Indus Civilisation.” Modern Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (2005): 399–426. Habib, Irfan, Suvira Jaiswal, and Aditya Mukherjee. History in the New NCERT Text Books for Classes VI, IX and XI – A Report and an Index of Errors. Kolkata: Indian History Congress, 2003. Hamer, John. “The Image of the Other in History Teaching.” Symposium on The Image of the Other in Post-­conflict Situations: Learning Different Histories as

180  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber a Means of Rebuilding Trust, edited by John Hamer, Athens, 26–27 November  2009, 39–90. Strasbourg: Council of Europe [DGIV/EDU/HISTDIM (2009)05]. Ingrao, Charles. “Weapons of Mass Instruction: Schoolbooks and Democratization in Multiethnic Central Europe.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 1, no. 1, 2009. https://doi.org/10.3167/jemms.2009.010111. Iyengar, Shanto, and Douglas S. Massey. “Scientific Communication in a Post-­ Truth Society.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 116, no. 16 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805868115. Jaffrelot, Christophe. “The Hindu Nationalists and Power.” The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 205–218. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Jain, Meenakshi. Flawed Narratives: History in the Old NCERT Textbooks: A Random Survey of Satish Chandra’s Medieval India. New Delhi: Delhi Historians Forum, 2003. Joshi, Manoj. “Hitler as Hero: Society Without a Moral Compass.” Times of India, 26 December  2002. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-­page/ LEADER-­ARTICLEBRHitler-­as-­Hero-­Society-­Without-­a-­Moral-­Compass/ articleshow/32382342.cms. Juneja, Monica et  al. Social Science: India and the Contemporary World  – 1, Textbook in History for Class IX. New Delhi: NCERT, 2006. [Kothari Commission Report 1966], Education and National Development: Report of the Education Commission, 1964–66. D.S. Kothari Report. New Delhi, 1966. https://archive.org/stream/ReportOfTheEducationCommission1964-­ 66D.S.KothariReport/48.Jp-­R eportOfTheEducationCommission1964-­ 66d.s.kothari_djvu.txt. Kulkarni, Pavan. “History Shows How Patriotic the RSS Really Is.” The Wire, 15 August 2018. https://thewire.in/history/rss-­hindutva-­nationalism. Kumar, Krishna. Learning from Conflict. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1996. Lal, Makkan et al. India and the World. Social Science Textbook for Class VI. New Delhi: NCERT, 2002. Lal, Makkhan, Meenakshi Jain, and Hari Om. History in the New NCERT Textbooks: Fallacies in the IHC Report. New Delhi: NCERT, 2003. Lazer, David M. J. et al. “The Science of Fake News.” Science 359, no. 6380 (9 March 2018): 1094–1096. Malik, Malti. Saraswati History: Modern India and Contemporary World, History Textbook for Year XII. New Delhi: Saraswati House, 2005. Malik, Malti et al. Saraswati Social Science for Class IX. New Delhi: New Saraswati House, 2018. Mallick, Ross. “Refugee Resettlement in Forest Reserves: West Bengal Policy Reversal and the Marichjhapi Massacre.” The Journal of Asian Studies 58, no. 1 (February 1999): 104–125. https://doi.org/10.2307/2658391. Menon, Harish C. “Post-­truth: In the Version of History Found in India’s New Textbooks, China Lost 1962 and Gandhi Wasn’t Murdered.” Quartz India, 16 August  2017. https://qz.com/india/1054692/in-­the-­version-­of-­history-­found-­ in-­indias-­new-­textbooks-­china-­lost-­1962-­and-­gandhi-­wasnt-­murdered/. Mukherjee, Aditya, Mridula Mukherjee, and Sucheta Mahajan. RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi: The Hindu Communal Project. New Delhi: Sage, 2008.

The Post-­Truth Environment 181 Mukul, Akshaya. “Scrap Reference to ‘Anti-­Muslim’ Riots, Vajpayee’s Lesson in ‘Rajdharma’ to Modi, NCERT Told.” The Wire, 21 May 2017. Accessed 16 June  2019. https://thewire.in/education/ncert-­gujarat-­muslim-­riots-­cbse­textbook. Naseem, Muhammad Ayaz, and Georg Stöber. “Introduction: Textbooks, Identity Politics and Lines of Conflict in South Asia.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 6, no. 2 (2014): 1–9. National Curriculum Framework 2005. New Delhi: NCERT, 2005. National Curriculum Framework for School Education, 2000. New Delhi: NCERT, 2000. National Policy on Education – 1986. New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India, 1986. ———. Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2000. https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/document-­reports/NPE-­1968. pdf. New Education Policy 2015. New Delhi: NCERT, 2015. Nithin, M., Pandikasala Jijin, and Pallayil Baiju. “Has Demonetisation Pushed Digitalisation in India? Some Counter Evidences.” Journal of Business Thought 9 (April 2018). https://doi.org/10.18311/jbt/2018/21170. Pandey, Neelam. “BJP Adds 4 Crore Members in a Month, with a 140% Rise in Recruitment in Bengal.” The Print, 20 August  2019. https://theprint.in/politics/bjp-­adds-­4-­crore-­members-­in-­a-­month-­with-­a-­140-­rise-­in-­recruitment-­in-­ bengal/279802/. “Post-­truth India” (Editorial). Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 1 (7 January 2017). www.epw.in/journal/2017/1/editorials/post-­truth-­india.html. Quintana Paz, Miguel Ángel. “Post-­Truth as a Feature of Hypermodern Times.” Edukacja Filozoficzna, no. 66 (2018). https://doi.org/10.14394/edufil.2018.0020. Rao, Shrenik. “Hitler’s Hindus: The Rise and Rise of India’s Nazi-­loving Nationalists.” Haaretz, 14 December 2017. www.haaretz.com/opinion/hitlers-­hindus­indias-­nazi-­loving-­nationalists-­on-­the-­rise-­1.5628532. “Rupture of South Asia.” Chap. 3 In The State of the World’s Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action, edited by Mark Cutts. UNHCR and Oxford University Press, 2000. www.unhcr.org/3ebf9bab0.pdf. Saint-­ Laurent, Constance de, Ignacio Brescó de Luna, Sarah H. Awad, and Brady Wagoner. “Collective Memory and Social Sciences in the Post-­truth Era.” Culture & Psychology 23, no. 2, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1177/135406 7X17695769. Sengupta, Debjani. “The Forgotten Massacre of Dalit Refugees in West Bengal’s Marichjhapi.” The Wire, 3 October  2018. https://thewire.in/history/ west-­bengal-­violence-­marichjhapi-­dandakaranya. Singh, Khushwant. The History of the Sikhs, vol. 2. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. Sinha, Mohammad Basir ul Haq. “Legacy of British Colonialism: The ‘Great Calcutta Killings’ of 1946: A Cry for Accountability After Decades.” www.globalresearch. ca/legacy-­of-­british-­colonialism-­the-­great-­calcutta-­killings-­of-­1946/5604231. Stöber, Georg. “To Compare the Incomparable: Textbook Images of the Other and Their Didactical Background.” In Indo-­ German Experts’ Meeting on Reviewing ‘India’s Image in Germany and Germany’s Image in India in High School Education’, A Report, 97–109. New Delhi: NCERT, 2001.

182  Basabi Khan Banerjee and Georg Stöber Stradling, Robert. Multiperspectivity in History Teaching: A Guide for Teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2004. Subramanian, A. et al. Social Science – X-­standard. Chennai: Tamil Nadu Textbook Corporation, 2011. TT Bureau. “Cash Recall Mystifies Economist.” The Telegraph, 6 January 2017. www.telegraphindia.com/india/cash-­recall-­mystifies-­economist/cid/1496253. Vosoughi, Soroush, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral. “The Spread of True and False News Online.” Science 359, no. 6380 (2018): 1146–1151. https://doi.org/10. 1126/science.aap9559. Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary. Boston, MA: Riverside Publishing Company, 1988. Yash Pal. Learning Without Burden. New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resources and Development, 1993. Yousuf, Sumaiya. “India Won ’62 War, Says MP Sanskrit Textbook.” Times of India, 10 August 2017. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/india-­ won-­62-­war-­says-­mp-­sanskrit-­textbook/articleshow/59995923.cms.

10 Business as Usual Feminist History in a Post-­Truth World Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson

Recent entreaties to acknowledge the extent of gender violence as a sociohistorical phenomenon often culminate in a key refrain: ‘believe women’.1 The MeToo movement has refocused attention on the pervasiveness of gender violence, especially after 2017. Its public outpouring of stories seemed to provide undeniable evidence of widespread experiences of sexual violence – except, of course, among those who denied the legitimacy of such testimonies.2 The need to believe victims and survivors emerges as equally central to the miniseries Unbelievable (2019), which focuses on the true story of a young woman whom the police forced to recant the rape she reported. The politics of truth, justice, and gender violence have also been at issue in other recent miniseries, from the tales of 19th-­century Canadian domestic servants in Alias Grace (2017) to the history of those falsely accused of rape in the Central Park jogger case of 1989 in When They See Us (2019). Our recent edited collection, Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives, attests to the realisation that although gender violence has reached what might be described as ‘a particularly significant historical moment’, disbelief continues to characterise the experiences of survivors, and countless cases continue to go unreported.3 Given the persistence of these historical and contemporary realities, it is notable that few recent analyses of the post-­truth phenomenon pay much heed to its consequences for feminism.4 This is because feminist analyses have, to some extent, always existed in something of a post-­truth environment in which evidence often held less power and credibility than personal emotions and systems of belief. Taking gender violence as its major case study, this chapter explores how feminist histories of gender violence have been beset by mythologising approaches before examining what this means in a contemporary feminist politics of truth and belief. The chapter concludes by considering how emerging feminist methodologies may produce new forms of evidence and how these are likely to fare in a post-­truth context.

184  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson

Gender Violence as Myth The ghost of a prostitute comes into a bar, inviting men to spend the night with her.   The next morning the men wake up, only to find themselves lying on a gravestone. – A ghost story with local variants across Zimbabwe.

Women’s experiences of gender violence have long been simultaneously revealed and denied. This violence haunts histories of the domestic and judicial realms, sometimes literally. Literary theorist Heather Harper argues that during the 18th century, when social mores were increasingly rendering domestic violence an ‘unspeakable’ topic, one genre of writing that continued to depict such violence were ghost stories. Invariably marketed as ‘authentic’ accounts, these tales depicted slain female apparitions returned to earth to seek vengeance on their male abusers.5 Today, ghost stories rooted in historical episodes of gender violence continue to be used to discuss such topics worldwide, both in countries where the impact of gender violence is increasingly acknowledged and in countries where it still carries an air of taboo.6 The realisation that ghost stories have traditionally functioned as one of the few forms of public history to deal with gender violence offers a metaphor for the challenges confronting feminist historians in the post-­ truth context: struggling to make the invisible visible against an engrained politics of belief – or disbelief – and constant attempts to reduce the topic to the status of mere myth. Described as a story or a system of belief that operates at both the unconscious level and the conscious level, myth functions as a narrative through which individuals and communities make sense of the world. In much contemporary parlance, myth holds the connotation of falsity, yet certain cultural ideals and norms transcend this framework and achieve the status of truth.7 Since ‘communicative acts’ such as storytelling have been used to narrate the past for much of human history, myths are often close cousins of histories.8 However, whereas history is the past as understood from surviving sources, myths are collective understandings of the past and present that have evolved from shared wisdom – things people believe and feel to be true. Post-­truth has been described as ‘a circumstance in which objective facts and the correspondence between reality and what is said about reality is less influential in shaping public opinion than emotions or personal beliefs’.9 In other words, it describes a world in which myths  – stories that resonate with the society producing them – are more important than the facts or histories that lie behind them. Philosopher Lee McIntyre suggests that one of the defining characteristics of a post-­truth worldview is that it subordinates and obfuscates facts to feelings so as to challenge truth itself, thereby asserting political dominance.10 The extent to which

Business as Usual 185 this is a purely contemporary phenomenon, however, can and has been questioned. ‘Capitalism, racism, consumerism, and patriarchy feed off each other and are mobilised largely through a notion of commonsense’, Henry A. Giroux and Debaditya Bhattacharya argue; such ideologies may be increasingly contested, yet there is little to indicate that they are losing ‘power as a pedagogical force’.11 Similarly, ‘fake news’ existed long before the rise of social media or 21st-­century demagoguery. When it comes to political history, fake news and its ilk have affected figures from Mark Anthony to George Washington.12 Media campaigns of disinformation also have a long lineage among opponents to feminist causes. Such tactics beset one of the most infamous rape cases in Australian history – the ‘Mount Rennie outrage’ of 1886 – in which 12 men were prosecuted and four were hanged for the brutal gang rape of a 16-­year-­old girl. The circumstances of the crime and the considerable evidence against many of those prosecuted (including eyewitness testimony) meant some newspapers supported the conviction and sentence. Others, however, like the Bulletin, were scandalised that men’s lives should be put in jeopardy on the evidence of a girl that they – without foundation – depicted as a prostitute and daughter of criminals.13 Whether referred to as myths or fake news, such victim blaming has been and remains a standard operating response to incidents of gender violence. Historically, the legal establishment has been highly suspicious of women’s propensity for truth telling. This was especially so with respect to women’s accounts of sexual violence, as judges habitually felt more willing to give men the benefit of the doubt than to imprison them unjustly. This is, in part, because the law itself is concerned not with ‘truth’ but rather with ‘legal truth’– that is, whether a proposition is valid or can be proven according to legal principles.14 While assumptions about women’s capacity to offer truthful accounts remained largely unchallenged for many centuries, feminist analyses in recent decades have helped reorient – or at least challenge – many of these assumptions in the public sphere. And yet one longitudinal study finds little difference in rape complainants’ courtroom experiences between the 1950s and the 21st century; cross-­examining lawyers continue to rely on rape myths and attempt to discredit a complainant’s plausibility, credibility, and reliability in order to instil reasonable doubt in the jury.15 Indeed, feminist historians argue that changing cultural and sexual mores have the potential to ‘reinforce stereotypes of female duplicity and deny women standing as believable victims of rape’.16 Similarly, domestic violence survivors have described the experience of entering the family law system as one of walking ‘through the looking glass’, as their abusers are able to construct alternate realities where they are the victims and the victim is the problem – and be believed by the courts.17 All sorts of myths have been and continue to be used to justify gender violence. Women, these myths suggest, can prevent sexual violence

186  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson by dressing conservatively or avoiding certain areas. Husbands cannot rape their own wives. Domestic violence victims can simply leave their abusers. Such ideas started to be challenged as far back as 1974, when criminologists Julia Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger first documented a range of myths about rape that operated in legal and social settings. This included the idea that men were actuated by ‘uncontrollable passions’, that victims were ‘asking for it’, and that women could prevent a rape if they really wanted to.18 Over three decades later, a 2009 study similarly identified 28 information myths that acted as powerful barriers to survivors of intimate partner violence accessing support services. This included the assumption that domestic violence affects only people from particular socioeconomic backgrounds, that abuse ‘counts’ only if it leaves physical marks, and that victims can be to blame for provoking the abuse.19 While these myths have undergone challenge in recent decades, countering such claims continues to be a central function of much feminist activism and scholarship. Looking into the past, the myths that underpin gender violence today are joined by a host of others. In 16th-­century Europe, it was believed that moles on women’s genitals were signs of witchcraft that justified hanging or burning.20 In 19th-­century Ireland, some community members saw no problem with a husband beating and burning the fairy ‘changeling’ who had assumed the form of his wife.21 In 20th-­century South Africa, accusations of women practising magic were sometimes seen as reasonable grounds for family violence.22 Examining such histories from a 21st-­century perspective merely reveals how far-­reaching and farcical the patriarchal mythologising of gender violence has been. It is notable too that mythological belief systems themselves have, historically, often served to justify or normalise such violence. This is particularly evident in relation to the European witch hunts of the early modern period, during which some 70%–80% of the approximately 45,000 to 60,000 individuals executed were women.23 Yet this is far lower than the estimate of 9 million victims initially suggested by suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, when her book Woman, Church and State (1893) emerged as the first work to situate witchcraft prosecutions as an act of gender violence.24 Early second-­wave feminist interpretations of witch hunting –  authored mostly outside of academia – were also led into historical inaccuracies as a result of their political agenda. Unfortunately, as witchcraft scholar Alison Rowlands recently discussed in detail, this fostered suspicion and antipathy towards feminism among many academic historians, and it continues to discourage them ‘from engaging with any helpful insights feminism offers into the gendering of witchcraft prosecutions’.25 It was only during the 1970s that feminists began to recover women’s history, a process which was far from uncontested.26 Indeed, when pioneer historian Gerda Lerner challenged historians to recognise and reconsider the ‘androcentric assumptions’ that had defined historical analysis before

Business as Usual 187 the 1970s, her call represented a radical departure from previous scholarship.27 Women’s history, in contradistinction from the subdiscipline of gender history, which emerged across the 1980s and 1990s, insisted that women’s lives and historical contributions have been overlooked and are worthy of recovery. What may make feminist historical analyses seem anti-­factual to the denizens of post-­truth, from Rush Limbaugh to men’s rights activists, is that its findings are grounded in such a reinterpretation of facts and received wisdom that they routinely result in a fundamental challenge to one’s worldview. But feminist scholars have themselves been concerned with countering claims that feminist analyses were untruthful or counterfactual. Developed across the 1980s, feminist standpoint theory became directly concerned with the nature of feminist truth claims. According to Susan Hekman, it ‘raises a central and unavoidable question for feminist theory: How do we justify the truth of the feminist claim that women have been and are oppressed?’28 To the degree that feminist historical analysis is rooted in a tradition in which the personal is also seen as political, it has long been concerned with those private realms dismissed not only as less important than the public stages on which ‘real’ histories focus but as less readily amenable to empirical analysis. Each of these methodological approaches has contributed to constructing the history of gender violence in all its variance. Without the development of feminist and antiracist frameworks, the historical experiences of the enslaved African American women who became the subjects of nonconsensual gynaecological medical experimentation during the 19th century would remain unknown.29 So too would the nature and extent of Jewish women’s experiences of sexual violence during the Holocaust.30 Feminist scholarship continues to acknowledge the pivotal influence of feminist activism, as it took decades to bring the enforced military prostitution and sexual slavery that the Japanese military perpetrated during the Pacific War to light.31 It is therefore pertinent to ask, is a feminist worldview – and thus feminist historical analysis – inherently at risk in the post-­truth era? Or, for feminist historians, is a ‘post-­truth’ world just business as usual?

Politics of Truth in Feminist History If you encounter Bella Sheephead, a shepherdess from Buttermere whose love hailed from a town nearby, her ghost will take your head. The couple married, but her love already has another wife; his punishment was light and Bella’s was death. Blameless in life and beheaded unjustly, her body was thrown into the lake. In a state of undeath she can neither rest nor find her head, and so takes the head of a sheep. Forever seeking her own head, she will exact revenge upon all who wronged her.   She can still be summoned by touching certain rocks, or pillars, or by uttering her name. – A ghost story with variants across West Cumbria, England.

188  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson A sense of incredulity towards feminist scholarship is far from new, given that feminist analyses have long been subject to considerable scepticism. Establishing how the politics of truth operate in feminist historical analysis has been an ongoing concern because of the sexism and racism that have long underpinned the status quo. These were the assumptions that scholars faced as a feminist worldview gradually emerged to gain scholarly influence. That said, feminist historians are not in a position to believe the assertions of historical actors, either women or men, unreservedly. This is because individuals have long been motivated to morph the truth for political purposes by factors such as racism and sexism in a manner that is not dissimilar to that which defines post-­truth politics. What is most important is to understand why this occurred, both at the individual level and at the collective level. The theory of intersectionality offers both an important corrective and implicit challenge in that it foregrounds the need for analysis which is grounded in the connections between gender, race, class, and myriad other factors. As much as myths about women’s capacity for truth telling have been used to justify gender violence, equally pernicious ideas about rapists have also gained the status of myth. Indeed, feminist historians have become attentive to white women’s complicity in constructing what Angela Y. Davis describes as the ‘myth of the black rapist’.32 This derived from the ‘myth of the Dark Continent’, in which the 19th-­century imperialist venture positioned itself to gradually replace African customs – in which accounts of unfamiliar cultural and sexual mores played no small part – with European notions of civilisation.33 Racialised ideas about black men’s propensity to violate white women began to develop during the colonial era across Africa and beyond. This myth assumed appellations such as the ‘black peril’ or ‘swart gevaar’ across southern Africa and the ‘negro beast’ in the United States, its meaning crystallising across the late 19th and early 20th centuries.34 Highly mutable, each of these myths had the capacity to morph and transform so as to suit alternative historical, national, and geographical contexts. Other settler colonies generated different but no-­less-­pernicious myths. In Australia, for example, Aboriginal men were vilified for their treatment of Aboriginal women, acts which colonists interpreted as including rape, prostitution, and violent bride capture or exchange. Yet Aboriginal men were otherwise emasculated and desexualised in colonial imaginings so as to legitimise what Patrick Brantlinger describes as extinction discourse, another myth which simultaneously anticipated and justified the genocidal disappearance of Indigenous peoples.35 Both ultimately served to condone and legitimate the actions of white ranchers during the late 19th century, who routinely abducted Aboriginal women and girls and exploited their sexual, economic, and reproductive labour on the frontier.36 Historian Estelle B. Freedman describes how the myth of the black rapist took on ever-­greater significance in the United States after the

Business as Usual 189 abolition of chattel slavery in 1865. Hereafter, white supremacists increasingly justified the lynching of black men to protect white women’s sexual purity. The result was to pathologise black men while routinely overlooking white men’s sexual crimes against women – most especially women of colour. However, white women’s testimony became equally central to the construction and perpetuation of racism. The veracity of women’s claims was at question during the decade-­long Scottsboro trials in which nine African Americans, between the ages of 13 and 20, were accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. One woman later recanted her testimony, and the other equivocated, yet the prosecution of the accused continued nonetheless. While this trial did begin to offer foundations for challenging racist misconceptions about African American men and rape, it confirmed existing ideas about women’s propensity to lie about sexual assault.37 Thus, it is possible to trace myths about the ‘black peril’ and ‘negro beast’ as providing the seeds for emergent myths about Mexican rapists or ‘bad hombres’ in the United States and about Islamic refugee and immigrant rapists in Europe. Yet, as historian Liz Conor argues, it is equally possible that the denigration of Aboriginal men’s sexuality in colonial discourse offered the foundations for contemporary reimaginings, in which relationships between Aboriginal women and white men have become romanticised in popular culture as examples of ‘forbidden love’.38 When myths collide in this way, although initially mobilised for different purposes, certain men experience the weight of one myth, whereas women continue to experience the weight of the other. All parties fail to benefit, and the status quo ultimately remains unchallenged. Regarding racial justice, a special type of amnesia is at play when making the claim that the 2010s constitutes a new and particular post-­truth era.39 Indeed, to consider post-­truth or fake news an emergent rather than an existing phenomenon, as Derek Ford points out, ‘is to claim that the domestic and international wars against First Nations, Black people, and people of color that were and are central to US democracy have been based on truthful politics and media’. That said, the definition of ‘post-­ truth history’ offered in the introduction to this volume does not frame post-­truth and truth as dichotomous but instead understands the former as being largely characterised by indifference to the latter. Nevertheless, it is imperative to challenge what Ford describes as zombie intellectualism, in which academics comment on but fail to participate directly in political struggles, functioning under what is itself a myth of academia: if only the theories, the political analyses, or the histories of intellectuals were understood by the masses, then systems of injustice would simply collapse.40 Reframing myths as well as historical accounts is part of the broader shifts in terminology surrounding gender violence. This has proven to be a particular challenge for feminist scholars. Surveys on violence

190  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson against women conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, were met by an antifeminist backlash and accusations that broad definitions of ‘abuse’ and ‘victimisation’ had served to inflate numbers to further feminist interests.41 Terminology becomes even more vexed when historians try to recover evidence of gender violence because the language for such behaviours were both different and constantly in flux. For example, before the rise of the term ‘domestic violence’ in the 1970s, the phrase ‘wife-­beating’ was far more commonplace. Other behaviours that are recognised as gender violence today, such as economic abuse, simply did not exist in the language of the past, even though such behaviours were historically present.42 The complexities of inculcating a rigorous culture of belief must be contextualised historically in order to achieve justice in cases of gender violence. The Problem of Feminist History in a Post-­Truth Era The ghost of a chambermaid is believed to haunt the Criterion Hotel on Quay Street in Rockhampton.   What happened to her? And why? Nobody knows . . . – A ghost story told in Central Queensland, Australia.

The edited collection Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-­Truth Society asks, ‘can we be more transparent about uncertainty in scientific evidence without undermining public understanding and trust?’43 The same can be asked of historical evidence. Indeed, a fundamental tenet of historical disciplinary practice is that the contestability of historical evidence means histories can be endlessly produced, debated, and revised, but the past itself remains, in L.P. Hartley’s well-­known phrase, a foreign country that can never be fully known. Historians set themselves the impossible task of bringing the ghosts of the past to life while acknowledging that such attempts will inevitably remain incomplete, ephemeral, and conditional. In the current political climate, even the most empirical forms of evidence can be regarded with scepticism. Ed Humpherson points out that the post-­truth climate of distrust towards evidence and facts undermines public confidence in the usefulness of statistics, even those produced by experts or official bodies. Such scepticism, Humpherson further points out, may not be entirely unwarranted, because in today’s data-­ rich world, it has become easier than ever ‘to select and highlight preferred data to suit a particular narrative’.44 Often, however, it is not statistics themselves that are flawed but how they are used. When communicating statistical evidence, David Spiegelhalter notes, there seems to be an ‘irresistible tendency to produce a simplifying narrative’, blunting its subtle meanings or exaggerating its significance.45 Early feminist scholars concerned themselves with questioning such simplistic narratives. Shulamit Reinharz observes that feminist research

Business as Usual 191 has long been symbiotic with qualitative approaches, given that it originated in a ‘critical distrust of earlier non-­feminist research’, which was often quantitative in approach. To some extent, though, Reinharz suggests that ‘the fusion of “qualitative” and “feminist” is more myth than reality’.46 Many early feminist histories of the family  – and family violence – made particular use of quantitative evidence.47 Nevertheless, a 2011 study that datamined half a million abstracts from two key women’s history journals found that such research was overwhelmingly qualitative, calling for the expansions of quantitative approaches.48 Not limited to history, this so-­called feminist antipathy towards quantitative methods has also been identified as an issue in sociological research.49 Since the late 1990s, beginning with the work of Ann Oakley, there have been efforts to rehabilitate quantitative methods within feminist research.50 One particular area where calls for greater use of quantitative approaches among feminist researchers have emerged is gender violence.51 When economic historian Jo Guldi and intellectual historian David Armitage published The History Manifesto in 2014, available open access via Cambridge University Press, the book emerged as both a provocation and a call to arms for historians. It proclaimed that the prominent models of historical methodology developed over the past 50 years were fundamentally flawed; one implication was that historians had failed to steer public debate, because they had not spoken ‘truth to power’. According to the authors, this had occurred as a result of increasing disciplinary subject specialisation and a narrowing of temporal focus that discouraged long-­term thinking or real-­world engagement. A  return to grand narratives and longue durée histories that examine changes in large-­scale structures and institutions, not across mere decades but across the span of centuries, Guildi and Armitage observed, had begun to take place as a result of the rise of big data and historical digitisation projects.52 The History Manifesto attracted much commentary and some praise but also criticisms. Among the problems found with Guildi and Armitage’s thesis was that it failed to acknowledge the value of subdiscipline specialisation in terms of expanding history beyond the realm of politics, international relations, and intellectual life to transformations in individual experience through the lens of gender, race, class, family, sexuality, and emotions.53 Yet it also illuminates the challenges and opportunities that the current trends towards big data and digitisation might present to feminist analyses. Guildi and Armitage cite digitisation initiatives such as the Old Bailey Online as examples of big data projects with the potential to transform public understandings of how the present was reached via collaborative research on the evolution of law and society. This push towards big data in criminal justice history has grown only more pronounced since 2014, encouraging the production of microhistories that explore the intersections of gender, family, and violence.54

192  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson Digital history is another area where there are growing calls for feminist methodological approaches. Despite having strong voices in some areas, such as digital pedagogy, women as a whole remain underrepresented in digital humanities scholarship.55 The voices of women of colour  – from either the Global North or the Global South  – are even rarer. This intersectional invisibility extends to source digitisation, with material containing the voices of low-­income black women far less likely to be part of big data corpuses than the voices of privileged white men.56 Calling for greater reflexive feminist practice in digital methods, Koen Leurs notes that there tends to be two simplistic narratives that impede the development of such approaches: ‘Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide’. One challenge for feminists, as Leurs sees it, is that ‘[d]ata-­ driven research often values aggregated, seemingly “natural” volunteered data over the complexity of individual human subjectivity and meaning-­making’.57 One of the benefits of big data, however, is that they enable the identification of smaller subsets of data related to women, minorities, and individuals or cases who might be considered statistical outliers but whose experiences can be analysed at a scale not possible before.58 Case study approaches are valuable precisely because they offer a window into wider trends, processes, or events while imbuing these with complexities and individual nuances rather than reducing them to simplistic narratives. The editorial for a 2012 special issue of the Journal of Women’s History dedicated to life histories noted that each was deliberately chosen to offer a window into larger issues of the societies in which the women moved.59 All of this is to suggest that although feminist historical analysis may be inherently at risk in a post-­truth framework, it is still an area of strength and growth, in which traditional feminist approaches are being successfully blended with contemporary quantitative and digital methods. The politics of believing women maintains a complicated relationship with gendered approaches to truth and post-­truth. Indeed, gender cannot be the only factor through which to understand gender violence. Yet these perspectives can be productively paired with statistical approaches to feminist history to directly counteract post-­truth claims. New statistical approaches are certainly emerging with the specific aim of combatting fake news; for example, a benchmark dataset has been made publicly available to facilitate fake news detection.60 Such a tool, however, is not positioned to counteract the sexism, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia that already characterises so much news reporting and interpretation. Ghost stories operated historically as a dominant genre through which gender violence could find cultural expression, becoming myths that would transform through each retelling yet nonetheless conveying what were believed to be truths about the nature and extent of gender violence.

Business as Usual 193 The Zimbabwean oral tradition illuminates how gender violence remains both revealed and denied; Bella Sheephead of West Cumbria conjures a sense of violent rage in response to gendered injustice; and the haunting of the Criterion Hotel evokes the degree to which these experiences remain obscured. Each oral tradition asserts that violated women should be believed. But if ghost stories already operate in the realm of post-­ truth, historians can consider the truths about gender violence that these oral traditions reveal without needing to resort to such mythic, ghostly hauntings. Feminist historical analysis is already poised to embrace these insights and pair it with rigorous statistical analysis and the possibilities of big data to combat the scepticism of the post-­truth era.

Acknowledgements Our thanks go to Tawanda V. Chambwe, Lotti Nkomo, Duncan Money, Janet Stevenson, and Noreen Rossall for sharing their recollections of ghostly oral traditions.

Notes 1. Hesse, “Do We Really ‘Believe Women’? 2. See Fileborn and Loney-­Howes, #MeToo. 3. Piper and Stevenson, Gender Violence in Australia, ix. 4. E.g. McComiskey, Post-­Truth Rhetoric; McIntyre, Post-­Truth; Andina and Condello, Post-­Truth. 5. Harper, “Matchless Sufferings.” 6. Petersen, “Breaking Silences and Revealing Ghosts.” 7. Segal, Myth, 102. 8. Saint-­Laurent and Obradović, “Uses of the Past,” 6. 9. Condello, “After the Ordeal,” 21. 10. McIntyre, Post-­Truth, xiv, 1. 11. Giroux and Bhattacharya, “Anti-­Politics and the Scourge of Authoritarianism,” 504. 12. Watson, “Information Literacy in a Fake/False News World,” 93–96. 13. Peers, What No Man Had Ever Done Before. . . . 14. Mason, “Idealism, Empiricism, Pluralism, Law,” 93. 15. Zydervelt et  al., “Lawyers’ Strategies for Cross-­ Examining Rape Complainants.” 16. Freedman, Redefining Rape, 229. 17. Hill, See What You Made Me Do, 189. 18. Schwendinger and Schwendinger, “Rape Myths.” 19. Westbrook, “Information Myths and Intimate Partner Violence.” 20. Darr, Marks of an Absolute Witch. 21. Bourke, “Reading a Woman’s Death.” 22. Redding, “Deaths in the Family.” 23. Rowlands, “Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe,” 2. 24. Corey, “Matilda Joslyn Gage.” 25. Rowlands, “Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe,” 3. 26. Bennett, History Matters. 27. Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past, xiv.

194  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson 8. Hekman, “Truth and Method.” 2 29. Owens, Medical Bondage: Race. 30. Hedgepeth and Saidel, Sexual Violence; Waxman, Women in the Holocaust. 31. Crozier-­De Rosa and Mackie, Remembering Women’s Activism, Chapter 4. 32. Davis, Women, Race & Class, Chapter 11. 33. Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans.” 34. McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue; Feimster, Southern Horrors. 35. See Konishi, The Aboriginal Male; Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings. Our thanks to Liz Conor for her advice about this point. 36. Conor, “The ‘Drover’s Boy,” 95–113. 37. Freedman, Redefining Rape, Chapter 13. 38. Conor, “The ‘Drover’s Boy,” 95–98. 39. Mejia et al., “White Lies.” 40. Ford, Politics and Pedagogy, 7, 9. 41. Crocker, “Counting Woman Abuse.” 42. Piper, “Understanding Economic Abuse as Domestic Violence.” 43. van der Linden and Löfstedt, Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-­Truth Society, 3. 44. Humpherson, “Trustworthiness, Quality, and Value,” 45. 45. Spiegelhalter, “Trust in Numbers,” 12. 46. Reinharz, “Neglected Voices and Excessive Demands,” 69. 47. Allen, Sex and Secrets; Grimshaw, “Women and the Family in Australian History,” 37–52. 48. Block and Newman, “What, Where, When, and Sometimes Why.” 49. Cohen et al., “The Methodological Impact of Feminism.” 50. Hughes and Cohen, “Feminists Really Do Count.” 51. Hester et al., “Feminist Epistemology.” 52. Guldi and Armitage, The History Manifesto. 53. Cohen and Mandler, “AHR Exchange: On The History Manifesto.” 54. Rogers, “Making Their Mark”; Williamson, “The Bonnie and Clyde of the Blackout”; Johnston et al., “I Am Afraid She Is Perfectly Responsible for Her Actions.” 55. Tonya Howe, “WWABD? Intersectional Futures in Digital History,” 2. 56. Brown et al., “Mechanized Margin to Digitised Center.” 57. Leurs, “Feminist Data Studies,” 130, 141. 58. Welles, “On Minorities and Outliers,” 1–2. 59. Quataert and Wheeler, “Editorial Note,” 7–12. 60. Wang, “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire.”

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Business as Usual 195 Brantlinger, Patrick. Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. ———. “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent.” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 166–203. Brown, Nicole M., Ruby Mendenhall, Michael L. Black, Mark Van Moer, Assata Zerai, and Karen Flynn. “Mechanized Margin to Digitised Center: Black Feminism’s Contributions to Combatting Erasure within the Digital Humanities.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10, no. 1 (2016): 110–125. Cohen, Deborah, and Peter Mandler. “AHR Exchange: On The History Manifesto.” American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015): 530–542. Cohen, Rachel Lara, Christina Hughes, and Richard Lampard. “The Methodological Impact of Feminism: A Troubling Issue for Sociology?” Sociology 45, no. 4 (2011): 570–586. Condello, Angela. “After the Ordeal: Law and the Age of Post-­Truth.” in Post-­ Truth, Philosophy and Law, edited by, Tiziana Andina and Angela Condello. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Conor, Liz. “The ‘Drover’s Boy’ and Indigenous Women’s Unthinkable Consent.” In Gender Violence in Australia, edited by, Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2019. Corey, Mary E. “Matilda Joslyn Gage: A Nineteenth-­Century Women’s Rights Historian Looks at Witchcraft.” OAH Magazine of History (2003): 51–49. Crocker, Diane. “Counting Woman Abuse: A Cautionary Tale of Two Surveys.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13, no. 3 (2010): 265–275. Crozier-­De Rosa, Sharon, and Vera C. Mackie. Remembering Women’s Activism. Oxon: Routledge, 2019. Darr, Orna Alvagon. Marks of an Absolute Witch: Evidentiary Dilemmas in Early Modern England. London; New York: Routledge, 2016. Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. London: The Women’s Press, 1981. Feimster, Crystal N. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Fileborn, Bianca, and Rachel Loney-­Howes, eds. #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Ford, Derek. Politics and Pedagogy in the “Post-­Truth” Era: Insurgent Philosophy and Praxis. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Freedman, Estelle B. Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. Giroux, Henry A., and Debaditya Bhattacharya. “Anti-­Politics and the Scourge of Authoritarianism.” Social Identities 23, no. 5 (2017): 503–517. Grimshaw, Patricia. “Women and the Family in Australian History.” In Women, Class and History: Feminist Perspectives on Australia 1788–1978, edited by, Elizabeth Windschuttle, 37–52. Melbourne: Fontana Books, 1980. Guldi, Jo, and David Armitage. The History Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Harper, Heather. “ ‘Matchless Sufferings’: Intimate Violence in the Early Modern Apparition Narratives of Daniel Defoe and Elizabeth Boyd.” Women’s Writing 16, no. 3 (2009): 425–444.

196  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson Hedgepeth, Sonja M., and Rochelle G. Saidel, eds. Sexual Violence against Jewish Women During the Holocaust. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2010. Hekman, Susan. “Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22, no. 2 (1997): 341–365. Hesse, Monica. “Do We Really ‘Believe Women’? How the Kavanaugh Accusation Will Put a Slogan to the Test,” Washington Post, 17 September  2018. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/do-­w e-­r eally-­b elieve-­w omen-­ how-­t he-­k avanaugh-­a ccusation-­w ill-­p ut-­a -­s logan-­t o-­t he-­t est/2018/09/16/ c8a7405e-­b9f2–11e8-­a8aa-­860695e7f3fc_story.html. Hester, Marianne, Catherine Donovan, and Eldin Fahmy. “Feminist Epistemology and the Politics of Method: Surveying Same Sex Domestic Violence.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13, no. 3 (2010): 251–263. Hill, Jess. See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse. Carlton: Black Inc., 2019. Howe, Tonya. “WWABD? Intersectional Futures in Digital History.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830 7, no. 2 (2017): 1–4. Hughes, Christina, and Rachel Lara Cohen. “Feminists Really Do Count: The Complexity of Feminist Methodologies.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13, no. 3 (2010): 189–196. Humpherson, Ed. “Trustworthiness, Quality, and Value: The Regulation of Official Statistics in a Post-­Truth Age.” in Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-­Truth Society, edited by Sander van der Linden and Ragnar E. Löfstedt. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019. Johnston, Helen, Barry Godfrey, and Jo Turner. “ ‘I Am Afraid She Is Perfectly Responsible for Her Actions and Is Simply Wicked’: Reconstructing the Criminal Career of Julia Hyland.” In Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-­ Studies in the History of Crime, edited by Anne-­Marie Kilday and David Nash, 227–250. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Konishi, Shino. The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World. London: Routledge, 2015. Lerner, Gerda. The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Leurs, Koen. “Feminist Data Studies: Using Digital Methods for Ethical, Reflexive and Situated Socio-­ Cultural Research.” Feminist Review 115 (2017): 130–154. Linden, Sander van der and Ragnar E. Löfstedt, eds. Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-­Truth Society. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019. Loksee Leung, Stephanie Miedema, Xian Warner, Sarah Homan, and Emma Fulu. “Making Feminism Count: Integrating Feminist Research Principles in Large-Scale Quantitative Research on Violence against Women and Girls.” Gender & Development 27, no. 3 (2019): 427–47. Mason, Luke. “Idealism, Empiricism, Pluralism, Law.” In Post-­Truth, Philosophy and Law, edited by Tiziana Andina and Angela Condello. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. McComiskey, Bruce. Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017. McCulloch, Jock. Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. McIntyre, Lee. Post-­Truth. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2018.

Business as Usual 197 Mejia, Robert, Kay Beckermann, and Curtis Sullivan. “White Lies: A Racial History of the (Post) Truth.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 2 (2018): 109–126. Owens, Deirdre Cooper. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017. Peers, Juliet. What No Man Had Ever Done Before. . . . Malvern: Dawn Revival Press, 1992. Petersen, Amanda L. “Breaking Silences and Revealing Ghosts: Spectral Moments of Gendered Violence in Mexico.” Interdisciplinary Mexico 8, no. 16 (2019): 22–40. Piper, Alana. “Understanding Economic Abuse as Domestic Violence.” In Gender Violence in Australia, edited by Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2019. Piper, Alana, and Ana Stevenson, eds. Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2019. Quataert, Jean, and Leigh Ann Wheeler. “Editorial Note: Individual Lives: Windows on Women’s History.” Journal of Women’s History 24, no. 3 (2012): 7–12. Redding, Sean. “Deaths in the Family: Domestic Violence, Witchcraft Accusations and Political Militancy in Transkei, South Africa, 1904–1965.” Journal of Southern African Studies 30, no. 3 (2004): 519–538. Reinharz, Shulamit. “Neglected Voices and Excessive Demands in Feminist Research.” Qualitative Sociology 16, no. 1 (1993): 69–76. Rogers, Helen. “Making Their Mark: Young Offenders’ Life Histories and Social Networks.” In Law, Crime and Deviance Since 1700: Micro-­Studies in the History of Crime, edited by Anne-­Marie Kilday and David Nash, 227–250. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Rowlands, Alison. “Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe.” In The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, edited by Brian P. Levack, 1–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Saint-­Laurent, Constance, and Sandra Obradović. “Uses of the Past: History as a Resource for the Present.” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 53, no. 1 (2019): 1–13. Schwendinger, Julia R., and Herman Schwendinger. “Rape Myths: In Legal, Theoretical, and Everyday Practice.” Crime and Social Justice, no. 1 (1974): 18–26. Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Spiegelhalter, David J. “Trust in Numbers.” In Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-­ Truth Society, edited by Sander van der Linden and Ragnar E. Löfstedt. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019. Wang, William Yang. “ ‘Liar, Liar Pants on Fire’: A New Benchmark Dataset for Fake News Detection.” Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2: Short Papers (2017): 422–426. Watson, Carol A. “Information Literacy in a Fake/False News World: An Overview of the Characteristics of Fake News and Its Historical Development.” International Journal of Legal Information 46, no. 2 (2018): 93–96. Waxman, Zoë. Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

198  Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson Welles, Brooke Foucault. “On Minorities and Outliers: The Case for Making Big Data Small.” Big Data & Society 1, no. 1 (2014): 1–2. Westbrook, Lynn. “Information Myths and Intimate Partner Violence: Sources, Contexts, and Consequences.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 4 (2009): 826–836. Williamson, Clifford. “The Bonnie and Clyde of the Blackout: The Short Criminal Careers of Gustav Hulten and Elizabeth Jones.” In Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-­Studies in the History of Crime, edited by Anne-­Marie Kilday and David Nash, 227–250. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Zydervelt, Sarah, Rachel Zajac, Andy Kaladelfos, and Nina Westera. “Lawyers’ Strategies for Cross-­Examining Rape Complainants: Have We Moved Beyond the 1950s?” British Journal of Criminology 57, no. 3 (2016): 551–569.

11 ‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ Myths About Moriori and Denials of Indigeneity in New Zealand André Brett ‘The Māori weren’t even the first people in New Zealand’, American comedian Jim Gaffigan tells a laughing audience in his 2019 Amazon Prime special Quality Time. ‘The first people in New Zealand were the Moriori, and then the Māori came and ate them’. He adds, with a flourish: ‘I’m not even making that up!’ Almost everything in Gaffigan’s riff about the Moriori is incorrect. He might not be ‘making that up’ in the sense that he did not confect it himself, but he is peddling an inaccurate and toxic claim. Moriori are the indigenous inhabitants of the small South Pacific archipelago Rēkohu (often called the Chatham Islands), and the false narrative that they were forced from New Zealand by Māori cannibals has gone international just as it finally wanes domestically. Generations of New Zealanders learned this myth at school even after it was discredited in academic circles; now Moriori are a punchline for an overseas comic. In this chapter, I investigate two prominent myths told about Moriori history  – one a long-­ standing denial of Māori indigeneity, the other a recent appropriation based on clash-­of-­civilisations rhetoric and environmental determinism. I  show how current disinformation has a long history and that these myths are resilient, their proponents able to cherry-­pick from more accurate research. Facts alone cannot defeat post-­truth narratives. There is no longer debate among scholars that the first people to inhabit New Zealand were East Polynesians, who became Māori. This has not, however, stopped competing claims from proliferating. Kerry Howe traces them in The Quest for Origins, suggesting a categorisation of mainstream, alternative, and extreme.1 Some extreme ideas suggest that Celts, Phoenicians, and Tamils settled New Zealand first; these are often presented as narratives suppressed by academics with vested interests in Māori being indigenous.2 Moriori, however, were presented as a pre-­Māori people in mainstream settings from the 1910s, a depiction that persisted for generations even though scholars repudiated it from 1923. As will be seen later on, it was not until the 1980s that much of the New Zealand public encountered an accurate narrative. Most significant is

200  André Brett Michael King’s Moriori: A People Rediscovered, today the standard work on Moriori history and culture. There are few publications by scholars who are Moriori. Maui Solomon (Horomona) stands out: a barrister and Moriori community leader, he has published in popular and scholarly outlets, often in collaboration with archaeologist Susan Thorpe. Much important work by other scholars, usually Pākehā (New Zealand Europeans), is unpublished: two of the most important studies of Moriori representations are postgraduate theses by Peter Clayworth and Jacinta Blank. It is an unfortunate fact of New Zealand history as a discipline that significant research in theses often goes unpublished. There is no single ‘Moriori myth’, even if the term is used regularly. Blank avoids the term because ‘it does not capture the complexity of ideas held by those influenced by the work of the two ethnologists’, S. Percy Smith and Elsdon Best, who popularised false claims about Moriori origins. She prefers ‘stories’. I consider it sufficient to clarify that I am discussing two of the most persistent myths, which I dub the ‘pre-­Māori myth’ and the ‘alt-­right myth’. The pre-­Māori myth is that Moriori were autochthonous to mainland New Zealand and exterminated by Māori colonisers, a myth used to deny Māori indigeneity. The alt-­right myth is that the experience of the Moriori proves the folly of pacifism, a myth that misappropriates specific details of Moriori history to prosecute political arguments overseas. I credit historian and blogger Scott Hamilton for a thoughtful, provocative Twitter thread that encouraged me to think about the diversity of mythmaking about Moriori. He counts at least five versions of the myth, which he describes as ‘an evil & ingenious virus . . . [that] is now infecting people across the globe’.3 Hamilton’s microblogging is a positive example of historical truth telling in our digital age. But the global spread of knowledge and ideas has not been an unalloyed good for Moriori, and post-­truth narratives have a long history. Some terms I use will be unfamiliar to international readers. The organised colonisation of New Zealand began when Britain’s representatives signed the Treaty of Waitangi with Māori chiefs on 6 February  1840. I use ‘Pākehā’ for New Zealand Europeans and their ancestors, although the term is mildly anachronistic for 19th-­century individuals, who, if they used it, usually did so only to compare themselves to Māori. Te reo Māori and re Moriori are the Māori and Moriori languages. ‘Iwi’ (‘imi’ in re Moriori) refers to a tribe; an iwi comprises hapū, subtribes, within which are ‘whānau’ (‘hunau’), extended families. ‘Whakapapa’ (‘hokopapa’) refers to a framework of genealogy and traditional knowledge that connects all things in the terrestrial and spiritual worlds. To indicate membership of a group, such as the Tūhoe iwi, a person will whakapapa to Tūhoe. This possesses broader connotations than ‘descend from’ does in English; it is an active process where a person demonstrates their relationship to a community and the landscape. The macron above some

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 201 letters indicates long vowels; macrons became commonplace only in the 2010s and quotations without them are unmodified. Māori words are unchanged whether singular or plural, and writers outside New Zealand should take care to not use ‘Maoris’. Further words in te reo Māori and re Moriori are translated at first usage. It is important to use these terms not only because English translations do not capture their full meaning but also to reflect the mana (status and prestige) of both languages as taonga (cultural treasures).

Who Are the Moriori? To discuss myths about Moriori and how their history is misappropriated by bad-­faith actors, it is essential to be clear on who Moriori are and to outline the current scholarly consensus about their history. Moriori are the indigenous inhabitants of Rēkohu, located 870 kilometres east of New Zealand’s South Island. This windswept archipelago is named the Chatham Islands in English and Wharekauri in te reo Māori, but I prefer the indigenous appellation and its evocative meaning of ‘misty skies’. Moriori hokopapa describes a dual colonisation, first by Rongomaiwhenua from East Polynesia and then at least two subsequent migrations from mainland New Zealand. The standard view of historians and archaeologists is that Moriori are descended from or closely related to the same East Polynesians who became Māori in New Zealand. The date of arrival on Rēkohu is uncertain: a recent settlement between the New Zealand government and Moriori includes an agreed narrative that locates this event between 1000 and 1400, while some scholars suggest that it might have occurred as late as 1600.4 The landmark volume Tangata Whenua notes that no cultural remains on Rēkohu have been radiocarbon dated to before approximately 1500, but the style of adzes and ornaments suggests earlier settlement. The Māori and Moriori languages possess idiosyncrasies not present in other Tahitic languages, which indicates that some migration occurred between mainland New Zealand and Rēkohu rather than that all Moriori arrived directly from East Polynesia.5 One major divergence between Māori culture and Moriori culture is the Moriori attitude to violence. Moriori observe Nunuku’s law, a tradition of nonviolence based on the injunction of an ancestor, Nunuku-­ whenua, sickened by fighting between two Moriori groups. He ordered the destruction of weapons and proclaimed that Moriori would no longer engage in lethal violence but resolve all disputes with ritual combat that ended at the first sign of abrasion or blood. To ensure his command was kept, he established a curse: ‘May your bowels rot the day you disobey!’6 This was no simple moral precept but a practical adaptation: large-­ scale conflict could destabilise the entire population on an archipelago with limited resources. Moriori culture retained war chants and assertive behaviour, but successive generations upheld Nunuku’s command.

202  André Brett Moriori observed a complex system of tapu (religious prohibitions, sacred restrictions, and supernatural conditions) that guided all daily activity. Māori and other Polynesian societies have similar systems of tapu, but the extent that it permeated Moriori life prompted Māori observers to consider them ‘a very tapu people’.7 Nunuku-­whenua’s injunction was a defining quality. Māori, by contrast, had sophisticated combat strategies; one military historian remarks that ‘[t]he scale of Māori military engineering is staggering’.8 Pākehā recognised Māori warfare as similar to their own; Nunuku’s law was the opposite, and Māori and Pākehā interpreted Moriori nonviolence as cowardice or weakness. In 1791, Moriori had their first contact with outsiders for centuries. At this time, they comprised nine tribes who inhabited specific regions on the two largest islands, known today as Chatham and Pitt.9 Their population at contact is typically approximated as 2000, although this is contested. Rhys Richards considers it a bare minimum that implies too small a decline from disease in the next four decades; Solomon and Thorpe contend that even 2500 is a low estimate. Atholl Anderson, however, suggests it is too high because it would entail a population density that he considers implausible.10 Whatever the figure, Moriori and Europeans met on 29 November 1791. The Chatham, a British brig on George Vancouver’s voyage of exploration to Pacific North America, landed at Rēkohu after being blown off course. The encounter was mostly peaceful but ended in confusion and tragedy when a member of the Chatham’s crew shot a Moriori man, Tamakaroro, for reasons that remain unclear.11 A subsequent Moriori council concluded the visitors were not an existential threat and resolved to greet future newcomers peacefully. Rēkohu became known for its unthreatening inhabitants. Sealers, then whalers and other traders, brought the islands into the economy of Britain’s hazy imperial fringe, even though Britain did not annex Rēkohu to New Zealand until 1842. Secrecy shrouded this activity, both to avoid revealing a new sealing ground to rivals and because, for the first decades of the New South Wales colony, it was illegal for colonial vessels to operate in waters as far south as Rēkohu. This activity induced deleterious environmental change as seal numbers plummeted. Moriori had to change their diet, and without sealskin cloaks, they were forced to make clothing from materials inferior in quality and warmth.12 Introduced diseases, in an outcome too familiar to historians of colonialism, affected Moriori severely. At least one-­sixth of the population (approximately 350) died from influenza, measles, and syphilis before 1835. Some Moriori oral accounts collected in the 1890s claim up to 1600 deaths, but other Moriori derided this as exaggerated.13 Some visitors inflicted gratuitous violence: a gang of convicts seized the Cyprus in Van Diemen’s Land in August  1829 and plundered a Moriori village on their way towards Tahiti.14 But none of these calamities suggested that Moriori lifeways were in mortal threat. The economy and environment were

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 203 changing, but Moriori were adaptive and resilient, learning new skills and reviving old ones.

The Events of 1835 and Their Aftermath Moriori self-­ determination ended suddenly in late 1835. Numerous Māori visited Rēkohu from the 1800s, usually on sealing and whaling ships. One visitor, Matioro of the Ngāti Mutunga iwi, arrived on a sealing vessel in 1833. He quizzed Moriori on their culture and tested their commitment to nonviolence. First, Matioro profaned a sacred location; when this did not provoke violence, he pursued a group of Moriori on trumped-­up charges of ‘vandalism’, and they fled instead of resisting.15 Matioro stayed on Rēkohu, but compatriots from Ngāti Mutunga and the allied iwi Ngāti Tama informed relatives in New Zealand that Moriori were not warlike. This news was valuable: both iwi had been ousted from northern Taranaki by better-­armed rivals and led an uneasy and impoverished existence among allies in the Wellington region. Roughly nine hundred individuals of the two iwi resolved to relocate to Rēkohu and in November  1835 compelled the crew of the Sydney-­based brig Rodney to carry them there. I have elsewhere described the ensuing events as genocide, arguing that Moriori history deepens and complicates the concept of colonial genocide.16 Typically, this concept is understood as colonisers perpetrating violence against indigenous peoples, but Rēkohu is an example of the colonial encounter underpinning violence between indigenous groups. British traders provided the firearms that defined the war in which Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama were expelled from Taranaki; colonial mobility and technology allowed the iwi to learn of and reach Rēkohu; European ideas of racial hierarchy informed their attitudes towards Moriori. Roughly three hundred Moriori died as the two iwi ritually claimed Rēkohu; the rest were enslaved, and reproduction was prohibited. In conflict between Māori, rival iwi were not perceived as subhuman and intermarriage was common, but Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama mapped British tropes of supposed Aboriginal Australian inferiority onto Moriori. The word ‘blackfella’ for Aboriginal Australians became ‘paraiwhara’ on Rēkohu. Pākehā visitors in the 1840s such as trader Walter Brodie and the bishop of New Zealand, George Selwyn, attested to the derogatory and othering qualities of ‘paraiwhara’.17 Hazel Petrie emphasises in her study of Māori slavery the significance of this word: te reo Māori has a broad vocabulary to connote status, yet Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama used a new colonial word to relegate Moriori to a status lower than that described by any existing term.18 Both iwi held Moriori as hereditary slaves, a practice contrary to Māori and Moriori traditions, and the Moriori population declined rapidly from abuse, disease, overwork, starvation, prohibitions on reproduction, and what Moriori called

204  André Brett despair.19 Although Britain annexed Rēkohu to New Zealand in 1842, colonial authorities appointed no official to the islands until 1855, and slavery endured until 1863, by which point only 101 Moriori were alive. Their numbers dwindled into the 20th century. Moriori, it must be emphasised, did not become extinct. This claim rests on a European fetish for ‘blood’: Tame Horomona Rehe, often anglicised as Tommy Solomon, was the last known ‘full-­blooded’ Moriori. Newspapers proclaimed his death in 1933 as the ‘passing of a race’.20 Some described Horomona as ‘the last of the native race that was the predecessor of the Maori in New Zealand’. Horomona, per this account, was ‘last’ because Moriori had died or been ‘gradually absorbed by intermarriage’ into other groups.21 Pākehā fetishised ‘pure blood’ in subject peoples, often in a manner akin to animal breeding. Take a 1907 account of Horomona as ‘the youngest pure-­bred Moriori man, [who] could find no pure-­bred woman  .  .  .  [another unnamed] Moriori married a half-­ bred or three-­quarter bred woman’.22 It is inessential to have ancestors solely of one ethnic community in order to hokopapa to it, and it is a failure of imagination to suggest that a person cannot hokopapa to multiple communities. So, Tame Horomona Rehe was not the last Moriori: this chapter has already introduced one of the many Moriori alive today, his grandson Maui Solomon.23 Various estimates place the current Moriori population between 740 and 3500, and obituaries for them as a people were premature.

Moriori Myths René Lemarchand, one of the foremost international researchers on genocide, is unambiguous about the effects of failing to remember atrocities accurately: ‘That so many of these abominations are consigned to oblivion’, he writes, ‘is not just happenstance’. Historical circumstances, moral indifference, and the actions of state authorities all contribute, but Lermarchand identifies as most important ‘the combination of denial and myth-­making surrounding the debate about “what really happened” ’.24 The killing of Moriori has been treated as a sideshow to questions about the origins of the Māori race. When New Zealanders refer to ‘the Moriori myth’, they usually mean the pre-­Māori myth. There are numerous variations on the claim that Moriori were a pre-­Māori people, but at its core, this myth asserts that Moriori, a people of supposedly inferior Melanesian origin, inhabited mainland New Zealand when Māori arrived from Polynesia. The myth depicts Māori as colonisers who invaded and killed Moriori, a rare few of whom escaped to Rēkohu. Some variations suggest that Moriori also survived in Te Urewera, an isolated inland region of the North Island between Rotorua and Gisborne, and are the ancestors of Tūhoe. Many tellings not only attribute bloodthirsty violence to Māori but also

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 205 emphasise cannibalism: Moriori were not ‘killed’; they were ‘eaten’. For the myth to have its greatest effect, as Gaffigan’s comedy routine shows, the savagery must be both extreme and complete. Moriori do not simply fail to repel a Māori invasion; Māori consume them utterly. New Zealand’s precolonial history intrigued many Victorian-­ era Pākehā. Early accounts describe Moriori as similar to Māori. Ernest Dieffenbach wrote unambiguously in 1840 that Moriori are a Polynesian people, and Alexander Shand in 1885 held ‘little doubt’ of their shared origins with Māori.25 Shand, a Rēkohu resident, collected Moriori traditions in collaboration with an esteemed elder and survivor of the 1835 invasion, Hirawanu Tapu. Shand’s publications are, despite the filter of his interpretations, the most significant record of how Moriori in the 19th century understood their culture. Two respected ethnologists, S. Percy Smith and Elsdon Best, swept aside this accurate depiction in the 1910s.26 Best and Smith collected Māori oral traditions in the belief that they could form a coherent and accurate chronological narrative once collated and shorn of magical or fantastical elements. Smith obtained a document purporting to tell authentic, hidden Māori traditions, and Peter Clayworth explains that both men accepted its veracity on account of the ostensibly ancient quality of its narrative and that it filled important gaps in their knowledge.27 They could, therefore, rationalise the deprecation of contradictory traditions and reject the research of others, even that of Smith’s friend Shand. Smith and Best possessed strong networks to disseminate their views, and other scholars either lacked the authority and connections for their critiques to be influential or held such respect for Smith and Best that they did not publicise disagreements until both men died. Henry Skinner introduced his critique by emphasising how much it pained him to do so – he and his father were close to Smith.28 Skinner, the first New Zealand ethnologist with university training, performed fieldwork on Rēkohu and dismissed the pre-­Māori myth in The Morioris of Chatham Islands, published in 1923. Subsequent research has confirmed much of Skinner’s argument, but for decades, Smith and Best’s pre-­Māori myth appeared in school textbooks and general histories. Blank traces the pre-­Māori myth from the first School Journal of 1916 through to the 1960s: ‘Although Percy Smith and Elsdon Best provided a script for pre-­contact settlement, conquest and exile’, she concludes, ‘the writers they influenced made their own interpretations . . . [and] presented their work as history rather than conjecture’.29 Some of these were insulting of Moriori; others did not identify the pre-­Māori people by name. Howe argues that the pre-­Māori myth served both to present Māori as heroic explorers not unlike Europeans and to suggest that Pākehā had simply colonised Māori in the way Māori had colonised Moriori, thereby assuaging Pākehā unease.30 Blank extends this: narratives derived from Smith and Best met the needs of an emergent New Zealand national identity in a way that more accurate

206  André Brett histories could not. These accounts ‘served the interests of Pakeha in a way that made them irresistible’.31 The effects were profound, cementing the pre-­Māori myth as historical ‘fact’ for generations. It was not until the 1980s that more accurate accounts of Moriori history reached the New Zealand public. In the previous two decades, Rhys Richards, David Simmons, Douglas Sutton, and others presented research  – primarily archaeological  – that demolished the pre-­ Māori myth, although most of this had only academic readers.32 Filmmaker Bill Saunders’s documentary Moriori obtained a national television audience in 1980, which catalysed a Horomona/Solomon family reunion. The Moriori community, freshly invigorated, commissioned a history – scholars, even those just named, persisted in describing Moriori as extinct when the very fact of the reunion proved otherwise. King’s Moriori: A  People Rediscovered enjoyed wide distribution and positive reviews upon release in 1989 and became the standard work on Moriori history. Just as this more accurate history reached the public, however, some Pākehā weaponised the pre-­Māori myth against Māori claims to land, legal recognition, and reparations. One perceptive historian, Bill Oliver, asked in 1966, ‘If the Maoris themselves could be represented as an invading, conquering, expropriating people, would not this story serve to justify the activities of a race of subsequent conquerors, to turn the charge of expropriation upon the victims themselves?’33 Blank records a debate in 1974 as one of the earliest examples in print of the pre-­Māori myth being used to rebut Māori claims: one participant argued that refusal to grant recognition of te reo Māori was ‘just’ because Māori were unjust to Moriori.34 This was a harbinger of more far-­reaching rhetoric. The New Zealand government in 1975 responded to increasingly dynamic Māori activism by establishing the Waitangi Tribunal to investigate breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. Initially an obscure body with limited powers, the Tribunal’s scope expanded rapidly in the 1980s to consider grievances back to 1840. Some Pākehā, disconcerted by ‘radical’ Māori protests, looked to the pre-­Māori myth for succour. Avril Bell explains that a clear strategy emerged by the 1990s, along the lines of Oliver’s prediction: Pākehā could ‘construct an equal status to Maori in terms of belonging . . . [with] the argument that Maori too are immigrants’ who displaced Moriori.35 Some Māori responded to these denials of indigeneity with a new myth that Moriori were a Pākehā fiction to justify colonisation.36 Accurate Moriori histories have not neutralised the use of the pre-­ Māori myth against Māori demands for compensation of past wrongs. Those who hoped that good scholarship would bust the myth have been disappointed: whether Moriori were autochthonous to mainland New Zealand or Rēkohu has proven inconsequential to opponents of Māori rights. Instead, the myth has absorbed cherry-­picked facts, and culpability for the 1835 invasion is extrapolated from the nine hundred individuals of Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama to all Māori. This variation depicts

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 207 Māori as savage conquerors who have either received their comeuppance or should be grateful that Britain ‘civilised’ them. The cognitive dissonance can be striking: demands that Taranaki Māori be prosecuted for genocide are sometimes made alongside denials that Pākehā bear responsibility for atrocities perpetrated during the New Zealand Wars. Examples are legion, especially from talkback radio, letters to the editor, and social media.37 These have sometimes come from prominent members of society. David B. MacDonald examines one debate in 2000 involving political economist Keith Rankin and politician Winston Peters (a man with whakapapa to Ngāti Wai who has twice been deputy prime minister). Rankin and Peters rebutted claims that British colonisation inflicted a ‘holocaust’ on Māori, by asserting that the only perpetrators of a holocaust in New Zealand were Taranaki Māori against Moriori.38 Both men understand that Moriori inhabited Rēkohu, not mainland New Zealand, but the conclusion is the same. Denials of Māori indigeneity continue to arise in situations both serious and petty. It is not hard to find extreme and offensive claims from candidates and members of local councils, but in recent years, political parties and national politicians have only rarely legitimised the pre-­Māori myth. A prominent example is Don Brash, who led the centre-­right National Party in opposition between 2003 and 2006, before a brief stint leading the minor right-­wing ACT Party in 2011. He told Radio New Zealand’s Kim Hill in 2018 that Māori indigeneity was ‘a myth.  .  .  . the people who were here before them were Moriori, who Māori slaughtered’. Hill, exasperated, responded that ‘for heaven’s sake, if only Sir Michael King were here today’ and ended the interview.39 Muriel Newman, an ACT MP between 1996 and 2005, is another example. Both during and after her time in Parliament, she has advanced the pre-­Māori myth, insinuated that a conspiracy lies behind its disappearance from the school curriculum, and favourably discussed a wide range of farfetched claims, including Gavin Menzies’s discredited 1421 thesis.40 Clayworth emphasises that the pre-­Māori myth endures not only in media and political discourse but also in informal settings, such as pub conversations and public toilet graffiti.41 In a particularly outlandish example in 2017, an Instagram user who posted a photograph of herself nude at the peak of Mount Taranaki – a site sacred to local iwi – responded to critics by suggesting that anyone who thinks Māori are indigenous is an ‘ignorant twat’.42 I add my experience of family friends sharing the myth during mealtime conversations in the 2000s and those of teacher friends whose students at New Zealand schools in the 2010s have acquired the myth at home. If ‘why were we not told?’ is a stereotypical Anglo-­Australian response to accounts of settler massacres of Indigenous peoples, the equivalent from many New Zealanders is ‘why were we told incorrectly?’ Perhaps the simplest explanation for the myth’s endurance is not just that it buttresses Pākehā identity and denies Māori indigeneity, but that it does so

208  André Brett with memorable bloodthirsty violence. I  am not alone among Pākehā who first read Moriori history because dramatic tales of their expulsion from New Zealand demanded investigation; Blank and Clayworth introduce their theses with similar anecdotes. It should barely surprise historians that a nuanced account of migration, environmental adaptation, cultural change, and imperial influences has struggled to displace simple, lurid claims.

Myths About Moriori Go Overseas Solomon and Thorpe in 2012 described much scholarship on Moriori as ‘deleterious’, whether that be for perpetuating the pre-­Māori myth or for condescending assumptions about Moriori.43 This charge can also be levelled at international commentators who latch onto the Moriori story as a vignette to colour highly charged arguments that otherwise have nothing to do with New Zealand. Moriori history was almost unknown internationally until 1997, when Jared Diamond published his bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond, untrained in historical methods, drew on his background in physiology to apply, crudely, a scientific framework to interpreting history. With breathtaking environmental determinism, he presents Rēkohu as ‘a natural experiment of history’. The ‘brutal outcome of this collision between the Moriori and the Maori could have been easily predicted’, he argues, because ‘opposite evolutionary courses’ sealed their fate.44 Diamond is so hasty in his use of history that he overlooks decades of contact between Māori and Moriori before 1835, so incurious that he does not ask why Ngāti Mutunga or Ngāti Tama felt the need to move or whether their actions diverged from Māori traditions, and so careless in his written expression that he implies that their behaviour represented all Māori people. For Diamond, history is inevitability; it is not contingent. Such lazy scholarship, unfortunately, found a large audience. Michael King’s attempt to end his discussion of the 1835 invasion on a philosophical note appears to have been influential, although neither Diamond nor most of the accounts discussed next cite their sources. King concluded that Moriori ‘learned a philosophical and tactical truth that . . . non-­violence is an effective weapon only against an adversary who shares your conscience’.45 American writer David Mitchell was sufficiently inspired by Diamond’s account of Moriori history that he read King, visited Rēkohu, and set the start of his acclaimed 2003 novel Cloud Atlas there.46 Mitchell is so indebted to King that he plagiarises King’s conclusion: ‘What moral to draw? Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbours share your conscience’.47 Since the publication of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Cloud Atlas, this narrative of Moriori has been appropriated for much darker rhetoric. US right-­wing commentators, from anonymous bloggers to academics, have inserted Moriori into their polemics. Some would not identify with

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 209 the alt-­right, but the use of Moriori history in this capacity bolsters alt-­right narratives of white supremacy and militarism. Their purpose is sometimes to discredit opponents of specific US military actions, often categorising anti-­war activists as ‘pacifists’. One article in the National Review condemns activists as fools: ‘What happened to the Moriori would happen to these same pacifists, if not for the protection provided for many generations by the Anglosphere’s soldiers and sailors’.48 Others use Moriori in more wide-­ranging rejections of pacifism. Benjamin Ginsberg, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, suggests that because violence contributed to progress in the past, it will or should in the future. He uses a condescending account of ‘the poor Moriori’ to prop up this inane argument in The Value of Violence. The 1835 invasion, for Ginsberg, shows that pacifists who lead by example ‘always risk being eaten’.49 These arguments rest on a fear that ‘Western civilisation’, nebulously defined, has become soft and endangered. Daryl Withycombe in the alt-­ right blog Amerika makes plain the white supremacism that courses through this appropriation of Moriori history. He depicts Moriori as degenerates who ‘serve as a warning, to all other people around the world who chose to rebel against the laws of nature and descend down the path of the Moriori’.50 This alt-­right myth of Moriori resides in a political context almost as remote from Moriori culture as is possible. It is less concerned with accurate history than it is with an emotive warning that is ethnocentric and violent. This warning is rarely made to New Zealanders or about their domestic issues, so it has had little purchase there to date. The pseudonymous Lushington D. Brady claimed on Whale Oil, the website of disgraced New Zealand blogger Cameron Slater, that Moriori history presents ‘a salutary warning for the West today of the horrific cost of denial and virtue-­signalling’ about Islam.51 Brady, however, is Australian, which suggests the international reach of the US alt-­ right and this new appropriation of Moriori history – and, perhaps, that Australia’s domestic culture wars are absorbing US alt-­right narratives in some ways different from those in New Zealand. Novelist and former soldier Tom Kratman is one of the few proponents of the alt-­right myth to give Moriori some credit. He suggests that the Moriori response to invasion was not entirely irrational, because they ‘really weren’t given a lot of time to learn, so rapid was their destruction’. But this brief acknowledgement is used only to deride ‘modern, intellectual secular pacifist[s]’ as too ‘unintelligent’ to infer lessons from experience.52 It is also predicated on the idea that if only Moriori had more extended contact with the outside world, they would – or should – have abandoned their traditional culture. In suggesting this, Kratman makes the same mistake that Diamond did: Moriori had decades of experience with Māori and other visitors. But this does not make them stupid, as Kratman would have it; murderous violence might appear predictable with hindsight but that does not make it so.

210  André Brett The alt-­right myth perpetuates a supposed lesson that is almost entirely mistaken. If there is a lesson to be learned from the 1835 invasion, it is of the contingency of history and that past outcomes sometimes predict future consequences poorly. All Moriori experience suggested that sharing resources could facilitate peaceful coexistence and ensure the maintenance of Nunuku’s law. Visitors had slaughtered marine wildlife, perpetrated physical and sexual violence, introduced diseases, released pests, and profaned Moriori culture – but then they departed or settled down to quiet cohabitation. The evidence showed that Moriori lifeways would continue. Moriori certainly had no reason to believe that they faced slavery and genocide. Cloud Atlas is almost alone among international narratives in highlighting the reasonableness of this assumption – but then Mitchell was not prosecuting an alt-­ right narrative, unlike others who took up the example.53 Those who use Nunuku’s law to deride pacifism misrepresent Moriori culture. It did not embody pacifism in its purest form: Nunuku’s law forbade lethal violence, but Moriori continued to practice nonlethal ritual combat and war chants.54 Moriori used nonviolence not as a form of resistance à la Gandhi; in seeking to share resources with Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama, it was more akin to a treaty. Additionally, Hirawanu Tapu’s account of 1835 shows that Moriori did not have a chance to present this offer before they were set upon.55 The invading iwi lived peacefully on Rēkohu when they first landed; they chose to strike pre-­ emptively while Moriori held a meeting, so they could not have known whether Moriori would offer peace or issue an ultimatum. The appropriation of Moriori to argue that pacifism is unrealistic or even idiotic does not accord with how Moriori tell their history. Rather than viewing themselves as defeated, Moriori assert that they were never conquered. After all, in keeping Nunuku’s law, they retained their mana. In the face of colonisation, slavery, and slaughter, Moriori found ways to survive that did not involve lethal violence.56 Moriori reject that they can practise pacific traditions only because others might use violence to protect them. Nobody protected Moriori, yet today they have a vibrant presence on Rēkohu. Using Moriori as an argument against pacifism, furthermore, often reeks of victim blaming: if Moriori were not so foolish as to practise their traditional culture, they would not have been murdered. This is quite obviously repugnant.

Conclusion The continued dissemination of the pre-­Māori myth in New Zealand and the international propagation of the alt-­right myth show that even in the face of accurate histories, bad-­faith actors misuse historical facts to advance their agenda, derail debate, or troll opponents. One Twitter user describes this phenomenon as ‘Chatham’s law’: ‘the longer

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 211 a NZ comments thread goes on, the probability of mentioning “but Māori destroyed Moriori” approaches 1:1’.57 Publications including The Spinoff have quoted this ‘law’ approvingly.58 These are not the only two myths told about Moriori, only the most potent. The Waitangi Tribunal endorsed a seemingly more benign claim that Moriori are Māori but that ‘through isolation, they are unique as a Maori tribe’.59 It appears to have done so for expediency, to avoid questions about its jurisdiction, but assimilationist logic must also be repudiated. It is inappropriate that Moriori, denigrated as an inferior and extinct people, are now claimed to be no more than an iwi overlooked for decades. Moriori are not Māori; they are, as King put it, ‘related but separate peoples’.60 Moriori mean no offence by disclaiming membership of other groups; they simply want recognition as the distinct people that they are. The persistence of myths about Moriori shows that, in a post-­truth landscape, facts in isolation are insufficient to counter falsehoods. The networks through which ideas are disseminated are important  – the pre-­ Māori myth became mainstream through powerful connections. Moreover, these narratives offer something to those who use them, from justifying colonialism to entertainment, so countering them requires more than a single rebuttal or fact-­check. Moriori history is used in the alt-­right myth to serve political ends – it is an emotive warning against perceived threats to ‘Western civilisation’. This warning speaks to beliefs or fears of the recipient beyond a specific historical anecdote or the veracity of its articulation. The education system provides one possible long-­term response: more than just presenting facts, educators at every level impart the critical skills to reject false claims with superficial appeal. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced in September 2019 that New Zealand history will be taught in all primary and secondary schools by 2022, including material on the arrival of Māori. Maui Solomon hailed this as an opportunity to dispel myths about Moriori.61 The new curriculum should mean young New Zealanders receive up-­to-­date lessons about Māori and Moriori before myths have the opportunity to take root. Broadly, training in historical methods provides the skills to investigate claims about the past and motivations of those who use them in the present. It is also important that New Zealand’s leaders, current and future, are aware of who Moriori are. Don Brash’s false claim on Radio New Zealand in 2018 must not be indulged by those who ought to know better; simplistic falsehoods travel faster than nuanced factual accounts. Some commentators suggested that Kim Hill should have given brief information about Moriori rather than ending the interview, not for Brash’s benefit but for listeners uncertain about the truth.62 Both strategies – denying a false claim oxygen or providing a counternarrative to limit its appeal – have merit, and a senior broadcaster’s refusal to countenance myths about Moriori sets an important precedent in addressing shameless post-­truth narratives.

212  André Brett Untruths about Moriori are unlikely to disappear soon. Howe emphasises that false and fantastic claims, be they of Moriori or of Celts, have staying power: prehistory ‘is a wonderfully fertile ground for the human imagination  .  .  .  [and] some people simply have a capacity to believe some very strange things’.63 Indeed, as accurate information about Moriori has become mainstream, the pre-­Māori myth is shared in informal settings as if it is suppressed knowledge, with all the allure that being told a secret possesses. Accounts of the 1835 invasion, therefore, come with risks: bad-­faith actors can misuse them, whether to condemn Māori or to condemn political opponents. Historians working in areas where post-­truth narratives abound are vulnerable to having research cherry-­picked to advance emotive claims. That said, pinning the blame on historians whose accounts neither idealise or denigrate any group is to suggest that they have more control than they actually do over how readers receive scholarship; their leading duty is to present scholarship clearly and carefully. As for Gaffigan, when New Zealanders on Twitter alerted him to the factual inaccuracy, he explained that he was ‘simply repeating what I was told’ and ‘so sorry’.64 By that point, of course, it was too late. How many thousands of people have only heard of Moriori from Gaffigan’s routine? The cost of disinformation, even if shared without malice, is high.

Notes 1. Howe, Quest for Origins, 11. 2. Ibid., chapters 6–7. 3. Hamilton, Twitter posts, 16 August 2019. 4. Government of New Zealand, “Deed of Settlement Summary”; King, Moriori, 22 suggests the 13th century or the 14th century; Anderson estimates as late as the mid 1500s (though probably earlier) in “A Fragile Plenty,” 40; McFadgen asserts 1500–1600 in “Archaeology and Holocene Sand Dune Stratigraphy,” 35–37. 5. Anderson et al., Tangata Whenua, 28–30. 6. King, Moriori, 26–28. 7. Shand, “Moriori People,” 79. 8. Cooke, Won by the Spade, 23. 9. Richards, “Population Distribution,” 352. 10. Ibid., 356–357; Solomon and Thorpe, “Cultural Database,” 11; Anderson, “Retrievable Time,” 27. 11. An English perspective of this encounter, told by Chatham commander Lieutenant William Broughton, is in Vancouver, Voyage of Discovery, 387; a Moriori perspective is in Amery, “Koche,” 549. 12. I describe the economic and environmental effects of the early colonial encounter in Brett, “Secretive Exploitation.” 13. Sutton, “Culture History,” 87; Shand, “Occupation of the Chatham Islands,” 160. 14. Brett, “Secretive Exploitation,” 106–107. 15. A Moriori account of this event is in Amery, “Koche,” 550; a version derived from Māori sources is Dieffenbach, “Chatham Islands,” 210–211.

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 213 6. Brett, “Miserable Remnant.” 1 17. Brodie Papers, 25 March 1840; Selwyn, Journal, 98–99. 18. Petrie, Outcasts, 35–37. 19. King, Moriori, 67. 20. Evening Post (Wellington), 20 March 1933, 6. 21. E.g. Stratford Evening Post, 20 March 1933, 6. 22. Waikato Argus, 19 April 1907, 2. 23. For a profile of Maui Solomon and his wife Susan Thorpe, see Nicholas, “Our People.” 24. Lemarchand, “Introduction,” 12. 25. Dieffenbach, “Chatham Islands,” 208; Alexander Shand to Thomas Hocken, 17 November 1885, Hocken Papers. 26. See, in particular, Smith, Lore, vol. 2; Best, “Maori and Maruiwi.” 27. Clayworth, “Indolent and Chilly Folk,” 262–266. 28. Skinner, Morioris, 17. 29. Blank, “Imagining Moriori,” 69. 30. Howe, Quest for Origins, 166–167. 31. Blank, “Imagining Moriori,” 61. 32. Richards, “Historical Geography”; Richards, “Population Distribution”; Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth; Sutton, “Culture History”; Sutton, “Whence of the Moriori.” 33. Oliver, “Myths in New Zealand.” 34. Blank, “Imagining Moriori,” 75. 35. Bell, “Relating Maori and Pakeha.” 36. King, Moriori, 16; Blank, “Imagining Moriori,” 9. 37. For examples see Blank, “Imagining Moriori,” 107–108. 38. MacDonald, “Daring to Compare,” 388–389. 39. The interview can be heard at Radio New Zealand, “Ragging on Te Reo”; the Moriori exchange is from 30:20. 40. Examples from the New Zealand Centre for Political Research think tank that she founded include “History in the Making” and “Fake History.” One article, “Down the Path to Racism,” cites radiocarbon dating of rat bones now known to be inaccurate; see Anderson et al., Tangata Whenua, 23–24. 41. Clayworth, “Indolent and Chilly Folk,” 3. 42. “Mt Taranaki Nude Model,” Newshub. 43. Solomon and Thorpe, “Taonga Moriori,” 249. 44. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 53–54. 45. King, Moriori, 76. 46. Book World Talks, “We Found the Author.” 47. Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, 16. 48. Gallant et al., “A Moriori Lesson.” Kopel sustains this argument with greater vehemence  – and offensive racial tropes about Aboriginal Australians as a ‘gentle Stone Age’ people – in “Pacifist Aggressives,”63–66. 49. Ginsberg, Value of Violence, 42–43, 168. 50. Withycombe, “Learn from the Moriori”; basic factual errors in this article include names and dates and should discredit it even for those who sympathise with intellectual arguments against pacifism. 51. Brady, “Whirlwind of Denial.” 52. Kratman, Countdown, afterword. 53. Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, 14. 54. Kopel, “Pacifist Aggressives,” 63 is one of the clearest misrepresentations, positioning Moriori as the zenith of ‘purity pacifism’. 55. Maori Land Court, Chatham Islands minute book no. 1, 17 June 1870. 56. Moriori and the Crown, “Deed of Settlement,” 18–23.

214  André Brett 57. McCluskey, Twitter post, 10 April 2018; this was not McCluskey’s first use of the term, which was in 2016 or early January  2017 on a now-­deleted account. At present, the oldest reference to ‘Chatham’s law’ on Twitter is by me (@DrDreHistorian) on 10 January  2017, but I  obtained it from McCluskey. 58. Hayden, “Grateful Horis.” 59. Waitangi Tribunal, Rekohu, 21. 60. King, Land Apart, 11. 61. Radio New Zealand, “New Zealand History Will Be Compulsory in All Schools By 2022.” 62. Mills, “Moriori Myth.” 63. Howe, Quest for Origins, 158. 64. Gaffigan, Twitter post, 12 September 2019.

Bibliography Amery, John. “Koche, King of Pitt.” Catholic World 17 no. 100 (1873): 545–557. Anderson, Atholl. “A  Fragile Plenty: Pre-­European Māori and the New Zealand Environment.” In Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, edited by Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson, 35–51. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013. ———. “Retrievable Time: Prehistoric Colonisation of South Polynesia from the Outside In and the Inside Out.” In Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand’s Pasts, edited by Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney, 25–41. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006. Anderson, Atholl, Judith Binney, and Aroha Harris. Tangata Whenua: A History. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2015. Bell, Avril. “Relating Maori and Pakeha: The Politics of Indigenous and Settler Identities.” PhD thesis, Massey University, 2004. Best, Elsdon. “Maori and Maruiwi.” Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 48 (1915): 435–447. Blank, Jacinta. “Imagining Moriori: A History of Ideas of a People in the Twentieth Century.” MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 2007. Book World Talks. “We Found the Author of Cloud Atlas.” Washington Post, 22 August 2004, http://web.archive.org/web/20191009070923/www.washing tonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2004/08/22/we-­f ound-­t he-­ author-­of-­cloud/70ad4f46-­b05b-­4d2a-­bebe-­4b643e85ee37/ Brady, Lushington D. “Reaping the Whirlwind of Denial: The Lesson of the Moriori.” Whale Oil Beef Hooked, 24 April  2019. http://web.archive.org/ web/20191010011048/www.whaleoil.net.nz/2019/04/reaping-­the-­whirlwind­of-­denial-­the-­lesson-­of-­the-­moriori/. Brett, André. “Australia and the Secretive Exploitation of the Chatham Islands to 1842.” Journal of Australian Studies 41, no. 1 (2017): 96–112. ———. “ ‘The Miserable Remnant of this Ill-­Used People’: Colonial Genocide and the Moriori of New Zealand’s Chatham Islands.” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 2 (2015): 133–152. Brodie, Walter. Papers. Hocken Library Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-­0621. Clayworth, Peter. “ ‘An Indolent and Chilly Folk’: The Development of the Idea of the ‘Moriori Myth’.” PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2001.

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 215 Cooke, Peter. Won by the Spade: How the Royal New Zealand Engineers Built a Nation. Dunedin: Exisle Publishing, 2019. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999 (1997). Dieffenbach, Ernest. “An Account of the Chatham Islands.” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 11 (1841): 195–215. Gaffigan, Jim (@JimGaffigan). Twitter post. 11:17pm, 12 September 2019 (New Zealand time), https://web.archive.org/web/20191103114609/https:/twitter. com/JimGaffigan/status/1172106922314608643. Gallant, Paul, David B. Kopel, and Joanne D. Eisen. “A Moriori Lesson.” National Review, 11 April  2003, http://web.archive.org/web/20191009070255/www. nationalreview.com/2003/04/moriori-­lesson-­paul-­gallant/. Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Value of Violence. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2013. Government of New Zealand. “Deed of Settlement Summary.” 13 August 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191014054452/www.govt.nz/assets/Documents/ OTS/Deed-­of-­Settlement-­Summary-­12-­August-­2019.pdf. Hamilton, Scott (@SikotiHamiltonR). Twitter posts, 11:54am to 12:50pm, 16 August  2019 (New Zealand time), https://web.archive.org/web/2019110202 5030/https:/twitter.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1162150537485119488. Hayden, Leonie. “Grateful Horis and Model Minorities: Why Don’t We Know We’re Racist?” The Spinoff, 14 April  2018, http://web.archive.org/web/ 20191022061333/https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/14-­04-­2018/grateful-­horis-­ and-­model-­minorities-­why-­dont-­we-­know-­were-­racist/. Hocken, T.M. Papers. Hocken Library Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-­0451-­004/013. Howe, Kerry. The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands? Auckland: Penguin Books, 2003. King, Michael. A Land Apart: The Chatham Islands of New Zealand. Auckland: Random House, 1990. ———. Moriori: A People Rediscovered. Auckland: Viking, 1989. Kopel, David B. “Pacifist Aggressives vs. the Second Amendment: An Analysis of Modern Philosophers of Compulsory Non-­Violence.” Charleston Law Review 3, no. 1 (2008): 63–66. Kratman, Tom. Countdown: H Hour. Riverdale, New York: Baen Books, 2012. Lemarchand, René. “Introduction.” In Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory, edited by René Lemarchand, 1–19. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. MacDonald, David B. “Daring to Compare: The Debate About a Maori ‘Holocaust’ in New Zealand.” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 3 (2003): 383–403. McCluskey, Jordan (@kilbrniesanders). Twitter post. 8:33pm, 10 April  2018 (New Zealand time), https://web.archive.org/web/20191103114727/https:/ twitter.com/kilbrniesanders/status/983624064999682054. McFadgen, B.G. “Archaeology and Holocene Sand Dune Stratigraphy on Chatham Island.” Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 24, no. 1 (1994): 17–44. Maori Land Court. Chatham Islands minute book no. 1. Archives New Zealand CAMW CH299 Box 1. Mills, Keri. “The Moriori Myth and Why It Is Still With Us.” The Spinoff, 5 Augut 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20191019005748/https://thespinoff.co.nz/ atea/03-­08-­2018/the-­moriori-­myth-­and-­why-­its-­still-­with-­us/.

216  André Brett Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003. Moriori and the Trustees of the Moriori Imi Settlement Trust and the Crown. “Deed of Settlement of Historical Claims.” Initialled 13 August 2019, https:// web.archive.org/web/20191014051512/www.govt.nz/assets/Documents/OTS/ moriori-­deed-­of-­settlement-­initialled.pdf “Mt Taranaki Nude Model: ‘Māori Are NOT Indigenous’.” Newshub, 11  May  2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20191021071922/www.newshub. co.nz/home/new-­zealand/2017/05/mt-­taranaki-­nude-­model-­m-­ori-­are-­not-­ indigenous.html. Newman, Muriel. “Down the Path to Racism.” New Zealand Centre for Political Research, 27 September 2009, http://web.archive.org/web/20191103113102/ www.nzcpr.com/down-­the-­path-­to-­racism/. ———. “Fake History.” New Zealand Centre for Political Research, 6 October  2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191103111020/www.nzcpr.com/ fake-­history/. ———. “History in the Making.” New Zealand Centre for Political Research, 21 January 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/20191103111300/www.nzcpr.com/ test-­post-­307/ Nicholas, Jill. “Our People: Maui the Moriori Leading His People’s Renaissance.” Rotorua Daily Post, 12 January  2019, http://web.archive.org/web/ 20191016041928/www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-­daily-­post/news/article.cfm? c_id=1503438&objectid=12188651. Oliver, W. H. “History, Myths in New Zealand: The Morioris.” In An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966, edited by A.H. McLintock, https://web.archive. org/web/20191104103309/https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/history-­myths-­in-­ new-­zealand/page-­10. Petrie, Hazel. Outcasts of the Gods? The Struggle over Slavery in Māori New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2015. Radio New Zealand. “Don Brash  – Ragging on Te Reo.” 2 December  2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20191104104131/www.rnz.co.nz/audio/ player?audio_id=2018623927. ———. “New Zealand History Will Be Compulsory in All Schools By 2022.” 12 September  2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20191009044111/www.rnz. co.nz/news/national/398599/new-­z ealand-­h istory-­w ill-­b e-­c ompulsory-­ in-­all-­schools-­by-­2022. Richards, Rhys. “An Historical Geography of Chatham Island.” MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 1962. ———. “A  Tentative Population Distribution Map of the Morioris of Chatham Island, Circa 1790.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 81, no. 3 (1972): 350–374. Selwyn, G. A. A Journal of the Bishop’s Visitation Tour Through His Diocese, Including a Visit to the Chatham Islands, in the Year 1848. Christchurch: Kiwi Publishers, 2002 (1849). Shand, Alexander. “The Moriori People of the Chatham Islands: Their Traditions and History” (part one). Journal of the Polynesian Society 3, no. 2 (1894): 76–92. ———. “The Occupation of the Chatham Islands by the Maoris in 1835” (part two). Journal of the Polynesian Society 1, no. 3 (1892): 154–163. Simmons, D. R. The Great New Zealand Myth: A Study of the Discovery and Origin Traditions of the Maori. Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1976.

‘I’m Not Even Making That Up’ 217 Skinner, H. D. The Morioris of Chatham Islands. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1923. Smith, S. Percy. The Lore of the Whare-­Wananga, vol. 2. New Plymouth: Polynesian Society, 1915. Solomon, Maui, and Susan Thorpe (primary authors). “IPinCH Case Study Report: Moriori Cultural Database.” Hokotehi Moriori Trust and Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage Project, http://web.archive.org/web/20191 009072534/www.sfu.ca/ipinch/sites/default/files/resources/reports/moriori_ final_report_2014.pdf. ———. “Taonga Moriori: Recording and Revival.” Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 3 (2012): 245–263. Sutton, Douglas G. “A Culture History of the Chatham Islands.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 89, no. 1 (1980): 67–94. ———. “The Whence of the Moriori.” New Zealand Journal of History 19, no. 1 (1985): 3–13. Vancouver, George. A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World 1791–1795, vol. 1. Edited by W. Kaye Lamb. London: Hakluyt Society, 1984. Waitangi Tribunal. Rekohu: A Report on Moriori and Ngati Mutunga Claims in the Chatham Islands. Wai 64 (2001). Withycombe, Daryl. “What the Western World Can Learn from the Moriori.” Amerika, 10 March  2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20191019043628/ www.amerika.org/politics/what-­t he-­w estern-­w orld-­c an-­l earn-­f rom-­t he-­ moriori/.

Part 3

The Truth About “Post-­Truth” Evaluation and Response

12 Trump, Fascism, and Historians in the Post-­Truth Era Ben Mercer

Historians, Fascism, and the Past in the Present Historians of Nazi Germany, the fascist era, and the Holocaust have long been familiar with problems of the political uses of the past in the present, the tendentious deployment of historical analogies, and the vexed question of historical truth. In the 1980s, the Historikerstreit debated the function of the past in national identity, the attempt to ‘normalise’ the Nazi past, and the role of comparison in historical investigation.1 Although few historians now unequivocally endorse the view of the Holocaust as ‘unique’ and comparison of Nazi crimes to other regimes has increased over the subsequent decades, the Historikerstreit remains an exemplary instance of how ideologically motivated comparison can be invoked to create a reassuring or exculpatory historical lesson. The broader debate around the Historikerstreit demonstrated the appeal of a history in which Germans were the victims (as well as perpetrators) in the Second World War, particularly on the eastern front. The work of Andreas Hillgruber in particular, confused the ‘subjective view of the situation . . . and the historical truth’.2 As early as the 1980s, how the crimes of the Second World War were remembered, understood, and felt contrasted with historians’ deployment of historical truth. In the late 1990s, the Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibition challenged the image of Germans as the victims of the Second World War (and Nazism) more generally.3 The exhibition, which displayed photographs demonstrating the participation of Wehrmacht soldiers in the crimes of the Second World War, cast ordinary soldiers (and not just the SS) as perpetrators. This debate thus contrasted historical research with a commonly felt myth of the clean Wehrmacht. While that debate ostensibly revolved around the correct attribution of photographs in the exhibition (a small number of which had been incorrectly labelled), the public controversy reflected not so much the question of historical truth in terms of the attribution of evidence but the challenge of historical research to memory or a history based on a structure of feeling. The exhibition attested to the power of images to make a much broader impact than

222  Ben Mercer that of academic historiography.4 The renewed debate in the early 2000s about the firebombing of Dresden, its memory and interpretation, placed the question of German victimhood in public memory and on the agenda of historical research. These controversies seemed to hold out hope that historical research continued to affect the contemporary world beyond the academy or enforced a line that demarcated acceptable use of the past in academic and, more importantly, political discourse. In the Historikerstreit, the nationalist narrative appeared to be effectively marginalised, while the Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, despite its closure and its reopening as a much less provocative and more conventional exhibit, could be read as successful in sparking public debate, as having ‘an effect of enlightenment’.5 Yet a less optimistic reading might be that for the most part the culture of public memory was impervious to the disciplinary impact of historians. Research has demonstrated that among younger generations in Germany, knowledge of Nazism and its crimes is widespread and accepted, but individuals find it difficult to apply that knowledge to individuals in their own family, instead retelling and reinventing family history in such a way as to turn grandparents with ambiguous pasts into exemplars of resistance more fitting with contemporary moral values.6 Historians confronted the problem that historical research had not filtered out beyond a relatively limited academic sphere and that when it did, it confronted deeply rooted feelings and identities resistant to historical truth. If the memory debates of the Federal Republic of Germany implied that historical truth and public historical consciousness coincided only incompletely, the value of historical truth appeared validated in other public debates on the Holocaust. In the 1990s, amid theoretical arguments about the nature of truth in history and the impact of postmodernism, the Holocaust functioned as a crucial test of the value of Hayden White’s metahistorical analysis of narrative.7 The Irving-­Lipstadt trial in 2000 proved Irving’s denial of the Holocaust and offered a moment of triumph for historical research, a high point of historical endeavours to prove the truth of the past or, more precisely, to demonstrate falsehoods written by Irving, which could not be justified as merely a difference of interpretation.8 The success of the Irving-­ Lipstadt trial notwithstanding, historical truth has not always been triumphant in legal settings. Some historians suggested that the courtroom was not a space for debating historical truth. A number have pointed out that law courts and the witness box are poor spaces for witness testimony.9 While Irving’s defeat seemed to consign fake history and Holocaust denial to the dustbin of history, such an optimistic reading presumed that Irving’s audience was interested in historical truth as a matter of evidence-­based research. Although Irving’s mendacity was proven to the satisfaction of the law and the community

Trump, Fascism, and Historians 223 of historical researchers, eliminating one audience that may have taken his work seriously, other audiences for Irving’s work were hardly likely to be dissuaded by evidence. Indeed, they were more likely to see his trial as a persecution by powerful elites. This brief sketch of the memory debates related to the Nazi past, and the Holocaust demonstrates that there has always been an audience for versions of the past that do not conform to historical research (or ‘truth’). There is a long history of resistance to ‘knowledge’ or ‘truth’, especially where that comes into conflict with existing modes of meaning. This history cautions against any diagnosis of a sudden turn to fake history in a post-­truth society.

Post-­Truth The term ‘post-­truth’ has been used to designate a political and cultural moment in which feeling takes priority over evidence. This assertion is complicated by the fact that, as numerous commentators have pointed out, mendacity is not new in politics. Instead, post-­truth describes not lying in politics but what facilitates it: either technology – social media and the Internet more broadly – or the growth of an audience for post-­ truth politics. What is new is ‘not the mendacity of politicians but the public’s response to it’, being ‘indifference, and finally . . . collusion’.10 This diagnosis coincided with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. Post-­truth, therefore, appears not merely as a description of contemporary society but rather is invoked as a causal explanation, at least in part, for the success of Trump, a candidate whose disregard for truth and political convention and whose open embrace of misogyny and racism was thought initially to make him unelectable. The election of Trump in 2016 crystallised an audience for the diagnosis of a post-­truth world. Whether post-­truth actually marks a qualitatively new phenomenon is beyond the scope of this chapter. Diagnoses of novelty are always suspect, and a primary function of historians in public discourse is to demonstrate that what is thought new is in fact nothing of the sort (in addition to demonstrating that what is assumed to be age-­old is often of recent invention). There is no space here for an archaeology of post-­ truth. However, it is important to remember that shock at disregard for empirical reality is hardly unique to the Trump era. Post-­truth and ‘truthiness’ were coined in the era of George W. Bush, who led a war against Iraq based on false evidence. In 2004, the journalist Ron Suskind reported the notorious comments of a senior adviser to Bush, that Suskind belonged to ‘what we call the reality-­based community’, which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. He continued, ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create

224  Ben Mercer our own reality’.11 The advent of post-­truth needs to be inserted into the long history of the reality-­based community’s confrontation with alternative realities. Post-­truth explains at least as much the failure of commentators and intellectuals to perceive the credibility of the Trump candidacy as it does the success of the Trump phenomenon itself. To be sure, Trump’s rhetoric certainly displays an unusual level of illiteracy, disdain for reality, narcissism, and delusion. This is not the place for an analysis of Trump’s rhetoric, although it clearly betrays a number of features inimical to evidence-­based research: the reliance on hearsay or a nebulous ‘some people say’ (‘Some people have serious, serious doubts as to its [Obama’s birth certificate’s] validity’,);12 expressing doubt about the obvious ‘I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows’ (on the place of Barack Obama’s birth);13 a predilection for moral equivalence) ‘very fine people on both sides’), and feigned ignorance of easily demonstrated reality (‘I don’t know David Duke. . . . I just don’t know anything about him’).14 In all this, Trump clearly epitomises a brazen contempt for both conventional boundaries of politics and empirical reality. Although Trump’s brazenness marks him out from some previous exponents, there are also multiple precedents in global politics. The most obvious is Silvio Berlusconi’s prime ministerships of Italy, dating from the mid 1990s.15 The Berlusconi era was, like the Trump one, characterised by mendacity, an ostentatious disregard for ‘political correctness’, a willing embrace of racism and misogyny, and the proposition that a millionaire businessperson, with wealth based in media and real estate, can conduct politics better than professional politicians. Yet much of what is assumed to propel the post-­truth era (such as social media) date from after the rise of Silvio Berlusconi. In this instance, the focus on post-­truth is likely to obscure the historical lineage of Trump and Trump-­like politics. Post-­truth may therefore not be helpful in understanding the origins of Trump but instead represent a superficial and convenient target for journalists, academics, and intellectuals.

The Return of Fascism Trump’s election drew historians into public historical debate via the constant invocation of fascism. Unlike the debates in the Federal Republic of Germany sketched earlier, fascism was not invoked in discussion of a national memory culture. Rather, the tendency to discuss Trump in the framework of fascism suggests a striking reluctance to analyse Trump within the frameworks of US history from US conservatism to white supremacism. Although the invocation of fascism did not reflect a memory culture, it did raise again the problem of historical analogies and of historical truth or more precisely the role of rigorous, research-­based history in the public sphere.

Trump, Fascism, and Historians 225 The closest parallel to contemporary discussion of Trump as fascist is not the memory wars of Germany and elsewhere but the long-­term history of the use of fascism and Hitler to evoke foreboding parallels to the present. The rise of fascism in Germany has long held a fascination for democratic societies. The 21st century is hardly unique in its tendency to see the German past in the present, so often hoped to be the opposite of contemporary society rather than its future. In this mode, the Weimar Republic is viewed, as one historian put it, with a sense of kinship. Caught in a crisis ourselves, we turn to Weimar because its tragic experience of dissolution  – political, social, and cultural – seems to promise understanding of our own situation. It is not the abhorrent strangeness of Weimar society that strikes us now, but our affinity with it.16 So wrote Carl E. Schorske in the New York Review of Books in May 1970. There is little new, therefore, in the tendency to imagine the present with foreboding as a rerun of Germany of the late 1920s or early 1930s.17 The use of ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse, as a way to marginalise and denigrate opponents, also has a long history, extremely popular in the 1960s, either to designate protesters of that era for engaging in fascist-­ like activity or to describe an authoritarian undercurrent to superficially democratic societies or governments. The use of ‘fascist’ in the 1960s and 1970s became so expansive that it at times lost any connection to analytical criteria, a way of designating the possibility of a creeping authoritarianism.18 This history is cautionary for any use of fascism today. One of the reasons for the popularity of fascism in the 1960s and 1970s is that it designated an inherent potential of liberal, democratic, capitalist societies. It allowed the user to see a historical progression rather than to describe an empirical reality. The word ‘fascist’, a vaguer and more flexible term than Nazism, served this function particularly well. One visceral reaction to the Trump candidacy and presidency was to label Trump, his words, his intentions, his actions, his advisers, or his supporters ‘fascist’. In some instances, this was factual. Trump won support for his candidacy from white supremacists and neo-­Nazis, support which Trump reciprocated by making a moral equivalence between neo-­Nazis and anti-­Nazi demonstrators. A figure such as Stephen Bannon, briefly the Trump White House’s chief strategist and former chief executive of Breitbart News openly declared his engagement with far-­right ideology. In March 2018, the Mussolini biographer Nicholas Farrell reported Bannon’s telling him that Mussolini [was] . . . one of the most important figures of the 20th century. You put the juice back in Mussolini. He was clearly loved by women. He was a guy’s guy. He has all that virility. He also had

226  Ben Mercer amazing fashion sense, right, that whole thing with the uniforms. I’m fascinated by Mussolini.19 Trump himself was reported in 1990 to keep a volume of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. His denial at the time – ‘If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them’ – displayed a typical confusion about whether he needed to deny having the speeches or reading them.20 Yet the designation of fascist is most often invoked to describe a certain style of political rhetoric rather than the flirtation with fascist groups and ideologies. Thus, fascism has been evoked when Trump or members of his campaign or administration deployed tropes of antisemitic rhetoric, conspiratorial thinking, blatant denial of empirical reality, the designation of opponents as unpatriotic, and the dismissal of the ‘the system’ as corrupt.21 All these features are characteristic of both fascism and the Trump administration, but importantly, they also mark a much broader spectrum of politics. The paradox of the invocation of fascism (or, rather, Nazism) is that its constant deployment as the ultimate symbol of absolute evil obscures the extent to which much of Nazi ideology was mainstream. As the historian of Nazism Neil Gregor pointed out on the occasion of the 2016 German republication of Mein Kampf, the critical edition aimed to demonstrate ‘how Hitler’s thought was anchored in elements of the mainstream European intellectual tradition’.22 While the identification of specific parallels is one way in which history can inform the present, the analytical distinction between politics characteristic of (but not only of) fascism and fascist politics can be erased all too easily. The history of fascism furthermore suggests the need to understand its connection to mainstream politics as much as its invocation as a limit case of absolute evil. The most precise attempt to draw parallels between the Trump administration and Nazi Germany has been by the historian Jane Caplan on the website of the History Workshop Journal. Caplan identified the ‘unsettling echoes’ of the 1930s by juxtaposing quotations from Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels with quotations from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Stephen Bannon. Thus, Spicer’s statement that Trump’s 2017 audience ‘was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration  – period  – both in person and around the globe’ echoed Goebbels’s declaration that this evening you are witnessing by eye and ear a mass event of a scope that has no precedent in Germany, probably in the whole world. I  think it would be not be saying too much to assert that this evening at least twenty million people in Germany and beyond Germany’s borders will be listening to the speech of Reich chancellor Adolf Hitler.23

Trump, Fascism, and Historians 227 Where Goebbels attacked ‘the opposition press’, Stephen Bannon was reported saying ‘The media here is the opposition party’.24 Presented without commentary, these quotations are less arguments that the Trump administration is fascist than they are questions of what sorts of regimes embrace such statements. This is a history that unsettles and questions but which provides few answers.

History as Warning If one mode of analysis has been able to identify the flirtation of figures in the Trump administration with the far right and a second is to pinpoint precise rhetorical parallels between the 1930s and today, a third is to much more vaguely invoke the 1930s as a period of important (and often portentous) lessons for the present. The exemplary instance of this history as warning and lesson was written by the Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of multiple works on the history of Eastern Europe in the 20th century. In an article titled ‘Him’ for the online magazine Slate published on 18 November 2016, Snyder recounted the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, without naming him, to draw the parallels to election of Trump: His election that November came as a surprise. The conservative intellectuals had made telling arguments against his racism and conspiracy thinking. Rival nationalists had mocked his affection for a foreign tyrant. Businessmen had explained that economic isolation could only harm an export economy. All to no avail.25 Unlike specific comparisons of vocabulary or statements, the parallels here are evoked rather than delineated. The main features of this retelling of Hitler’s rise to power are the apparent ‘surprises’ of the November victory, the terrorist attack (the Reichstag Fire), and the outbreak of the Second World War. Historians might quibble that little was surprising about the electoral results of November  1932 (in which the Nazi vote actually declined), but the disregard for detail demonstrates the desire to evoke rather than to analyse. This is a form of history for a post-­truth world: directed at a broad public, aiming to evoke a feeling, unconcerned with detail, and offering a relatively simple lesson. The full expression of Snyder’s history as warning arrived in his bestselling On Tyranny – the development of a Facebook post from 15 November 2016 that received over 17,000 shares.26 The book sold over half a million copies.27 This is, therefore, history crafted via new forms of social media and very much responding to audience demand. As Snyder noted of the original post, ‘It’s not a historical thing. . . . But I couldn’t have done it without the 25 years of work [that I spent] trying to understand history’.28 In On Tyranny, Snyder develops a somewhat generic set of prescriptions

228  Ben Mercer (beware the one-­party state, be wary of paramilitaries, believe in truth). These commandments are unobjectionable, and there is probably some value in reminding citizens that complacency is hardly a valuable approach to contemporary political crises. Yet who needs to be told to beware the one-­party state? Would anyone who might need such reminding really buy such a book anyway? The genre of history as warning (‘history can familiarize, and it can warn’, writes Snyder) speaks as much about the audience who reads it as the phenomenon it seeks to warn against.29 History as warning is not history as understanding. It is a largely untheorised genre of history and not particularly self-­reflexive. Warnings tend to focus on emphasising the danger of a situation and what to do rather than on how and why something has occurred. The danger is the extent to which this history preaches to the converted and thus becomes a symptom of the problem rather than its resolution. The most typical lessons drawn from the history of fascism and applied to 2016 is the danger of complacency. Thus, in the New York Review of Books, Christopher Browning evoked the willingness of mainstream conservatives to deal with Trump and the need to unite against the fascist threat. A  favourite comparison is that between the conservatives who facilitated Hitler’s appointment as chancellor and the Republican Party in the United States: ‘Today’s Republicans and similarly minded figures in Europe are like the conservatives who put Adolf Hitler in power’, wrote the historian of Weimar Germany Eric Weitz.30 Browning identified Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as the ‘gravedigger of American democracy’ akin to Paul von Hindenburg in the Weimar Republic, while Jeffrey Herf likewise warned that in the 1930s, as in 2016, ‘political establishments failed to take the danger seriously enough’.31 Without wishing to underestimate the craven politics of Republicans in pursuit of their self-­interest, the question of who these warnings are really for recurs. Which Republicans will be deterred from their embrace of Trump by a Hitler analogy? Directing a lesson at the other end of the political spectrum, Richard Steigmann-­Gall argued that those who supported the candidature of Bernie Sanders and were reluctant to vote for Hillary Clinton were making the same mistake as the Communists in the 1930s who refused to back social democracy: for some on the left . . . Trump still cannot be a fascist. Because that would encourage the American electorate to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to stop him. This view sadly repeats the mistake of many on the European left in the 1930s. . . . They paid dearly for that mistake. Let us hope they do not repeat it in 2016.32 These lessons are not necessarily wrong, but they do not really derive from historical analysis. They tend to embody rather simple precepts such as ‘choose the lesser evil’ or ‘beware of compromising principles

Trump, Fascism, and Historians 229 for self-­interest’. History is not a repository of easily actionable lessons. Laurie Marhoefer has pointed out that while some take the lesson of the rise of fascism to be the need to offer counterdemonstrations, willing (if necessary) to resist fascists with violence, the historical lessons are much more ambiguous: such events could contribute to an impression of a cycle of violence that aided the Nazis rather than showed them that they were not welcome.33 If there is one lesson to be drawn from the past, it is of unintended consequences. History as warning and history as lessons are all too often simplistic lessons for other people.

The Limits of Historical Analogy Most historians’ pronouncement on the comparison of Trump to fascism have been framed by disciplinary conventions of caution, qualification, and evidence. Where is the economic catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression? Where is the paramilitary organisation engaging in street violence equivalent to the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA)? Where is the threat from a radical and powerful ideology such as communism and the revolutionary charge unleashed by the Bolsheviks and embodied in a major state? Where in the world, for that matter, is there a powerful social democratic movement? Where is the heritage of the First World War, the militarisation of politics and ideologies after it? For all these reasons, and more, the typical introduction to a historian’s discussion of Trump, fascism, and Hitler is that Trump is not Hitler (or Trumpism is not fascism) but . . . followed by some parallels. As Neil Gregor has pointed out, there can be no a priori problem with the comparison of two historical eras. Crucially, however, he notes that comparison must be a process ‘which seeks to tease out both similarities  and  differences’.34 This point is important, because too many comparisons seek to evoke the similarities without careful attention to differences, or after elaborating a set of differences, they get on to the real business of finding similarities. Since no one pretends that history exactly repeats itself, differences can always be dismissed. There is, of course, a much larger audience for the thesis of similarities than differences: only the similarities can serve the genre of history as warning and as lesson. Yet, most often, the identification of differences is more enlightening. Thus, Christopher Browning – in the same piece in which he compared Mitch McConnell to Paul von Hindenburg – pivoted to a much more nuanced argument that Trump is more representative of an illiberal, authoritarian democracy than the drive to destroy democracy characteristic of the 1930s.35 That characterisation is useful because it opens questions more specific to the present-­day situation than does seeking echoes and lessons of the past. The most useful response to the rise of fascism talk around Trump has been that of Geoff Eley, who sought to shift the debate from the diagnosis

230  Ben Mercer of fascism, and warning about the conservative elite, to identifying the substantive issues of contemporary politics which give rise to the discussion of fascism. As Eley put it, ‘whether or not the “fascist” label might apply to this or that particular politician, it seems more important to ask about the kind of context in which such a question gets raised’.36 After explicitly stating that ‘it makes no sense to draw direct equivalences between far-­right politics now and the politics calling itself fascist then’ Eley points rather to the problems of a crisis of representation and of democratic faith, combined with economic discontent.37 In a public sphere in which the term ‘fascism’ is thrown about already, historians certainly need to ‘find ways of making our knowledge and scholarly expertise available’ as Eley put it.38 But this needs to be done in ways that are not contrary to historical practice – that is, the careful use of evidence and rigorous comparison  – that give historians whatever authority they may have. The discussion of fascism thus requires an awareness of the long tradition of throwing the term around and an awareness of the tendency to use Weimar as a metaphor for contemporary society in ways that obscure as much as enlighten. Historians need to beware the tendency to use the term ‘fascism’ as an ostentatious form of ‘truth telling’, to ‘call Trump by his name’ – that is, as a fascist – rather than a right-­wing populist, which is understood to be a trivialisation.39 Historians also need to be aware of the limits of historical knowledge. In 2016, the election of Donald Trump coincided with the republication of Mein Kampf in Germany. As Neil Gregor noted, the latter was a peculiar project, caught between ‘the scholarly imperative to show how the text works and the political necessity of preventing it from speaking’, between the dispassionate pose of the scholar and the political and ethical imperative to demonstrate the text’s lies and racism.40 The critical edition thus sought via the deployment of academic apparatus to ‘neutralize the prose . . . dismantle the tissue of lies, inaccuracies, and clichés and expose them for the ideological filth that they are’.41 There is a great intrinsic value to critical scholarly work. Scholarly knowledge is certainly necessary but not sufficient to defeat the ideologies of the past and present. The same can be said for history in the public sphere of social media and the modern press. In an article on the appeal of ‘fake history’ in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Patrick Iber pointed out that ‘much of the resistance to the basic facts of American history comes not from complex disputes about interpretation but essentially from a politically motivated confidence game’.42 That is not a game won by historical accuracy: ‘The problem is not that there is honest disagreement among historians – the problem is that there is a market for pseudo-­historical grift’.43 This lesson is not new. The memory wars of the recent past should have made historians aware that a simple appeal to historical knowledge, as authorised by historians, is not sufficient to transform a society’s historical consciousness. The importance of scholarship should not be

Trump, Fascism, and Historians 231 measured by its impact on those uninterested in listening to it. The appeal of fake history, or of Trump, is not resolved simply by more accurate history or the ‘facts’. Nor is it helped by tenuous historical parallels or the label of ‘fascist’. As Daniel Bessner and Udi Greenberg pointedly remark, ‘condemning fascism . . . is not a productive progressive agenda’.44 To be sure, there are audiences to whom historians can speak profitably. It can be valuable, unsettling, and thought-­provoking to point to the parallels, precedents, and commonalities between the authoritarianisms of today and those of the past. But in an era when many avoid the hard work of rigorous analysis and engagement with empirical reality in preference for a blinkered restatement of their prejudices, historians must be careful not to draw simple lessons from a past which rarely provides them.

Notes 1. See Knowlton and Cates, trans., Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? 2. Bartov, Murder in Our Midst, 73. 3. See Niven, Facing the Nazi Past, 140–170. Heer and Naumann, eds., War of Extermination; Madievski, “The War of Extermination.” 4. Struk, “How Pictures Can Haunt a Nation,” 89–108. 5. Niven, Facing the Nazi Past, 141 6. See Welzer, Grandpa wasn’t a Nazi. 7. See the contributions in Friedlander, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation. 8. Evans, Lying About Hitler. 9. See Rousso, The Haunting Past. Cf. Browning, “Historians and Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom.” See also Wittmann, Beyond Justice. 10. D’Ancona, Post Truth. 11. Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush.” 12. Kelley-­Romano and Carew, “Make America Hate Again,” 40. 13. Ibid., 43. 14. Timm, “Donald Trump’s History of Talking about David Duke and White Supremacists.” 15. On Berlusconi, see Ginsborg, Silvio Berlusconi; Orsina, Berlusconism and Italy. 16. Schorske, “Weimar and the Intellectuals I.” 17. See Bessner, “The Ghosts of Weimar” for an example of a recent investigation of some of these currents in relation to the invocation of Trump as fascist. 18. For an examination of this process in Western Europe in the 1960s, see Mercer, “Specters of Fascism.” 19. Farrell, ‘I’m fascinated by Mussolini.” 20. Brenner, A Private War, 167. 21. See Herf, “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?”; Shanes, “Trump’s Deep Dive into Fascist, Anti-­Semitic Conspiracy Thinking”; Blow, “Trump Isn’t Hitler. But the Lying . . .” 22. Gregor, “ ‘Mein Kampf’: Some Afterthoughts,” 107. 23. Caplan, “Unsettling Echoes.” 24. Ibid. 25. Snyder, “Him.” 26. Snyder, Untitled Facebook Post; Snyder, On Tyranny. 27. Mikanowski, “The Bleak Prophecy of Timothy Snyder.”

232  Ben Mercer 8. Elbenni, “Tyranny in Twenty Lessons.” 2 29. Snyder, On Tyranny. 30. Weitz, “Donald Trump and Weimar Germany.” 31. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy.” See also Herf, “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” 32. Steigmann-­Gall, “What the Amerian Left Doesn’t Understand about Fascism.” 33. Marhoefer, “How Should We Protest Neo-­Nazis?” 34. Gregor, “ ‘To Think is to Compare’.” 35. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy.” See also Ruth Ben-­Ghiat’s multiple arguments about the authoritarian playbook of Trump. 36. Eley, “Is Trump a Fascist?” 37. See also Huyssen, “Behemoth Rises Again.” 38. Ibid. 39. Augstein, “Trump beim Namen nennen.” 40. Gregor, “Some Afterthoughts,” 107. 41. Ibid. 42. Iber, “History in an Age of Fake News.” 43. Ibid. 44. Bessner and Greenberg, “The Weimar Analogy.”

Bibliography Augstein, Jakob. “Trump beim Namen nennen.” Spiegel, 17 November  2016. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/donald-­ trump-­wie-­seine-­wahl-­die-­demokratie-­gefaehrdet-­kolumne-­a-­1121716.html. Bartov, Omer. Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Bessner, Daniel. “The Ghosts of Weimar: The Weimar Analogy in American Thought.” Social Research 84, no. 2 (Winter 2017): 831–855. Bessner, Daniel, and Udi Greenberg. “The Weimar Analogy.” Jacobin Magazine, 17 December  2016. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.jacobinmag. com/2016/12/trump-­hitler-­germany-­fascism-­weimar-­democracy/ Blow, Charles M. “Trump isn’t Hitler. But the Lying . . .” New York Times, 19 October 2017. Accessed 30 September 2019. www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/opinion/ trump-­isnt-­hitler-­but-­the-­lying.html?smid=tw-­nytopinion&smtyp=cur. Brenner, Marie. A Private War: Marie Colvin and Other Tales of Heroes, Scoundrels, and Renegades. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018. Browning, Christopher R. “Historians and Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom.” In Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Volume I, edited by John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell, 773–778. New York: Palgrave, 2001. ———. “The Suffocation of Democracy.” New York Review of Books, 25 October 2018. Accessed 30 September 2019. www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/ 25/suffocation-­of-­democracy/. Caplan, Jane. “Unsettling Echoes: Joseph Goebbels (1933), Sean Spicer (2017), Steve Bannon (2017).” History Workshop, 30 January 2017. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/unsettling-­echoes-­joseph-­goebbels­1933-­sean-­spicer-­2017-­steve-­bannon-­2017/. D’Ancona, Matthew. Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. London: Ebury Press, 2017.

Trump, Fascism, and Historians 233 Elbenni, Ahmed, “Tyranny in Twenty Lessons: Timothy Snyder on the Rise of Trump.” The Politic, 8 March  2017. Accessed 30 September  2019. https:// thepolitic.org/tyranny-­in-­twenty-­lessons-­timothy-­snyder-­on-­the-­rise-­of-­trump/. Eley, Geoff. “Is Trump a Fascist?” 19 March 2018. Accessed 30 September 2019. www.versobooks.com/blogs/3697-­broadside-­for-­the-­trump-­era-­is-­trump-­a-­fascist. Evans, Richard J. Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Farrell, Nicholas. “I’m Fascinated by Mussolini: Stephen Bannon Talks Fascism.” Spectator USA, 14 March 2018. Accessed 30 September 2019. https:// spectator.us/mussolini-­steve-­bannon/. Friedlander, Saul, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation. Nazism and the ‘Final Solution’. Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1992. Ginsborg, Paul. Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony. London: Verso, 2004. Gregor, Neil. “Mein Kampf’: Some Afterthoughts.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London 39, no. 1 (May 2017): 105–111. ———. “ ‘To Think Is to Compare’: Walther Rathenau, Trump and Hitler.” History Today, 20 February 2017. Accessed 30 September 2019. www.historytoday. com/history-­matters/%E2%80%98-­think-­compare%E2%80%99-­walther-­ rathenau-­trump-­and-­hitler. Heer, Hannes, and Klaus Naumann, eds. War of Extermination. The German Military in World War II, 1941–1944. New York: Berghahn, 2000. Herf, Jeffrey. “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” The American Interest, 7 March 2016. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.the-­american-­interest.com/2016/03/07/ is-­donald-­trump-­a-­fascist/. Huyssen, Andreas. “Behemoth Rises Again.” n+1 July  29, 2019. Accessed 30  September  2019. https://nplusonemag.com/online-­only/online-­only/behemoth­rises-­again/. Iber, Patrick. “History in an Age of Fake News.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 July 2018. Accessed 30 September 2019. www.chronicle.com/article/ History-­in-­an-­Age-­of-­Fake-­News/243982. Kelley-­Romano, Stephanie, and Kathryn L. Carew. “Make America Hate Again: Donald Trump and the Birther Conspiracy.” Journal of Hate Studies 14, no. 1 (2017–2018): 33–52. Knowlton, James, and Truett Cates, trans. Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? Original Documents of the Historikerstreit, the Controversy Concerning the Singularity of the Holocaust. Atlantic Highlands: N.J. Humanities Press, 1993. Madievski, Samson. “The War of Extermination: The Crimes of the Wehrmacht in 1941–1944.” Rethinking History 7, no. 2 (2003): 243–254. Marhoefer, Laurie. “How Should We Protest Neo-­Nazis? Lessons from German history.” The Conversation. Accessed 30 September 2019. https://theconversation. com/how-­should-­we-­protest-­neo-­nazis-­lessons-­from-­german-­history-­82645. Mercer, Ben. “Specters of Fascism: The Rhetoric of Historical Analogy in 1968.” Journal of Modern History 88 (March 2016): 96–129. Mikanowski, Jacob. “The Bleak Prophecy of Timothy Snyder.” The Chronicle Review, 12 April  2019. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.chronicle.com/ interactives/20190412snyder. Niven, Bill. Facing the Nazi Past. United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich, 140–170. London: Routledge, 2002.

234  Ben Mercer Orsina, Giovanni. Berlusconism and Italy: A  Historical Interpretation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Rousso, Henry. The Haunting Past. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Schorske, Carl E. “Weimar and the Intellectuals I.” New York Review of Books, 7 May  1970. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.nybooks.com/ articles/1970/05/07/weimar-­and-­the-­intellectuals-­i/. Shanes, Joshua. “Trump’s Deep Dive into Fascist, Anti-­ Semitic Conspiracy Thinking.” Haaretz. 23 October  2016. Accessed 30 September  2019. www. haaretz.com/opinion/trumps-­deep-­dive-­into-­fascist-­anti-­semitic-­conspiracy-­ thinking-­1.5452089. Snyder, Timothy. “Him.” Slate, 18 November 2016. Accessed 30 September 2019. https://slate.com/news-­and-­politics/2016/11/his-­election-­that-­november-­came-­ as-­a-­surprise.html. ———. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017. ———. Untitled Facebook Post, 15 November 2016. Accessed 30 September 2019. www.facebook.com/timothy.david.snyder/posts/1206636702716110 Steigmann-­Gall, Richard. “What the American Left Doesn’t Understand about Fascism.” Huffington Post, 10 June 2016. Accessed 30 September 2019. www. huffpost.com/entry/what-­the-­american-­left-­doesnt-­understand-­about-­fascism_ b_57f5e21ee4b050f8f9045022. Struk, Janina. “How Pictures Can Haunt a Nation.” Private Pictures. I.B. Tauris, 2011: 89–108. Suskind, Ron. “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush.” New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004. Accessed 30 September 2019. www. nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-­c ertainty-­a nd-­t he-­p residency-­o f-­ george-­w-­bush.html. Timm, Jane C. “Donald Trump’s History of Talking About David Duke and White Supremacists.” MSNBC, 29 February  2016. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-­trumps-­history-­talking-­about-­david-­duke­and-­white-­supremacists. Weitz, Eric D. “Donald Trump and Weimar Germany.” Tablet, July 18, 2016. Accessed 30 September  2019. www.tabletmag.com/jewish-­news-­and-­politics/ 207665/weimar-­germany-­and-­donald-­trump. Welzer, Harald. Grandpa wasn’t a Nazi: The Holocaust in German Family Remembrance. American Jewish Committee, 2005. Wittmann, Rebecca. “The Trial.” In Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

13 Decolonising Historiography in South Africa Reflecting on ‘Post-­Truth’ Relevance 25 Years Since Mandela June Bam-­Hutchison1 The End of Apartheid as Denial and Attempts to Challenge the Myth When the African National Congress won the elections in April  1994 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was promulgated as part of the new Constitution of 1996, it was evident that the material contradictions of apartheid South Africa remained regarding land ownership by the white minority. After 1994, many white people (who benefited materially) were also in denial of the major truths of colonialism and apartheid. This marks the period of South Africa entering the domain of post-­truth as a particular reconciliation historiographical paradigm – a seemingly benign, deliberate, and conscious denial and manipulation of truth. Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland makes the pertinent point that stories are sometimes deliberately wrong or told for political propaganda to advance an agenda or political purpose.2 A study by political scientist James Gibson conducted a few years after the TRC found that English-­speaking white South Africans accepted the truth of the TRC to help them reconcile the conflict and ‘move on’.3 Nelson Mandela became the trope for forgiveness and ‘moving on’. Nancy Clark and William Worger refer to white South Africans and their preoccupation with ‘moving on’ after 1994.4 Afrikaans-­speaking white people rejected the truth at the TRC as fabrication and therefore found reconciliation more difficult. Black South Africans welcomed the truth but still rejected reconciliation.5 An earlier 1998 survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) found that responsibility for the atrocities of the past was placed mainly on the doorsteps of anti-­apartheid activists and ‘troublemakers’ in black communities (57%)’.6 A similar sentiment of indifference by white school teachers to the facts of apartheid and its atrocities was found in a study in the late 1990s in former white schools in Cape Town.7 Today, according to the statistics of 2017, one-­quarter of

236  June Bam-­Hutchison the over 55 million people (majority black) in the country live in ‘extreme poverty’.8 In addition, the police reported over 19,000 murders per year.9 And 25  years after 1994, ordinary South Africans began taking to the streets often to strike and protest against inequality.10 Truth was negotiated and mediated in history education after the TRC. For example, in 1997 at a provincial history workshop, government official and historian Funiwe Jaiyesimi-­Njobe explained that history ‘was part of truth and reconciliation in order to shape the future’.11 He went on to say it was about ‘how truth [shall] be said in schools’. The provincial gathering expressed concern that the apartheid period of 1948–76 was not covered in the syllabus and that these gaps needed to be filled ‘to make our children able to live together’. There was clearly the desire by historians to protect white South Africans during this reconciliation process.12 A provincial government report similarly agreed, for instance ‘not to remove offensive material’.13 A national school history textbook research report found that ‘old era’ apartheid textbooks were predominantly used in township schools even after 1994.14 The educators who participated in the survey recommended the UNESCO General History of Africa volumes, Cheikh Diop’s Precolonial Black Africa, and (for high school students) the work of Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui. Although apartheid texts were considered undesirable, where the textbook covers frequently featured men in European army uniforms, they were still used. A  political lobby (which included political party–aligned historians) believed that history education had to conform with the national new agenda for reconciliation. Contrary to the broad embrace of a conscious post-­truth, South Africa has a long history of checking authoritarian versions of truth; opposition to apartheid historiography occurred long before the overthrow of apartheid itself. In fact, oppositional historiography to colonialism and imperialism dates back to the late 1800s through black literature and other popular histories produced throughout the 1900s.15 Clark and Worger speak of black-­authored fiction that provided insightful literature, such as works by Ezekiel Mphahlele and William Modisane.16 White liberal and Marxist revisionist historians tried to undo Afrikaner nationalist historiography and damaging myths of racial inferiority during the 1970s and 1980s. In the process, the vast, endless precolonial period and in fact the close to two centuries of slavery at the Cape got inadvertently buried.17 It is only recently that the precolonial has been identified as the neglected area of historical scholarship and features in such works as the 2008 Five Hundred Years Rediscovered edited by Swanepoel and colleagues. New questions in knowledge-­making partnerships with communities18 challenge hitherto traditionally accepted truths, such as whether indigenous people as a ‘tribe’ really died out from smallpox in the early 18th century at the Cape. Archie Mafeje pointed out that the indigenous South

Decolonising Historiography 237 African population in fact had no word for ‘tribe’, only for ‘nation’, ‘clan’, and ‘lineage’.19 Within the first ten years of democracy, The South African History Project contended that precolonial history and indigenous identities were indeed important ‘as through history education we need to comprehend fluidity and permeability through the learning of Oral history and the study of indigenous languages’.20 In this way, it was envisaged that students could examine the challenging nature of truth.21 The attempt to assert an African identity by recovering precolonial history through oral history traditions has not been easy.22 Historian Jeff Peires writes, for instance, about the challenges of researching a period for which little is written and no archaeological evidence is available: ‘the limited information which we have comes from recorded oral traditions, which have heretofore been distorted within a framework of Conventional Wisdom derived from reading history backwards’.23 For a long time, well into the new South Africa, many South African historians were dislocated from African historiography. It was only in 2004 that the eight-­volume UNESCO General History of Africa  – published between 1981 and 1993 to celebrate the intellectual independence of Africans – was introduced to libraries. Related to the dislocation from African historiography is the historiographical representation of Cape slavery (1653–1838). Historian Nigel Worden asserts that by 1806, slaves formed 55% of Cape Town’s inhabitants and that the historiographical trend was to accentuate the differences between ‘coloured’ and African Capetonians and in the process to link slavery further to an Islamic and Southeast Asian heritage that ignored its African components.24 This history of enslavement in the Cape spans a significant portion of the 342 years of external and internal (apartheid) colonialism from 1652 to 1994, of which the Cape slavery period covered close to 200 years (the better part of South Africa’s colonial history). Correcting such lacunae in historiography is important.

The Debate on ‘Truth’ in African Historiography The notion of absolute truth was rejected by postmodernist scholars already in the 1980s, as pointed out by South African historian Deborah Posel, and the philosophical idea of truth was rejected much earlier, in the 1970s.25 These emanated from ‘postcolonial critiques of Enlightenment thinking’ which drew on ‘the power of historiographies that unsettle the archival canon’.26 Much has been written about ‘truth’ and the TRC (notably, among them, Mahmood Mamdani in 2000 and 2002 and Charles Villa-­Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd27 in 2000). Although the TRC was not a practice in the discipline of history, it prompted historians to ask new, important questions about ‘truth’ in a South African context. According to South African historian Albert Grundlingh, historians were almost entirely absent from the TRC because of their scepticism around

238  June Bam-­Hutchison its production of truth.28 In 2004, Jacobus Du Pisani and Kwang-­Su Kim wrote about the difficulties in dealing with ‘truth’ faced by South African historians after the TRC. They pointed out that the discourse around ‘truth’ was not as simplistic as it was in the West and therefore more challenging. In this complex emotional national project, the South African public became politically engaged, eager to be ‘getting on’ with the democratic future after the TRC.29 Too much truth, they argued, would have threatened peace and the establishment of a democracy.30 In fact, historical truth would have been divisive. As subjective as this process of truth telling for peace and reconciliation was, South Africans had to engage with their own processes of determining a theory of truth relevant to its own reality, free of Eurocentric constructs. This self-­determination process was particularly important in that the discipline of history in South Africa was dominated by white people, not representative of the majority. The importance of African intellectual self-­determination is also discussed by Michael Eze.31 To restore the epistemological imbalance on truth, Posel speaks of ‘the conundrum of truth’32 and identifies different types of truth that emerged in South Africa after the TRC, which included narrative truth, social truth, healing truth, and restorative truth.33 Black and feminist South African historians are using innovative methods to write the truth and to invalidate colonially established archival ‘truths’. Babalwa Magoqwana writes about repositioning uMakhulu (grandmother) as an institution of knowledge beyond ‘biologism’ (menopause) as a response to the previous historiographical tradition to render women invisible as knowledge keepers in the precolonial period through to the present.34 These older African women are bearers of knowledge that have often been ignored by male historians. Black feminist South African historians like Yvette Abrahams tried to get around the colonial archive and its undisputed notions of ‘truth’ by writing a speculative history for her doctoral thesis on the indigenous woman Krotoa (c. 1643–1674), who lived in Cape Town’s Castle of Good Hope35 with Jan Van Riebeeck from childhood and who played the role of mediator and interpreter between the Khoe and the Dutch. Abrahams asks whether the indigenous Krotoa (baptised by the Dutch as ‘Eva’) was in fact raped by Dutch Commander Jan Van Riebeeck, a question that is still controversial in parts of South African society that continue to deny colonial violence.36 What are the silences and hidden instances of violence in the colonial archive? Abrahams used circumstantial evidence rather than ‘hard facts’ to successfully argue her historical studies thesis. And Nigerian historian Toyin Falola’s 2017 notion of the ritual archive challenges us to find the truth in intangible spaces integral to understanding African cosmologies and philosophies. Historical scholarship in South Africa in the 1990s was certainly influenced by not only African intellectuals who were producing such

Decolonising Historiography 239 Africa-­centric histories but also by European scholars like Michel Foucault on infinite labour and complexity of truth.37 These scholars who took on the challenge to take on the difficult and complex issues around truth emanated also from the historians who promoted an interdisciplinary public history discourse at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in the mid 1990s. This decolonial38 historiographical shift came with the Future of the Past conference held at UWC in 1996 with its themes around rethinking assumptions about objectivity.39 Coining the term ‘making histories’, they argued for multiple truths, questioned the boundaries of the disciplines, and raised the importance of oral evidence. The study of the obfuscation of truth was developed further at the South African Historical Society Conference, under the subtitle ‘Lies, Secrets and History’, held at UWC in July 1999.40 At this conference, this group of newer historians presented their sharp questioning of who speaks for South African pasts  – a reckoning with the complexities of truth in a post-­apartheid post-­TRC South Africa.41 Interdisciplinary discourse has created new opportunities for historians and for the discipline: epistemologies are bound up with new questions around ethics in research and discourses on decolonisation in the Global South – tied into philosophies on truth. In this context of decolonisation, historians are asking new questions about periodisation, linguistics, historical evidence, and constructed false identities imposed through colonialism and apartheid. What are the new challenges for decolonising epistemologies which scholars were grappling with specifically since 2015 with the Rhodes Must Fall student movement at universities across the country? In the 2018 edition of Whose History Counts?, established and newer South African historians tried to grapple with some of the new questions around truth.42 Nomathamsanqa Tisani calls the process of defining an African past as ‘precolonial’, ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ a misnomer,43 arguing instead for ‘Indigenous frameworks’ in an ‘African time’ consciousness.44 Maseko reminds us of the important relationship between language, power, and knowledge; English equivalents of Xhosa terms do not begin to convey concepts in their fuller cultural truth because distortion came as a result of cultural and linguistic prejudice that was couched in Christian evangelism.45 Nomalanga Mkhize speaks of the missing idiom in African historiography, where meaning and interpretation were lost when Eurocentric historians failed to understand (indigenous) idiomatic expressions: Xhosa texts should therefore be incorporated into the mainstream of South African historiography and be engaged with on equal terms.46 Carolyn Hamilton speaks of enfolded time and the challenges of the archive in exploring some of the terminological problems, temporal complications, and methodological challenges of enquiry into the southern African past before European colonialism.47 These female South African historians are engaged in a conscious decolonial scholarly project to contest the

240  June Bam-­Hutchison ‘absolute truths’ offered by the colonial, apartheid, and ‘reconciliation’ (post-­truth) historiographical paradigms. They argue for innovative rigour as historical method.

The Contested Museum Space and ‘Post-­Truth’: The Simonstown48 Museum The Simonstown Museum presents a fascinating case study on ‘post-­ truth’ (as reconciliation in favour of white South Africans). On a recent personal visit to the museum on 20 June 2019, an elderly former resident and relative (Stanley Charles)49 who was born there in 1932 was looking for the human remains of a deceased older relative and believed (as told through oral history in the family) that these may still be held by the museum in the dungeons. This search for the remains of the long-­deceased relative led nowhere, but it was revealed in the process of fact finding that the museum indeed held human remains unbeknown to the indigenous descendants forcibly removed from Simonstown in the 1960s. Not only is the museum reputed to be deceitful with visitors about the fact that it was a slave site since the 1700s, but it has also avoided the truth on human remains in its collection. The slave dungeon remains locked for visitations and is reluctantly opened by hostile and tense curators (both white and black South Africans). Still traumatised by the apartheid forced removals, Charles sharply observed that the dungeons have been turned into storerooms packed with paraphernalia and boxes of naval uniforms which hide the evidence of enslavement, such as the chains against the walls (which are still there). He was distressed and communicated to the museum staff that the truth was blatantly hidden and that the truth of the slave site (which he remembers being told about and shown as a child) was distorted through the creation of storage rooms that conceal the truth of incarceration. Simonstown Museum can be interpreted as a site of ‘post-­truth’ for reconciliation in South Africa; the reality of the slave site is deliberately hidden along with all its truths. Furthermore, the volunteers from the forcibly removed community have been participating in the museum’s Phoenix project (for the community’s stories).50 The proverbial phoenix bird clearly arises from the ashes to ensure reconciliation – at all cost – even if the truth has to be minimised and denied in the process. The Simonstown Historical Society was established during apartheid by white people in 1977 and produces several interesting pamphlets on the ‘history of Simon’s Town’. Mostly focused on European history (British and Dutch), a major feature of its historical narrative and memorialisation is Just Nuisance – the endearing dog who stole the heart of British naval soldiers during the Second World War. The museum’s narrative is much informed by the openly Eurocentric historiography of the Simon’s Town Historical Association. Although the city has attempted in

Decolonising Historiography 241 recent years to acknowledge the painful history of forced removals with a heritage trail on the main road and has also acknowledged in 2017 the over six hundred black combat labourers and support staff who perished in the SS Mendi off the coast of England in February  1917 during the First World War, it is openly deceitful – even in the face of overwhelming evidence. No excuses are provided, and no shame is shown. The small Mendi commemoration plaque is installed behind the more overpowering statue of Just Nuisance, who was buried in full naval colours as an ‘officer’. Ironically, the mythical figure of a dog overshadows the truth of the over six hundred black South African men who perished in a world war. One pamphlet, ‘Simonstown: walking the historic mile’, starts with Cecil Rhodes and the opening of the railway station on 1 December 1890, which coincided (for the ex-­residents) with the commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in Simonstown. The coincidence is not noted. The rest of the narrative focuses on British architecture. The Group Areas Act of 1967 is briefly referred to in a subclause of a few words. One of the families forcibly removed from Simonstown were the well-­known Amlays. Their family home was turned into a naval office after they were forcibly removed. In the pamphlet, there is reference to ‘Amlays Building’, with no further detail of who the Amlays were. Down the road is ‘Amlay House’, today occupied by the elderly ex-­residents couple (childhood friends of Mr  Charles and now also in their late 80s), Mr and Mrs Davidson (who are members of the Amlay family). The Davidsons occupy the house from which they can no longer view the beach (some yards away) because the navy constructed a high wall between their house and the beach. They have turned the family home into a heritage museum, displaying the stories of those forcibly removed, including the many residents who were Muslim. The tensions between the white management at the provincial Simonstown Museum and Mr and Mrs Davidson (regarding who is telling the ‘truer’ story) are palpable. Visitors to the town may easily miss Amlay’s house if their first stop is the provincial museum, which is located on the left of the main road as one enters the naval town. The marketing brand for the museum is the face of Just Nuisance, a well posted highly visible land mark as one enters the town. ‘The Legendary Able Seaman Just Nuisance’, published by the Simon’s Town Museum in 1999, is an eight-­page pamphlet which details the timeline of the dog’s life from the day it was born. The much-­ loved dog was nursed on a hospital bed in the Royal Naval Hospital and was buried with full military colours, the last post and a gun salute. Published by the Simonstown Historical Society in 2012, A Brief History of Simonstown mentions the indigenous people as ‘small groups who lived in the area before the advent of the so-­called Settlers’.51 There are two anomalies here – ‘small groups’ and ‘so-­called Settlers’ (‘so-­called’ was used during apartheid resistance to denote a deliberate falsehood,

242  June Bam-­Hutchison such as ‘so-­called Coloureds’).52 Typically used as propaganda during apartheid, such ‘truths’ were used to denote the impression of empty land (in this case, the presence of a few people suggested that the land was sparsely populated and that the Europeans were therefore not ‘settlers’ but first inhabitants). The suggestion is that the land was therefore innocently settled without the need for warfare. The narrative further points to ‘peaceful negotiations with Klaas Jager’ in 1717 to ‘establish farms’. By this time, the narrative fails to mention that slavery was by then in full swing in the area and that the indigenous people had already lost the land at the Cape and were controlled by the first pass laws introduced by Jan Van Riebeeck in the late 1600s to control the movement of the indigenous people in the Cape Colony.53 There is no single mention of slavery. By then, San or Bushmen54 were shot on sight as an everyday practice, and this practice continued well into the 20th century. The narrative includes a short description of the Group Areas Act of 1950 and includes that a few residents managed to return with a brief mention of the loss suffered. ‘The Dutch and Huguenot Legacy in Simon’s Town’, a pamphlet version of Prof. J. (Boet) Dommisse’s Dumps Willis Memorial lecture (delivered on 29 February 2012) to the Simonstown Historical Society is a little more committed to telling the fuller truth. It explicitly refers to the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) and its 16,839 slaves but quickly diminishes the indigenous presence, indicating that trade occurred between the Europeans and ‘the few KhoiSan people living there along the Liesbeeck river’. It also emphasises the ‘good relationship with Klaas Jager’, a local, but fails to provide the historical context of the period in which the indigenous people were already driven desperately to their knees after having lost much of their grazing lands and access to fresh water. The ‘good relationship’ amounts to a significant simplification of a period fraught with well-­documented conflict, violence, and brutal and forceful land occupation for almost 60 years after the DEIC’s permanent military and economic settlement at the Cape in 1652 after the many wars fought. Under the heading ‘Life in Simon’s Bay in the Seventeen-­Seventies’, the narrative emphasises that ‘the slaves’ were ‘generally well looked after, but there were many episodes of extreme cruelty, often for trivial offences and several slaves were known to have run away’. ‘Cattle were kept above Red Hill and relations with the Khoisan people seem to have been good’. Dommisse then contradicts this South African ‘rainbow’ narrative to mention the Russian ship which docked in 1808 and to mention that the captain made ‘extensive notes about the place and people’, indicating that ‘the slaves are kept very poorly and treated cruelly’. Dommisse further writes that reminders of the slaves and the deportees are the cells beneath the Residency55 which were slave quarters, and later holding cells. There

Decolonising Historiography 243 is a cave along the shoreline near Cape Point where Antoni, an escaped slave, took shelter  – and where some believe one can still see his image. ‘The Old Burying Ground (1813–1911) Seaforth  – Simon’s Town’ lists ‘interesting gravestones of 15 descriptions, with number 13 in the list stating simply ‘The Muslim Section’ (the only entry with no description)’. The Muslim community originated from the slaves brought here from the East by the DEIC. ‘Simon’s Town Museum’ pamphlet simply states that the museum was established in 1977 and moved to the ‘Residency’ in 1982. The truth is less anodyne: the building was once owned by a slave trader and incorporated a slave dungeon. The largest part of South Africa’s colonial history is its slave history of close to 200 years. Apartheid’s history spanned close to 50 years but is the main reference for reconciliation and peace. The narrative gives the following description: ‘This building dates from 1777  .  .  . originally for the governor of the Dutch East India Company. . . . it has served as a hospital, school, post office, police station, and goal and was until 1980 the Magistrate’s Court’. Established during the era of slavery56 with its telling spikes on cell ceilings (similar slave dungeons exist in the Castle of Good Hope and Cape Castle in Ghana), the former dungeon ostentatiously excludes the issue of slavery from the historical narrative. The main theme is ‘the cultural history of Simon’s Town’ with no reference to Amlay House. However, the slave narrative and the truth of the building make their way into an obscure and difficult-­to-­read map (in small blotchy print) of the floor plans on page 2, which call the slave dungeons The Awaiting Trial Cell, marked number 13; another is called The Black Hole (similar to the one in the DEIC’s Castle of Good Hope). There is – much to the relief of the ex-­resident expellees who know the fuller truth from oral history – mention of the ‘slave quarters and cells’ marked number 14. But then the narrative quickly swings away from the truth to appease the assumed white reader: ‘The stocks were used outside and used to punish drunk and disorderly men and women’; the stocks marked number 15; the punishment cell number 16; and ‘The Punishment cell: still shows the whiplash marks on the ceiling’. With this quick swing in the narrative, it is not clear to the reader whether this is reference to enslavement or to ‘disorderly’ people who deserved to be punished. The Just Nuisance Room is marked number 7 at the front centre across the entrance, leading into The People of Simon’s Town and Phoenix Project Room. Khoe and San history is at number 3, marked as ‘Early History’ and ‘hunter gatherers’. In the museum itself, this portion is nothing more than a small section inside a glass case in the corner. The pamphlet ‘Simonstown and the forced removals of the 1960s’ (undated) starts with a little promise of the truth, but the indigenous

244  June Bam-­Hutchison presence diminishes quickly, which is a consistent trope in the Historical Society’s narrative: Small bands of Bushmen . . . still lived around the Peninsula around 1488 when the Portuguese first rounded the Cape.  .  .  . After the Dutch arrived at the Cape in 1652 these people were eased out due to various reasons but a smallpox epidemic in 1713 killed off 9 out of 10 of these inhabitants, and having lost their wealth and independence, they were forced to become labourers and slaves for the colonial settlers. . . . According to early records in the Archives a sailor’s diary records that in 1790 indigenous people still regularly fired on the Dutch East India Company  .  .  . from above Simon’s Bay with their bows and arrows. . . . Slaves made up the majority of the population (which included the indigenous) by 1814 in Simon’s Town; by 1960 the indigenous people were still the majority at around 5000 people. (emphases added) ‘Post-­truth’ for reconciliation occurs here in a few instances: first, the small presence of indigenous people (there was little need for conflict over resources); second, the notion that the land was empty; third, that the extinction of the indigenous people was due to smallpox; and fourth, no mention of genocidal activities against the Bushmen – they were simply ‘eased out’ (there was no genocide). Another pamphlet ‘The Residency’ (undated; author unknown) starts with the town’s history in 1687 with Simon van der Stel and the naming of Simon’s Bay. It mentions briefly that the present museum building consisted of ‘slave cells’ on the ground floor. What is remarkable is that all these Simon’s Town narratives fail to connect indigenous people, slave dungeons, and the people forcibly removed during apartheid to black townships. It is about telling as little of the truth as possible, despite well-­ established evidence, with the aim of not offending white South Africans.

Conclusion As has been shown, defining a simplistic notion of post-­truth is not so easy in a multifarious post-­TRC-­truth South Africa. Post-­truth as a useful concept in South Africa is intertwined with discourse around the decolonisation of epistemologies in African philosophies and realities. In South Africa, it is tied up with reconciliation discourse at all cost, though female South African historians provide exciting alternatives to find new forms of truth in methods that are endogenous, rigorous, and decolonial. For instance, how do we deal with the challenge of strategic essentialist claims to indigeneity and contested claims to land that are based on often-­precarious and ironic Verwoerdian typologies of ‘race’?

Decolonising Historiography 245 Are positivist approaches to truth and lies helpful in addressing these new challenges? Are there alternative African philosophical conceptual frameworks for ‘post-­truth’ that are more useful for our context? Clearly, for South Africans, the discourse is more about the methods of truth finding in keeping authorities accountable in a political climate focused on truth for reconciliation at the expense of the poor. It is expected of scholars, such as historians, to find new questions and methods to address what epistemological justice as a process would entail. What are the methodologically ethical and germane processes for truth finding in Africa in a post-­truth global world where it is easier to avoid uncomfortable truths and difficult histories or where the preoccupation of reconciliation eschews the scholarly pursuit of truth? South Africa has been in the domain of post-­truth as a particular reconciliation historiographical paradigm since 1994. What appears benign is instead a deliberate and conscious denial and manipulation of ‘truth’. As a response to this epistemological challenge, the contemporary Khoe and San revivalist movement engages in public performative counternarratives.57 These include creative theatrical ritual performances at sites of memory. The South African historian’s engagement with truth is now impossible in the limited Western disciplinary canon of history; memories of the future are made at an accelerating pace within these sites, to compensate for the continuing loss in truth.

Notes 1. Also writes as June Bam. 2. Freedland, “Post-­Truth.” 3. Gibson, “Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation?” 4. Clark and Worger, South Africa, 40. 5. Gibson, “Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation?” 214–215. 6. See Theissen and Hamber, “A State of Denial,” 2–3, 8–12. 7. See Bam, “The Current Relevance of Populist History in Schools.” 8. Africa Check. 9. Ibid. 10. See Goodman, Eyerman, and Alexander, Staging Solidarity. 11. The “Memorandum of Provincial Consultative Plenary for History,” Cintsa Mouth East, Eastern Cape, 29–30 April 1997. 12. See also Bam, “Negotiating History, Truth and Reconciliation and Globalization.” 13. Task Team Report of “The Schools’ Standard Ten History Curriculum and Syllabus Restructuring and Transformation, Department of Curriculum Policy and Development, Province of the Eastern Cape,” dated June 1997. 14. May 2002 Ministerial Committee public call of the South African History Project (SAHP). 15. See Bam, “The Development of a New History Curriculum.” 16. Examples include Mphahlele’s The Unbroken Song and Modisane’s Blame Me on History. See Clark and Worger, South Africa, 9. 17. E.g. South African historian Nigel Worden. See Baderoon, “Reading the Hidden History of the Cape.”

246  June Bam-­Hutchison 18. The Aboriginal/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum established at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town in 2018 is an example. 19. Mafeje, “The Ideology of ‘Tribalism’,” 254. 20. Ministry of Education, “South African History Project Progress Report 2001–2003.” 21. Ibid., 38. 22. See also Buthelezi, “Sifuna umlando wethu.” 23. See Peires, “He Wears Short Clothes!” 333–354. 24. Worden. “Indian Ocean Slaves,” 404. 25. Posel, “History as Confession,” 124. 26. Ibid., 124–125. 27. The liberal-­minded grandson of former prime minister and sociologist Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. 28. Verbuyst, “History,” 8. 29. Du Pisani and Kwang-­Su, “Establishing the Truth,” 81–82. 30. Ibid., 85. 31. Eze, Intellectual history, 127. 32. Posel, “History as Confession,” 139. 33. Ibid., 132–140. 34. See chapter 5 of Bam, Ntsebeza and Zinn, eds., Whose History Counts. 35. The temporary fort was built before the construction of the bigger and permanent Castle of Good Hope (1666). 36. See Abrahams, “Was Eva Raped?” 3–21. 37. See Malpas, “Retrieving Truth,” 296. 38. See Maldonado-­Torres, “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality.” 39. Witz and Rassool, “Making Histories.” 40. See White, “The Most Telling: Lies, Secrets, and History,” 11–25; Minkley and Legassick, “Not Telling,” 1–10; Etherington, “Genocide by Cartography,” 207. 41. See Rassool, “The Rise of Heritage,” 1–21. 42. Bam et al., eds., Whose History Counts. 43. Ibid., 15. 44. Ibid., 31. 45. Ibid., 41–44. 46. Ibid., 72. 47. Ibid., 91. 48. Both spellings ‘Simon’s Town’ and ‘Simonstown’ are used in the pamphlets. It is used in this chapter as per the chosen spelling in the primary source. 49. The father of the author. 50. See discussion of the ‘rainbow’ nation initiative in Salter-­Jansen, “Simon’s Town Museum’s Project Phoenix” 51. The author of the pamphlet uses the term ‘so-­called Settlers’. The reason for this is not clear, but it could be a tongue-­in-­cheek reference to Economic Freedom Front’s leader Julius Malema’s campaign slogan of ‘One Settler, One bullet’. 52. See Wicomb, “Shame and Identity,” 93, for a discussion on the prefix. 53. This is the earliest incidence of pass laws introduced in what became South Africa. Passes were also later introduced during the migrant labour system of the 1800s and 1900s and entrenched during apartheid between 1952 and 1986 as an identity book which black people were forced to carry. 54. Both terms ‘San’ and ‘Bushmen’ are used and accepted today in South African scholarship. Descendants, themselves, prefer the latter and consider the former derogatory.

Decolonising Historiography 247 55. The winter residence built in 1777 for the Dutch East India Company’s Cape governor. 56. See Young, The Enslaved people of Simons Town 1743–1843. For a discussion on new methods for studying slavery from a people’s perspective, see Worden, “Cape Slaves in the Paper Empire of the VOC,” 23–44. 57. For a fuller discussion, see Bam, “Contemporary Khoisan Heritage Issues,” 123–135.

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248  June Bam-­Hutchison Buthelezi, Mbongiseni Patrick. “Sifuna umlando wethu (We are Searching for Our History): Oral Literature and the Meanings of the Past in Post-­apartheid South Africa.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012. Clark, Nancy L., and William H. Worger.  South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2013. Davenport, Thomas R. H., and Christopher Saunders. South Africa: A Modern History. Basingstoke, Hants and London: Macmillan Press, 2000. Deacon, Janette. “The Power of a Place in Understanding Southern San Rock Engravings.” World Archaeology 20, no. 1 (1988): 129–140. Denis, Philippe, and Radikobo Ntsimane, eds. Oral History in a Wounded Country: Interactive Interviewing in South Africa. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-­Natal Press, 2008. Du Pisani, Jacobus A., and Kwang-­Su Kim. “Establishing the Truth about the Apartheid Past: Historians and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” African Studies Quarterly 8, no. 1 (2004): 77–95. Etherington, Norman. “Genocide by Cartography: Secrets and Lies in Maps of the South-­Eastern African Interior, 1830–1850.” In Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies, edited by David Trigger and Gareth Griffiths. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Eze, Michael Onyebuchi. Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Falola, Toyin. “Ritual Archives.” In  The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, edited by Adeshina Afolayan and Toyin Falola. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Fataar, Aslam. “Policy Networks in Recalibrated Political Terrain: The Case of School Curriculum Policy and Politics in South Africa.” Journal of Education Policy 21, no. 6 (2006): 641–659. Freedland, Jonathan. “Post-­ Truth, Lies and Fake News.” YouTube video, 1:43:11, from the 2017 King’s College London Education Lecture, posted by “Kings ECS,” 17 July 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-­uFBSNBvHk. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Gibson, James L. “Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation? Testing the Causal Assumptions of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process.” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004): 201–217. Goodman, Tanya, Ronald Eyerman, and Jeffrey C. Alexander. Staging Solidarity: Truth and Reconciliation in a New South Africa. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2015. Heese, Hans Friedrich. Groep sonder grense:(die rol en status van die gemengde bevolking aan die Kaap, 1652–1795). Wes-­Kaaplandse Instituut vir Historiese Navorsing, Universiteit van Wes-­Kaapland, 1984. Kline, Benjamin. “The National Union of South African Students: A Case-­Study of the Plight of Liberalism, 1924–77.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 23, no. 1 (1985): 139–145. Legassick, Martin, and Ciraj Rassool. Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African Museums and the Trade in Human Remains, 1907–1917. Cape Town: South African Museum, 2000. Mafeje, Archie. “The Ideology of ‘Tribalism’.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 2 (1971): 253–261.

Decolonising Historiography 249 Maldonado-­Torres, Nelson. “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality.” (2016). Accessed 4 November  2019. Foundation Frantz Fanon: https://fondation-­frantzfanon.com/outline-­of-­ten-­theses-­on-­coloniality-­and­decoloniality/. Malpas, Jeff. “Retrieving the Truth: Modernism, Post-­modernism and The Problem of Truth.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 75, no. 2–3 (1992). Mamdani, Mahmood. “Amnesty or Impunity? A  Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC).” Diacritics 32, no. 3–4 (2002): 33–59. ———. “A Diminished Truth.” In After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, edited by Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver, 58–62. Cape Town: Philip, 2000. ———. “The Truth According to the TRC.” In The Politics of Memory: Truth, Healing and Social Justice, edited by Ifi Amadiume and Abdullahi An-­Na’im. London; New York: Zed Books, 2000. Ministry of Education. “South African History Project Progress Report 2001– 2003.” Incorporating the Report of the History and Archaeology Panel (Update 2003), Values in Education Initiative, Pretoria. Minkley, Gary, and Martin Legassick. “Not Telling: Secrecy, Lies, and History.” History and Theory 39, no. 4 (2000): 1–10. Modisane, Bloke. Blame Me on History. London: Penguin, 1963. Morris, Alan G. “The Reflection of the Collector: San and Khoi Skeletons in Museum Collections.” The South African Archaeological Bulletin 42, no. 145 (1987): 12–22. Mphahlele, Ezekiel. The Unbroken Song: Selected Writings of Esḱia Mphahlele. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981. Nieuwoudt, Sharné, Kasha Elizabeth Dickie, Carla Coetsee, Louise Engelbrecht, and Elmarie Terblanche. “Retracted Article: Age-­and Education-­Related Effects on Cognitive Functioning in Colored South African women.” www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13825585.2019.1598538. Ntsebeza, Lungisile. Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the Politics of the Land in South Africa. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005. Peires, Jeff. “ ‘He Wears Short Clothes!’: Rethinking Rharhabe (c. 1715–c. 1782).” Journal of Southern African Studies 38, no. 2 (2012): 333–354. Posel, Deborah. “History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Public Culture 20, no. 1 (2008): 119–141. Rassool, Ciraj. “The Rise of Heritage and the Reconstitution of History in South Africa.” Kronos, no. 26 (2000): 1–21. Salter-­Jansen, Cathrynne. “Simon’s Town Museum’s Project Phoenix: A Journey Towards Transformation from 1996 to 2010.” International Journal of the Inclusive Museum 3, no. 3 (2011). Schramm, Katharina. “Casts, Bones and DNA: Interrogating the Relationship Between Science and Postcolonial Indigeneity in Contemporary South Africa.” Anthropology Southern Africa 39, no. 2 (2016): 131–144. Shepherd, Nick. “Archaeology Dreaming: Post-­Apartheid Urban Imaginaries and the Bones of the Prestwich Street Dead.” Journal of Social Archaeology 7, no. 1 (2007): 3–28. Swanepoel, Natalie, Amanda Esterhuysen, and Philip Bonner, eds. Five Hundred Years Rediscovered: Southern African Precedents and Prospects. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008.

250  June Bam-­Hutchison Theissen, Gunnar, and Brandon Hamber. “A State of Denial: White South Africans’ Attitudes to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Indicator South Africa 15, no. 1 (1998): 8–12. Verbuyst, Rafael. “Claiming Cape Town: Towards a Symbolic Interpretation of Khoisan Activism and Land Claims.” Anthropology Southern Africa 39, no. 2 (2016): 83–96. ———. “History, Historians and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” New Contree, no. 6 (July  2013). http://repository.nwu.ac.za/ handle/10394/9030. Villa-­Vicencio, Charles, and Wilhelm Verwoerd, eds. Looking Back, Reaching Forward: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2000. White, Luise. “The Most Telling: Lies, Secrets, and History.” South African Historical Journal 42, no. 1 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1080/02582470008671365. Witz, Leslie, and Ciraj Rassool. “Making histories.” Kronos 34, no. 1 (2008). www.scielo.org.za/pdf/kronos/v34n1/v34n1a01.pdf. Worden, Nigel. “Cape Slaves in the Paper Empire of the VOC.” Kronos 40, no. 1 (2014). www.scielo.org.za/pdf/kronos/v40n1/02.pdf. ———. “Indian Ocean Slaves in Cape Town, 1695–1807.” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 389–408. Young, Joline. “The Enslaved People of Simons Town 1743–1843.” Masters diss., University of Cape Town, 2013. https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/6849.

14 Museums as Critical Spaces for Alterity in a Post-­Truth World Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa We live in a post-­truth world. Leaders and movements all around the world are building physical and virtual walls through narratives that aim to corrupt history in order to exclude the ‘others’, those that are seen as fundamentally different. Therefore, it is not only necessary but vital to remember the past in order to learn from it and there is no better space to do so than a museum. Consequently, museums can play a crucial role in counteracting post-­truth discourses by sensitising people through art and other aesthetic expressions that can keep memories alive, bring the past to the present, or raise awareness of certain realities, provoking the viewers, fostering reflection, and stimulating some empathy towards the suffering and pain of the other. Museums are uniquely placed to appeal to those emotions which seem to dominate public opinion in this post-­truth era.

Introduction On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. On that same day, 27 years later, Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the United States presidential election, the man who has sworn to build a wall on that country’s southern border. Trump is not the only leader who seeks to build walls – physical or imaginary – around the world: Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Santiago Abascal in Spain, and Marine Le Pen in France are other examples of this trend. These leaders and their rhetoric signify new divisions being erected throughout the world. We live in a time without memory. The world seems to have lost the ability to look back, to think about the past, and to remember. As George Santayana stated in the 19th century, ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.1 We are living in the times of post-­truth. It is crucial to recover our past, but in a mediatised world, it seems that words are no longer enough, and therefore, it is necessary to use images as well – hence the importance of public spaces such as museums. For younger generations, images can sometimes be more shocking and striking than can the most eloquent speech. One of the keys to sensitising

252  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa people about what once happened can be found in visual testimonies displayed by museums, places of remembrance not only of historical facts but also of fundamental issues and values. Turning our eyes to them is therefore indispensable. Consequently, the hypothesis of this chapter is that, by using the pieces  – either historical or artistic  – that museums exhibit, they can counteract the discourse of post-­truth, since these institutions not only give visibility to certain events but can also provoke the viewer, foster reflection, and stimulate some compassion towards the suffering and pain of the other – that is, to appeal to the emotions which seem to dominate in this era.

Post-­Truth and Alterity In 2016, amid the shock of the outcome of the Brexit referendum and Trump’s victory, Oxford Dictionaries declared that its international word of the year was ‘post-­truth’, defining it as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.2 In post-­truth times, it is ‘easy to cherry-­pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’,3 ignoring or completely discarding objective evidence to reinforce a particular vision of the world. For this reason, this phenomenon has intensified the opposition of two groups that fight to make their narrative the one that dominates the public discussion: the expert elites and the populist demagogues, the former treating ‘the status quo’s understanding of the past as a reliable basis for moving into the future’ and the latter considering ‘status quo as possessing a corrupt understanding of the past that inhibits movement into a still better future’.4 However, what the second group, the one who disdains the opinion of experts and elites, often considers a better future does not always coincide with the vision of a better tomorrow for society as a whole, but only for certain groups for which they seek to advance particular interests. This polarisation has become much more evident because of mass and social media, fora in which ‘people are provided with either conflicting news accounts, which they are then forced to resolve for themselves, or simply the news account that corresponds to their revealed preferences’, what Oxford Dictionaries defines as emotions or personal beliefs, and consequently, ‘truth is no longer the arbiter of legitimate power but rather the mask of legitimacy that is worn by everyone in pursuit of power’.5 In many leaders’ and movements’ quests for power, they have used divisive discourses that directly appeal to the emotions of certain people, making them feel part of a group with common characteristics and directing them to attack opposing groups. Thus, these leaders have found in the process of othering their most powerful weapon, for ‘the negotiation of identity often involves Othering, or noting differences between individuals and groups, to identify what power a person or group has

Museums as Critical Spaces 253 and what power that person or group would prefer to have’.6 Consequently, ‘Othering, or the process of identifying an individual or group of people as the Other, marks them as strange, foreign, exotic, or heathen. Usually, these descriptions of Otherness are negative or unfavourable’.7 Nevertheless, the Other can also be a positive disassociation. A positive disassociation is such that leads individuals to be ‘concerned by the alterity of the other: fraternity’,8 to an equal relationship in which one is for the other what the other is for one. In these times of post-­truth, that spirit of recognition and acceptance, of fraternity, must be built – or rescued – through sensory experiences capable of arousing feelings that can effectively lead to a sense of compassion for the suffering of those others, a mission in which museums can play a fundamental role.

Museums as Spaces for Alterity There are at least two ways that museums can be a post-­truth escape valve: the memorial and the critique. Although it might seem that showing the same art pieces that have already been seen is tautological or of little relevance, the impact that this can have depends on how they are updated; that is, it depends on the reappropriation of the artworks. To illustrate both cases, we have chosen several examples that show a cross between the past and the present in which museums have not only sought a remembrance of events but also the generation of new historically themed exhibitions, giving them visibility before the eyes of new generations in a striking way or by discussing new themes with pieces already known to viewers for their emblematic character in art history. In terms of the memorial, new spaces have appeared in recent years not only with the aim of raising awareness and generating compassion through the recollection of past events to avoid their recurrence, but also for motivating the celebration of differences through reinterpretations and reappropriations of these events. An important example is the National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC  – opened in the turbulent year of 2016 – a ‘comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history’,9 beyond the story of a community marked by slavery, segregation, and discrimination. The museum displays an astonishing 3500 pieces – while keeping 35,000 others in the collection – including Harriet Tubman’s personal items, Michael Jackson’s fedora, and artworks by Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, and Henry O. Tanner.10 In the same sense, an example of reappropriation was the installation of two pieces, Rosa Parks and Cellular Power,11 carried out by the Nelson Mandela Chair of Human Rights in Cinema and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2017. Both pieces were

254  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa mounted on the esplanade of the University Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City with support from the Embassy of the United States of America and the Memory and Tolerance Museum. The first installation, Rosa Parks, consisted of a bus that screened a documentary about the iconic black woman who refused to relinquish her seat to a white man that detonated a series of protests  – a seminal event in the civil rights movement – while Cellular Power consisted of a rectangular box in which people could enter and observe pictures of members of the Black Panthers Party that dated from 1968. The most interesting thing about it was that in all of the photographs, mobile phones were placed in the hands of the members; this was done with the intention of showing how technology enables not only the organisation of social movements but also the immediate and simple denunciation of injustices and abuses of power.12 In the first case, spectators were invited to a historical trip where they enter a recreated bus and learn about the context of what happened through videos; in the second, through the photomontage of a contemporary element, spectators were invited to reflect on the tools we now have and how the members of the Black Panther Party, despite lacking them, were able to raise their voices against injustice. In this way, not only was visibility given to historical facts, but viewers were also invited to imagine being part of these events, thus appealing to their feelings to generate awareness. It is worth mentioning the participation of two important collaborators for the realisation of the exhibition. First, the United States Embassy, whose involvement is notable given the xenophobic tone of several statements directed by President Donald Trump against Mexican migrants in that country, highlighting the differences between the president’s speech and the actions of the State Department and showing the ability of its officials to challenge the post-­truth rhetoric through the sponsorship of this kind of escape valves that help to generate compassion. Second, the Memory and Tolerance Museum may well itself be an example of promoting compassion since its mission is to Disseminate the importance of tolerance, non-­violence and Human Rights. Raise awareness through historical memory, particularly from genocides and other crimes. Alert about the danger of indifference, discrimination and violence to create responsibility, respect and awareness in each individual that leads to social action.13 The museum tries to achieve this goal through both its temporary and permanent exhibitions, focused on telling the story of the genocides in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia, Darfur, and Armenia, as well as the Holocaust, the latter being the one that stands out among them all. It begins by narrating 2000 years of Jewish presence in Europe

Museums as Critical Spaces 255 and their contributions to the cultural and scientific boom of the continent and then features a large collection of photographs, testimonies, and objects that transports viewers to the past by showing them the horrors that this community lived through from the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany to the end of World War II. Among all the objects exhibited in this museum in the Mexican capital, perhaps the most confrontational of all is a train wagon that was used to transport Jews to concentration camps. This wagon, donated by the Polish Railway Museum through the Auschwitz State Museum,14 was restored to facilitate the entry of visitors, who could experience the effects of dehumanisation to which millions of people were subjected to, thus generating powerful feelings that result in a positive dissociation of the other (Figure 14.1). In museums’ role in promoting a critical perspective, they can function as spaces that offer incentives to reflect on issues of a topical nature to trigger awareness. In that spirit, for example, on 20 January  2017, the day of the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States, several museums and cultural institutions in the United States closed their doors, and although none of them were of considerable celebrity, it is worth highlighting the nonconformity generated and the importance that a museum could have if it were to carry out this type of action. In a similar vein, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in an act of protest against the executive order of President Trump’s banning immigration from Muslim majority countries, exhibited works of the Sudanese painter Ibrahim el-­Salahi; of the Iranian artists Tala Madani,

Figure 14.1 Original boxcar used to transport Jews and other Holocaust victims during World War II at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico City, Mexico. Courtesy of Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. Source: Photograph by Museo Memoria y Tolerancia/CC BY-­SA (https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-­sa/4.0) via Wikimedia Commons15

256  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa Parviz Tanavoli, Siah Armajani, and Marcos Griogorian; and of the Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, replacing works by Picasso, Matisse, and Picabia.16 In addition, alongside each work, the museum placed texts explaining its intention: This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens are being denied entry into the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on Jan. 27, 2017. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum’s collection installed throughout the fifth-­floor galleries to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum as they are to the United States.17 In this way, through the exhibition and artworks themselves, the critique generated expresses both its discontent with Trump’s executive order and a pluralistic position that leads to the acceptance of the people that the government is rejecting and the understanding of a different reality through each of the pieces: The first substitute that viewers encounter at MoMA is a Cubist-­ inflected painting, from 1991, by the late Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid; its subject is an unrealized design for a health club set into a hillside overlooking Hong Kong, but its sepulchral palette of rust-­brown and thundercloud-­gray suggests a world on the brink of destruction. It hangs adjacent to Henri Rousseau’s crowd-­pleasing canvas ‘The Sleeping Gypsy’ (1897), an oneiric scene of a black woman traveller, safely at rest and attended by a peaceable lion. Of course, the reality for black and female bodies (not to mention brown, queer, and trans ones) is far from a dream in Trump’s America.18 Thus, displaying the works in this space can be considered a powerful discourse that advocates for inclusion; the active contemplation of each of the pieces invites the understanding of the other, of otherness itself, which is today not only crucial but necessary. Another relevant case is that of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, which decided not to exhibit the work created or donated by immigrants from 16 February through to 21 February 2017, a period that corresponded with the American federal holiday Presidents’ Day, in an initiative called Art-­Less. The curators covered 120 works of art – about 20% of the total exhibition – with a black cloth and placed labels stating ‘Made by an Immigrant’ and/or ‘Donated by an Immigrant’ to show the importance of immigrants in the art world. A particularly notable absence during the Presidents’ Day holiday was a portrait of President George Washington, painted by the Swedish-­born artist Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, who arrived in the United States in the 1790s. Lisa Fischman, the director of the Davis Museum, declared that ‘Art-­Less

Museums as Critical Spaces 257 demonstrates in stark and indisputable terms the impact of immigration on our collections, and we proudly take the opportunity to signal that impact, to honour the gifts of creativity and generosity that make the Davis Museum and the Wellesley community great’.19 Along the same lines, the Prado Museum teamed up with World Wide Fund for Nature for a campaign entitled +1,5°C Lo Cambia Todo – which translates from Spanish to +1.5°C Changes Everything – to warn about climate change by showing, through the alteration of some works of art, how the planet would be if the temperature were to rise by more than 1.5°C, the ‘turning point established by scientists to avoid the worst damages and unpredictable consequences’. To do this, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Prado Museum selected four masterpieces: Felipe IV a caballo by Velázquez; Los niños en la playa by Joaquín Sorolla; El quitasol by Goya; and El Paso de la laguna Estigia by Joaquin Patinir. The famous image of Filipe IV proudly riding his horse, for instance, is altered so that only their heads are above sea level.20 The goal was to ‘warn about rising sea levels, the extinction of species, the drama of climate refugees or the disappearance of rivers and crops due to extreme drought’, to use ‘art as a universal language to explain in a shocking and novel way the damage on Earth caused by the rise in temperature’ and to make a wakeup call ‘to shake consciences and mobilise society in the face of climate change’.21 Another example of critique was the Towards an Investigative Aesthetics exhibition by Forensic Architecture at the University Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017. Forensic Architecture is a research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, established in 2010 with the help of a European Research Council grant given to Professor Eyal Weizman, that undertakes ‘advanced spatial and media investigations into cases of human rights violations, with and on behalf of communities affected by political violence, human rights organisations, international prosecutors, environmental justice groups, and media organisations’, but it is also ‘the name of an emergent academic field we have developed at Goldsmiths. It refers to the production and presentation of architectural evidence – relating to buildings, urban environments  – within legal and political processes’.22 This means that the group uses ‘architecture as a methodological device with which to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, and to cross-­reference multiple other evidence sources such as new media, remote sensing, material investigation and witness testimony’.23 The exhibition presented Forensic Architecture’s investigation of the enforced disappearance of 43 students from the Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa, in Iguala, Mexico, in September 2014, a selection of recent cases undertaken by Forensic Architecture and its collaborators, and their research on the relation between human violence and environmental destruction.24 For the Ayotzinapa case, a mural ‘of the 21st century was made’, in Weizman’s words, ‘because it is composed of data’, inspired by ‘the muralist tradition of Mexico, a kind of aesthetic political act’,25 which

258  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa showed relationships and encounters between missing students; local, state, and federal security forces; and the criminal groups involved. The mural aimed to present ‘the multiplicity of narratives and the contradictions’ that ‘demonstrate how the violence experienced by students in 2014 continues until now when trying to blur the coordination between the perpetrators, the scale of the attack and the attempts to destroy the evidence’26 in an effort to build what the government at the time called the historical truth but what independent investigations have denied on several occasions. With that in mind, Weizman and his team prepared the exhibition for people to partake in the debate, as in the ancient Roman forum, with the purpose of reappropriating the original meaning and building a new concept of truth.27 Nevertheless, the exhibition generated many questions, because, in addition to raising criticism of the abuses of the state, it critiqued the mission of museums, leading to questions about the place of research works in art museums. Although Forensic Architecture present their investigations in ‘international courtrooms, parliamentary inquiries, United Nations (UN) assemblies, as well as in citizens’ tribunals and truth commissions’, they also present their work ‘in keynote lectures, seminars, publications and exhibitions in art and cultural institutions’ as they ‘use these forums to reflect on the political and cultural context’ of their work.28 And that is exactly the role that museums should play, that of spaces for dialogue between divergent perspectives. The question of what a research exhibition does in a contemporary art museum can lead to deeper questions of what art is and what its meaning is. However, as Umberto Eco pointed out, A general definition of Art has a perfect understanding of its boundaries; and these are the boundaries of generalisation, not verifiable but of experimentation; the limits of s definition loaded with history and, therefore, susceptible to modifications in other historical contexts.29 That is why it is necessary to analyse the pieces not according to a definition of art but from the perspective of the anthropology of images – that is, the contribution to what is human in them, what they reveal about other aspects of the social, political, or economic, since contemporary images not only are works that seek to be beautiful or balanced per se but also respond to the needs of our time. Consequently, Rosario Güiraldes, curator of the piece concerning the forced disappearance of the 43 students, defended the display of this research in spaces destined for art: Forensic Architecture’s work is of a very different record from that of committed art or social practice art. Unlike the models of social relationality from which these modes of artistic creation operate, some of

Museums as Critical Spaces 259 the Forensic Architecture cases have demonstrated the guilt of states and large companies in different cases of abuse of power. Paradoxically, perhaps, the effectiveness of the project – the possibility of mobilising its findings as evidence to reveal the violation of human rights – is at the same time the cause of its semantic fragility. The works produced by Forensic Architecture do not increase in value as they are exposed; they cannot enter and circulate in the art market, and the organisation is not an artist that accumulates collectors over time.30 Because of this, an exhibition such as that of Forensic Architecture makes perfect sense in this type of space, because it questions the foundations of aesthetics themselves, redimensions it, and draws attention to fundamental and urgent issues. This exhibition highlights the reconfiguration of the limits of what is exhibited in contemporary art museums and the importance of it, since art not only should be admired but also should confront the viewers, appeal to their feelings, and provide them with a more active role, acting as an antidote to post-­truth: Forensic Architecture, as a collective exercise of imagination at the service of the constitution of public evidence, blows up the practical abstractions and inherited theories that usually describe “culture” as ineffective spirituality, as a field of antithetical sensitivity to truth and practice. Their work (preparing investigations on the violence of the State on citizens as well as on the territory, which seek to be examined both in the judicial apparatus and in the forum of public conscience) exists to the extent that a variety of battles of human rights and ecological struggles require a certain production of truth and knowledge. This is how the practice of Forensic Architecture is offered as an eminently pragmatic device. It acts as an antidote against post-­truth: rewriting a place for evidence and understanding that any political operation must be activated both from ideological speculation and through the precise capacity granted by the clarification of the facts. Its appropriation and constant reinvention of epistemologies has a formidable consequence: the conscious production of a distribution of power and sensibility.31 In other words, in the face of a historical state crime, which has been denied and minimised and whose evidence has been manipulated to construct a supposedly historical truth – that is, in the face of a narrative that alludes to post-­truth – works such as that of Forensic Architecture seek to ‘expose what it already is’ and not what is being delivered as true,32 by showing the results of their research, understanding ‘the potential of certain aesthetic practices’ beyond ‘the creation of an object for monetary speculation’, grasping ‘the history of the museum as that of how to appear and how its contents are presented’, and contributing ‘other

260  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa ways to aesthetically communicate’. This is because ‘the museum is also another type of forum: a public space for debate. And, above all, a space for trial’,33 where works can appeal to the feelings, the sensibility of the spectators, and encourage them to take action. In this way, ‘contemporary aesthetic practices and technological advances combine to participate in the face of practices that try to veil the truth and manipulate the facts’ and thus ‘confront the reality of what has been called “post-­truth” ’.34 Similarly, the Memory and Tolerance Museum holds temporary exhibitions that show concepts rather than objects. This means that through careful museological work, it creates a discourse that leads the viewer to a profound exercise of reflection by making visible current problems such as feminicide, disability, the challenges facing the LGBTQ+ community, or migration. Accordingly, this museum exhibits some works of contemporary art, accompanied by graphics and data that try to evidence national and international events in order to raise awareness of them. However, beyond the showcase of objects, what ends up standing out is the museography as a vehicle of the concepts worked along a broad critical reflection, giving visibility to what we have in front of us but which we have already normalised. Thus, in an era where immediacy is privileged and people queue for hours to see objects of art – such as La Gioconda in the Louvre Museum – this venue decides to privilege words, the speech of tolerance, inclusion, reflection, and, above all, alterity (Figure 14.2 and Figure 14.3).

Figure 14.2  Welcome artwork of the temporary exhibition Feminicidios en México: ¡Ya Basta! at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico City, Mexico (January–August 2017). Courtesy of Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. Source: Photograph by Montserrat Boix/CC BY-­SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-­sa/4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.35

Museums as Critical Spaces 261

Figure 14.3 Cartography of Feminicide at the temporary exhibition Feminicidios en México: ¡Ya Basta! at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico City, Mexico (January–August 2017). Source: Courtesy of Museo Memoria y Tolerancia36

Conclusions The crossing of past and present can operate in different ways. This chapter placed special emphasis on two of them that, although different in their objectives, share the common characteristic of trying to reappropriate the past: the memorial, which seeks to remember it and, through a reinterpretation, bring it to the present for spectators, as is the case of the Rosa Parks and Cellular Power pieces or the permanent exhibitions of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Memory and Tolerance Museum, and the critique, which seeks to discuss urgent issues through elements of the past, as is the case of the Prado Museum and WWF campaign or the temporary exhibitions of MoMA, the Davis Museum, and the University Museum of Contemporary Art, or to give them visibility through other aesthetic or conceptual means, such as the Forensic Architecture exhibition at the MUAC and the temporary exhibitions of the Memory and Tolerance Museum. This quest to reappropriate past events becomes crucial in a present in which leaders and public opinion around the world seem to possess a corrupt understanding of history and come to whatever conclusion they desire, all on the basis of their emotions and personal beliefs, and in a

262  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa present that is losing sensibility to the pain and suffering experienced by other humans. Consequently, museums and art may play a crucial role in restoring sensibility by displaying a world that we can inhabit, phenomenologically speaking: we are not satisfied with the structure of the work and presuppose a world of the work. The structure of the work is in fact its sense, and the world of the work its reference. . . . To interpret a work is to display the world to which it refers by virtue of its ‘arrangement’, its genre’, and its ‘style’.37 That is something artwork can do, But the work can only do this because it is not the pure expression of feelings or a world of fiction built for an aesthetic enjoyment that only sees aesthetic attributes in it, which is satisfied by wandering through the imagined world. The work represents a world that we live as our own . . . through mimesis the work builds and orders the world, gives it senses, configures it . . . because it has the power to create universes of meaning and that means making the world . . . a human world.38 In a time in which we seem, as Macbeth, to have forgotten the taste of fears, museums can help us remember, because – to paraphrase Lawrence Durrell’s Justine  – through art, there is a joyous compromise with all that wounds or defeats us in daily life, not to evade destiny but to fulfil it in its true potential – imagination. Insensibility turns us susceptible to the deceit of post-­truth discourses, and museums can be ideal spaces to transform numbness into compassion, ignorance into knowledge, places where art and other aesthetic expressions can appeal to the emotions of visitors by making them relive the past – however painful and tortuous – and foster a consciousness of alterity as a positive dissociation – that is, consciousness of the condition of being other but at the same time being an equal. In that way, by igniting the recognition of those who are different but who share a same human condition, the physical and virtual walls that have been erected by the narratives of post-­truth may fall and be replaced by bridges.

Notes 1. Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, 72. 2. Oxford Dictionaries, “Post-­Truth.” 3. Ibid. 4. Fuller, Post-­Truth, 1–2. 5. Ibid., 4.

Museums as Critical Spaces 263 6. Jackson, Encyclopedia of Identity, 520. 7. Ibid. 8. Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, 94. 9. Smithsonian, “National Museum of African American History and Culture.” 10. Ibid. 11. An image of this installation can be found here: Fundación UNAM, “Piezas Rosa Parks and Cellular Power.” 12. Dirección General de Comunicación Social, “Exhiben las Piezas Rosa Parks.” 13. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, “El MyT.” 14. El Universal, “Restauran vagón Nazi.” 15. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, “Original Boxcar Used to Transport Jews and other Holocaust Victims during World War II.” 16. Farago, “MoMA Protests Trump Entry Ban.” 17. Ibid. 18. Scott, “New York Museums Signal Their Resistance to Trump.” 19. Wellesley College, “The Davis Highlights Immigrants’ Contributions.” 20. Prado, “Felipe IV #locambiatodo.” 21. Museo del Prado, “El Museo del Prado pone el arte y sus valores al servicio de la sociedad.” 22. Forensic Architecture, “About.” 23. Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, “Forensic Architecture.” 24. Forensic Architecture, “Hacia una Estética Investigativa.” 25. Franco, “A tres años de Ayotzinapa.” 26. Ibid. 27. Leñero, “Forensic Architecture.” 28. Forensic Architecture, “About.” 29. Eco, La definición del Arte, 148. 30. Güiraldes, Arte en la era de la posverdad, 151–152. 31. Barenblit and Medina, Una estética libre de estética, 19. 32. Diáz-­Guardiola, “Forensic Architecture demuestra.” 33. Leñero, “Forensic Architecture.” 34. Ibid. 35. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, “Obra de bienvenida de la exposición ‘Feminicidio en México ¡Ya basta!’ Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. Ciudad de México’.” 36. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, “Feminicidio en México. YaBasta.” 37. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 260. 38. González Valerio, La poética de Aristóteles, 6.

Bibliography Barenblit, Ferran, and Cuauhtémoc Medina. “Una estética libre de estética.” In Forensic Architecture: hacia una estética investigativa, edited by Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM, 16–23. Mexico City: Editorial RM, S.A. de C.V., 2017. Díaz-­ Guardiola, Javier. “Forensic Architecture demuestra que el concepto de verdad es frágil y colectivo.” ABC, 4 May  2017. www.abc.es/cultura/ cultural/abci-­f orensic-­a rchitecture-­d emuestra-­c oncepto-­v erdad-­f ragil-­y -­ colectivo-­201704300047_noticia.html. Dirección General de Comunicación Social. “Exhiben las Piezas Rosa Parks y Cellular Power, en el Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo.” Boletín UNAM-­ DGCS-­100, 13 February  2017. www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2017_ 100.html.

264  Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­Chiapa Eco, Umberto. La definición del arte. Barcelona: Ediciones Martínez Roca, S.A., 1970. El Universal. “Restauran vagón nazi para exhibirlo en Museo de Tolerancia.” 9 January 2008. https://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/473079.html. Farago, Jason. “MoMA Protests Trump Entry Ban by Rehanging Work by Artists from Muslim Nations.” The New York Times, 3 February  2017. www. nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts/design/moma-­protests-­trump-­entry-­ban-­with-­ work-­by-­artists-­from-­muslim-­nations.html. Forensic Architecture. “About.” Accessed 10 December  2019. https://forensic-­ architecture.org/about/agency. Forensic Architecture. “Hacia una Estética Investigativa.” Accessed 12 December 2019. https://forensic-­architecture.org/programme/exhibitions/muac. Franco, Marina. “A  tres años de Ayotzinapa, un mural revela los caminos de la violencia.” The New York Times, 7 September  2017. www.nytimes.com/ es/2017/09/07/ayotzinapa-­aniversario-­mural-­forensic-­architecture-­muac/. Fuller, Steve. Post-­Truth. Knowledge as a Power Game. London: Anthem Press, 2018. Fundación UNAM. “Piezas Rosa Parks and Cellular Power.” National Autonomous University of Mexico. Accessed 20 October 2019. www.fundacionunam. org.mx/pumarte/muac-­exhibe-­las-­piezas-­rosa-­parks-­y-­cellular-­power/ González Valerio, María Antonia. “La poética de Aristóteles desde Gadamer y Ricoeur.” María Antonia González Valerio. Accessed 25 May  2019. www. magonzalezvalerio.com/mimesisymythos.pdf. Güiraldes, Rosario. “Arte en la era de la posverdad: Hacia una estética investigativa, de Forensic Architecture.” In Forensic Architecture: hacia una estética investigativa, edited by Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM, 150–154. Mexico City: Editorial RM, S.A. de C.V., 2017. Jackson II, Ronald L. Encyclopedia of Identity. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2010. Leñero, Isabel. “ ‘Forensic Architecture’ y sus propuestas en el MUAC.” Proceso, 5 October 2017. www.proceso.com.mx/506359/forensic-­architecture-­y-­ sus-­propuestas-­en-­el-­muac. Levinas, Emmanuel. Alterity and Transcendence. London: The Athlone Press, 1999. Museo del Prado. “El Museo del Prado pone el arte y sus valores al servicio de la sociedad.” Accessed 2 December 2019. www.museodelprado.es/actualidad/ noticia/el-­m useo-­d el-­p rado-­p one-­e l-­a rte-­y -­s us-­v alores-­a l/3455d20a-­b f26-­ baf9–22f6-­b8d382a06171. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. “El MyT.” Accessed 10 December  2019. www. myt.org.mx/myt. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. “Obra de bienvenida de la exposición ‘Feminicidio en México ¡Ya basta!’ Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. Ciudad de México.” 12  July  2017, Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 10 December  2019. https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Por_ellas_-­_Linda_Atach.jpg. Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. “Original Boxcar Used to Transport Jews and other Holocaust Victims during World War II. Sala Holocausto, Genocidio y Crímenes contra la humanidad, Museo Memory and Tolerance, Mexico City, Mexico.” 17 October 2011, Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 10 December 2019. https://

Museums as Critical Spaces 265 commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vag%C3%B3n_original_de_traslado_de_ prisioneros_a_los_campos_en_la_II_Guerra_Mundial.jpg. Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo. “Forensic Architecture.” Accessed 10 December  2019. https://muac.unam.mx/exposicion/forensic-­architecture? lang=en. Oxford Dictionaries. “Post-­truth.” Accessed 20 October 2019. www.lexico.com/ en/definition/post-­truth. Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor. London: Routledge, 2003. Santayana, George. The Life of Reason or the Phases of Human Progress. Introduction and Reason in Common Sense. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. Scott, Andrea K. “New York Museums Signal Their Resistance to Trump.” The New Yorker, 17 February  2017. www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural­comment/new-­york-­museums-­signal-­their-­resistance. The Smithsonian Institution. “National Museum of African American History and Culture.” Accessed 10 November 2019. www.si.edu/museums/african-­american­museum. Wellesley College. “The Davis Highlights Immigrants’ Contributions to the Museum in ‘Art-­Less’.” Wellesley College News, 20 February  2017. www. wellesley.edu/news/2017/node/111646.

15 Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth How Do Genocide Scholars Respond to Denial? Marius Gudonis Introduction One aspect of post-­truth that is frequently evoked by social scientists is the rejection of expert opinion that contradicts existing emotion-­based beliefs.1 The definition of ‘post-­truth history’ offered in the introduction to this book also highlights the extreme scepticism towards experts if they do not confirm an existing worldview. If this is the case, academics who have spent years researching difficult pages of our history, such as historical genocide, may well find their expertise devalued by the populist atmosphere of our times and be less inclined to confront denialism. Well-­known mainstream politicians have publicly disdained expertise: former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy has questioned the utility of experts on climate change;2 former British education secretary and prominent Brexiter Michael Gove stated that ‘the people of this country have had enough of experts . . . from organisations with acronyms saying that they know best and getting it consistently wrong’;3 and even the towering European statesperson German Chancellor Angela Merkel opined that ‘we should put less faith in self-­proclaimed experts and instead follow one principle: the principle of common sense!’4 In far-­right communities, the image of experts is even worse: they are perceived to be not just incompetent but a nefarious elitist clique.5 There may be many reasons for this apparent aversion to expertise. Emma Jane and Chris Fleming point to an inappropriate use of Enlightenment epistemology where a distrust of authoritative sources and a reliance on first-­ hand enquiry has pervaded popular approaches to knowledge.6 Kurt Sengul’s literature review posits a link between anti-­ expert post-­truth discourse and the recent rise in populism, whose key tenet is a conflict between a virtuous homogenous people and a corrupt elite.7 Tom Nichols, on the other hand, focuses on the commercialisation of the modern university, where degree commodification, grade inflation, and clientelism have led to students acquiring an overblown sense of their own personal ability with a corresponding erosion of respect for faculty.8 Whatever the reason, academics now function in what appears to be a new irreverential environment. How they react to this has not been

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 267 studied in any depth, although Nichols and others have conjectured that today’s academics have largely retreated to their ivory towers.9 Whereas there is nothing intrinsically new about a scholar’s dilemma between focused erudition and social activism, our post-­truth era may accentuate the problem. Sandra Grey’s 2013 study of New Zealand academics concludes, for example, that ‘the desire of academics to connect themselves to social and political “causes” is frequently seen as being at odds with academic notions of objectivity’.10 Canadian geographer Nicholas Bromley has questioned whether one can be an academic and an activist at the same time,11 and Michael Flood and colleagues from the University of Wollongong in Australia endeavour to resolve the apparent ‘dichotomy between “academia” and “activism” ’.12 Many influential 20th-­century historians, such as Herbert Butterfield and Henry Lea, have rejected the moral dimension of historical writing,13 and a few contemporary historians, most notably Richard Evans and Henry Rousso, continue to do so, albeit less stringently.14 In the ethical turn of the 1980s and 1990s, however, some academics embraced an explicit ethical stance in their work. One of the clearest exponents of this change is the American historian Dominick LaCapra who advocates history as a vocation rather than a profession and warns that ‘historiography that turns away from critical reflection and ideological issues is not a craft . . . [but] a pampered profession’. Historians Nancy Partner and Hayden White as well as the philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre and Edith Wyschogrod have likewise strongly supported the ethical  – and even ideological – dimension of historiography.15 And more recently, historian Brian Porter-­Szűcs emphatically blogged ‘that those of us with a public platform, however small, have a duty to say something during a moment of [democratic] crisis’ in spite of the ‘oft-­leveled accusation that we academics are biased and that the universities are bastions of leftist ideologies’.16 The objective of this chapter, therefore, is to shed some light on academic activism in the potentially inhibitive conditions of post-­truth and its associated antipathy towards expert opinion. My case study is the particular scholarly response to public manifestations of genocide denial in Poland, France, and the United States. I  hope to ascertain whether there is any truth to the ivory tower stereotype and whether the type and level of response to denial commands an international consensus. Furthermore, I aim to identify possible factors that inhibit such response and the scholarly attitudes regarding a broader popular dissemination of genocide history.

Method The academic response to genocide denial has not been studied before. As a result, the survey I undertook was an exploratory study designed

268  Marius Gudonis to produce as much new information as possible.17 My overall research question was ‘how do academics with expert knowledge on historical cases of genocide respond to genocide denial?’ To answer this, I created a questionnaire with 30 questions, ten of which dealt mostly with academic response and constitute the basis of this study.18 Given that academic response to denial may be influenced by cultural factors, I have chosen to survey academics with identical questions in their respective languages from three countries: Poland, France, and the United States. In each case, I created a purposeful sample – typically used in exploratory studies19 – by selecting any academic (defined as a university faculty member) who has published or taught historical cases of genocide or whose specialisation is likely to have dealt with such issues. The sample for each country thus consisted of academics whose field of research or teaching could be identified online and who had publicly available email addresses. Each person was then sent an introductory email with a link to an anonymised Google Forms survey. The vast majority of respondents were historians, but I did not limit the sample to historians, because historical cases of genocide have also undergone scientific analysis in other disciplines. This purposeful selection is known as criterion sampling20  – the criterion here is ‘academics with expert knowledge on historical cases of genocide’. Purposeful sampling is particularly useful when studying populations that are difficult to enumerate21 and when requiring information-­rich cases.22 To take advantage of the latter, each multiple-­ choice question, except for the classification data, featured, in addition, an open space for optional personal answers. The Polish and French samples were created by checking the website of every state university and searching for either history department faculty lists dealing with ‘contemporary’, ‘20th’-­century, and ‘21st’-­century history or the far rarer genocide/Holocaust studies faculty lists and by identifying Polish and French academic members of the European Association for Jewish Studies listed under ‘Holocaust studies’. Unlike Europe, many US universities have dedicated genocide studies departments, allowing for easy identification of genocide scholars. To create the US sample, I checked the websites of all state universities and the private Ivy League universities23 for faculty explicitly dealing with genocide or 20th-­ to 21st-­century history and checked the websites of all the institutions comprehensively listed under ‘Holocaust studies centers, institutes and programs’ created by the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. In short, my sampling resembles more an imperfect census of all the genocide scholars that I could find online in the foregoing three countries. While these non-­probability samples do not represent the average academic involved in genocide studies (some non-­historian genocide experts, for example, may have been omitted), they are approximately representative of leading genocide scholars who decided to participate in the survey.

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 269 Table 15.1  Basic information about each sample Country

Sample*

Total Number of Responses

Response Rate

Number of Responses From Genocide Scholars†

Poland France United States

255 534 395

54 76 57

21.2% 14.2% 14.4%

42 36 54

Number of people successfully contacted (excluding automatic replies due to incorrect or obsolete emails, which were ten for Poland, 16 for France, and eight for the United States) † Respondents whose ‘field of expertise cover[s] some aspect of the history of a particular genocide’ (Q. 25) Source: All tables in this chapter are based on the author’s own research *

The possible major limitation of this method is not so much the purposeful sample itself but rather the significant nonresponse rate. We are therefore lacking the opinion of those people who are experts in the field but who choose not to respond; I will return to this issue in the conclusion and explain why, in fact, it does not undermine representativity. The public availability of a scholar’s institutional email address should not skew the results, either, because the policy of website design and information is generally an institutional one rather than a personal one. Table 15.1 gives the basic information for each sample. Answers to question 25 (‘Does your field of expertise cover some aspect of the history of a particular genocide?’) revealed that despite my best endeavours, some academics responded who were not experts in the field of genocide. As a result, only those who responded yes to question 25 were taken into account in the subsequent analyses (i.e. the last column in Table 15.1).

Should Academics Respond to Genocide Denial? The decision to participate in social activism against Holocaust denial appears not to be an easy one to take. Anti-­denial activists Deborah Lipstadt and Pierre Vidal-­Naquet experienced trepidation before researching and writing their own books on Holocaust denial.24 Writer and columnist Eric Zorn has described the dilemma facing scholars as follows: Ignore the revisionists, and their pronouncements float in the air unchallenged. Answer them in general but refuse to debate head-­to-­head, as mainstream historians and Jewish groups have, and you risk seeming afraid of a confrontation. Respond to their assertions one by one and you appear to dignify the arguments, perhaps making it seem to the uninformed as though the existence of the Holocaust is a question serious people consider seriously, when, in fact, the revisionists have failed to make their case with virtually every active scholar in the field.25

270  Marius Gudonis Table 15.2 ‘A professional academic (employed in a relevant discipline) has an obligation to respond in some way to instances of genocide denial’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

88.1% 88.9% 92.6%

2.4% 5.6% 0%

2.4% 5.6% 3.7%

Table 15.3 ‘It is best not to react to manifestations of genocide denial’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

2.4% 0% 0%

95.2% 97.2% 94.4%

0% 0% 0%

Only a couple of our respondents revealed a degree of ambivalence regarding the need to react to genocide denial in some way. A39,26 for example, stated, ‘It depends on the amount of attention the denial receives. Some must be confronted; others ignored’. P19 suggested, ‘Once in a while, when it is meaningful to do so’. But as Table 15.2 demonstrates, the overwhelming majority in all three countries are unequivocal on the issue. Doing nothing would thus seem not to be an option. And yet some have claimed that this is in fact the modus operandi for many academics. Professor of English Elizabeth Bellamy, in her praise of Pierre Vidal-­Naquet’s proactive stance, has asserted that ‘all too often, intellectuals have chosen silence as the only appropriate response to the outrages of Holocaust denial’.27 Indeed, certain individuals have explicitly rejected any response to denialism, most notably Canadian historian Michael Marrus: ‘I have no difficulty excluding from this book any discussion of the so-­called revisionists – malevolent cranks who contend the Holocaust never happened’.28 Here only a handful of respondents gave ambiguous answers: ‘the law can decide’ (F33); ‘In the lecture hall? You have to react. In a tram? Not necessarily’ (P12); ‘It is complicated and dependent on the situation, specifically if the denier poses a threat to one’s safety’ (A39); and ‘It depends, I don’t need to give people more air time if they don’t have a serious case’ (A54). These exceptions aside, Table 15.3 shows a strong consensus that disapproves of non-action.

Actual Response to Instances of Genocide Denial Having looked at what academics think ought to be done, let us see what they actually do. The stereotype of the isolated scientist in their ivory tower seems to be fairly widespread. Voices from academia have

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 271 upheld this view. Harvard professor of sociology Orlando Patterson has bemoaned the fact that ‘sociologists have become distant spectators rather than shapers of policy’ and have ‘mostly shied from engaging in public discourse’.29 Historians have also vigorously opposed such an apparent laissez-­faire attitude. Perhaps most vocal has been Deborah Lipstadt. She has written that as regards responsibility for opposing Holocaust denial, ‘much of the onus is on academe, portions of which have already miserably failed the test’.30 Renowned Holocaust historian Robert Jan van Pelt observed that ‘Academics who choose to ignore Holocaust deniers are like the crew of the Titanic straightening the deck chairs while the ship is going down’.31 Henry Rousso, who was commissioned to write a voluminous report on university denialism in Lyon, concluded that there was ‘a laxity towards negationists present in the university’.32 And yet there is also evidence suggesting that the Internet has encouraged academic activism; for example, the UK-­based website The Conversation has become a popular outlet for academic voices and garners 2 million views a month. More generally, the geographer Becca Farnum has noted the recent emergence of ‘scholactivism’, an informal movement of ‘an increasing number of academics who believe they have a role to play in creating social justice  – and who do something about it’.33 Social theorist Andreas Wittel has likewise noticed that academic activism ‘has recently experienced a sharp rise’ and that the ‘growth of scholarly work with an activist touch is so remarkable that it seems appropriate to discuss this phenomenon as an activist turn in humanities and social sciences’.34 The evidence in Table 15.4 suggests that a majority of academics have spoken out against genocide denial at least a few times in the past (Poland, 71.5%; United States, 66.7%; France, 52.8%). The reader may be surprised that academics in Poland appear much more active than those in France, a country known for its intellectuel engagé, but this may be partially explained by the fact that Holocaust minimisation (a type of denial) and overall antisemitism is much higher in Poland than in France.35 One could, therefore, argue that there is more opportunity to counter genocide denial in the former, rather than a greater volition to act. With much if not all genocide denial now being expressed online and a reported doubling of Holocaust denial conversations on social media

Table 15.4 ‘Have you ever publicly condemned an instance of genocide denial?’

Poland France United States

Never

Once

A few times

Often

11.9% 30.6% 22.2%

7.1% 13.9% 7.4%

40.5% 36.1% 46.3%

31.0% 16.7% 20.4%

272  Marius Gudonis Table 15.5 ‘Do you discuss history on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter)?’

Poland France United States

Never

Occasionally

Regularly

50.0% 58.3% 40.1%

42.9% 27.8% 46.3%

7.1% 13.9% 11.1%

between 2016 and 2018,36 it is perhaps ironic that despite their declared conviction to oppose genocide denial, approximately half of all respondents never use social media to discuss history (Table 15.5). Although one academic, P22, gives a reason for consciously not participating in social media discourse (‘[I use social media] very rarely because a comment frequently evokes a spiral of negative emotions’), I suggest that most academics would, in any case, rarely encounter denialist posts due to the nature of the Internet filter bubble.

Debating Genocide Deniers Academics who study and expose Holocaust denial appear generally to reject the idea of publicly debating with deniers. However, there have been some who have tried to do so, with mixed results. Australian Holocaust historian Paul Bartrop once unexpectedly found himself debating with antisemites who had come to his lecture at a Catholic university. Despite the vociferous racist discourse that the debate produced, Bartrop nonetheless assessed the encounter positively in that it ‘provided the Catholic students with a very valuable lesson to which they might never otherwise have become aware; that Nazis are not just antisemitic, but also racist, bigoted, and (by their actions and other comments) sexist, as well’.37 More recently, the BBC aired a documentary entitled Confronting Holocaust Denial, in which the British Jewish comedian David Baddiel wrestled with the idea of debating Irish Holocaust denier and antisemite Dermot Mulqueen before coming to the conclusion that debating a denier was necessary: The arguments in favour [of publicly debating a Holocaust denier] are the world is different now than when . . . [the] trial [DJC Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt] happened. Social media is creating a situation whereby all sorts of small distortions of the truth create a larger distortion, so therefore, the need, unfortunately, to engage and deflect and say that lies are not true is more burning than ever.  .  .  . when he [Anthony Julius, Lipstadt’s lawyer] says ‘You’re just giving them airtime’, I think, twenty years ago, a policy of better to ignore them, that would have been correct, but now, the problem

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 273 is that Holocaust deniers have airtime, just not on [TV] screens like this one.38 Other so-­called debates between academics and deniers have produced less-­positive assessments. Raul Hilberg once debated electrical engineer and Holocaust denier Arthur Butz on a US television show: while Butz used simple language, Hilberg quoted details from his three-­volume classic history on the Holocaust, and in terms of audience attention, Australian historian Colin Tatz claims ‘Butz won by a knockout’.39 Michael Shermer debated deniers David Cole and Bradley Smith on prime-­time television on 14 March 1994. Ineptitude from the staff of the Phil Donahue show as well as uninformed chairmanship from the host resulted in a fiasco, with the show discussing the ‘human soap’ myth.40 It is not surprising, therefore, that most published academic work argues against debating Holocaust deniers because it gives denialism an unwarranted legitimacy and credibility.41 In the three national samples, Poland stood out with a colossal 85.7% agreeing with the idea of debating genocide deniers, compared to only 33.6% and 30.3% for France and the United States respectively (Table 15.6). The only point of contention evident in the Polish sample was not the principle of debate per se but whether a fair debate were possible in the current political climate; for example, ‘They [academics] should debate, but not in the current media owned by PiS [nationalist ruling party]; they do not meet the criteria for democratic discourse, let alone good education and respect for the debater’ (P40). Where the French respondents left comments, they concerned the impossibility of debate with deniers and the danger of a debate disseminating denialist theories: ‘Debate is impossible with deniers, because their approach is not scientific (they claim absolute truths while science offers only probabilistic truths)’ (F19); ‘Doesn’t [a debate] contribute to the media coverage of their theories?’ (F34). Comments from the US sample focused instead on the undesirable legitimisation of denialism just by being featured in a debate: ‘formally debating them on radio, TV and Internet will enhance their credibility and make the denier look equal to the academic expert in the field which gives them credibility’ (A2);

Table 15.6 ‘Professional academics (employed in a relevant discipline) should debate with genocide deniers in public media (radio, TV, Internet)’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

85.7% 30.6% 33.3%

7.1% 61.1% 53.7%

7.1% 8.3% 7.4%

274  Marius Gudonis ‘I get the argument that directly engaging deniers “legitimizes” their position’ (A40).

Debunking Genocide Denial Although few academics have agreed to debate Holocaust deniers, many more have debunked denialist claims; that is to say, they have shown how assertions that deny the veracity of the Holocaust are erroneous.42 James Morcan and Lance Morcan declare in their introduction that ‘the Holocaust happened EXACTLY as per the history books. Period. Fact. No debate whatsoever’ before devoting the rest of the book to refuting denialist claims.43 Shermer and Grobman’s aforementioned Denying History also contains large sections of refutation. As for the Internet, there are important websites devoted to the act of debunking where academics have frequently contributed articles and posts. The page ‘Debunking Holocaust Denial’ on Emory University’s website ‘Holocaust Denial on Trial’ aims to provide ‘concise scholarly answers to a number of common claims made by Holocaust deniers’.44 The Canadian Nizkor project has been confronting Holocaust denial online for almost 30 years. As John Drobnicki has written, ‘Since 1991, Ken McVay [the founder of Nizkor] has, in his spare time, amassed an enormous database of information to refute the revisionists’.45 PHDN, which is an acronym of ‘Pratique de l’Histoire et Dévoiements Négationnistes’ (The Practice of History and Negationist Deviations), clearly emphasises debunking in its mission statement: ‘Since 1996, the PHDN project fights negationism by using the works of historians and by refuting the principal negationist “propositions” ’.46 In any case, debunking may be less than efficacious in refuting denialist claims in the minds of doubters, and the little evidence that there is suggests that it is mostly a case of preaching to the converted. In a rare large-­scale empirical study on the efficacy of five years of Facebook conspiracy-­debunking posts, Fabiana Zollo and her team found that only 6.54% of ‘users polarized towards conspiracy’ liked debunking posts and only 3.88% left comments.47 The authors further suggest that debunking could actually be counterproductive: ‘we find that users not exposed to debunking are 1.76 times more likely to stop interacting with conspiracy news’ and ‘the interaction [on debunking sites] seems to lead to an increasing interest in conspiracy-­like content’.48 Another recent study, ‘The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions’, by Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler, examines the emerging literature on false beliefs and concludes that ‘research indicates that corrective information often fails to change the false or unsupported belief in question’ and that ‘In some cases, corrections can make misperceptions worse’. The phenomenon whereby a person continues to believe X after X has been refuted has been given

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 275 different names in the scholarly literature: ‘belief perseverance’ and ‘continued influence effect’.49 It is perhaps for this reason that some institutions, academics, and activists are lukewarm to the whole notion of debunking or refuting, if not categorically against it. The Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an organisation with 31 member countries, published its guidelines for teaching the Holocaust, in which it states that ‘[one should not] seek to disprove the deniers’ position through normal historical debate and rational argument’.50 Deborah Lipstadt has similarly stated that ‘We need not waste time or effort answering the deniers’ contentions’51 – although both her Emory University website and her recent 2018 speech to the Netherlands Auschwitz Committee52 do precisely that. Lipstadt’s apparent contradiction demonstrates that any endeavour of responding to deniers inherently leaves the historian in a difficult dilemma: how can the historian respond without inadvertently legitimising the deniers? French philosopher Jean-­François Lyotard advocates for the importance of respectful silence and the need not to intellectualise the Holocaust. In his classic work The Differend, Lyotard rejects any attempt to convince deniers: The historian need not strive to convince Faurisson if Faurisson is playing another genre of discourse, one in which conviction, or, the obtainment of a consensus over a defined reality is not at stake. Should the historian persist along this path, he will end up in the position of victim.53 Lyotard’s compatriot philosopher Alain Badiou and publisher Eric Hazan similarly object to the refutation of denial: ‘Historical and academic refutation amounts to falling into their trap: proving that the gas chambers really did exist only maintains round the negationists precisely what they desire, i.e. to spread the idea that this is a “real problem” ’.54 Professor of contemporary literature Robert Eaglestone goes as far as to say that ‘perhaps even giving their names [of deniers], which can easily be googled, spreads their propaganda’.55 He may well have a point given that the Nizkor project website, which aims to debunk Holocaust denial, actually provides the links to the sites that it condemns. John Drobnicki, contributor to Nizkor and professor at The City University of New York, nevertheless defends this approach: ‘Nizkor’s site contains many links to racist and revisionist web pages, so the user can see the ugly face of bigotry first hand’.56 As far as our respondents go, all three samples demonstrate a firm consensus in favour of debunking genocide denial in the media (Table 15.7). Only one person, A19, expressed concern,: ‘I agree to an extent. Engaging deniers in this way is, however, counterproductive’.

276  Marius Gudonis Table 15.7 ‘Professional academics (employed in a relevant discipline) should debunk genocide denial in popular media (press, radio, TV, Internet)’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

92.9% 91.7% 88.9%

0% 0% 0%

7.1% 2.8% 5.6%

Disseminating Genocide History in Video Games When it comes to Holocaust-­themed video games, printed opinions on the subject suggest a consensus that such a medium is inappropriate as a way of educating people about historical genocide. One reason may be the fact that the early iterations of Holocaust games in the 1990s – as many as 140 may have existed for popular consoles such as the Commodore 64 – were denialist and pro-­Nazi in nature.57 More recently, we have seen the development of more sophisticated games that aim to provide a degree of historical accuracy from the perspective of the Jewish victim. For example, a Holocaust version of the popular Wolfenstein 3D game, with a narrative based loosely on the 1944 Auschwitz Sonderkommando uprising, was three years in the making before the Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-­Defamation League rejected a pilot of the Israeli project.58 A similar fate awaited independent New York programmer Luc Bernard in the late 2000s, whose critically acclaimed Imagination Is the Only Escape was a detailed reconstruction of a young Jewish boy in Nazi-­occupied Paris; however, nobody wanted to distribute the game, and Bernard also failed to secure crowdsourced funding.59 The view of Suzanne Bardgett, the director of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition, typifies the general rejection of the video game format: ‘We decided that there was no place for games technology and that we shouldn’t employ anything that smacked of theme parks. . . . in keeping with our advisory group we erred on the side of solemnity. We turned away from risk’.60 Nonetheless, a couple of academics have defended the idea of Holocaust-­themed games. The most prominent is Wulf Kansteiner, a professor of history and Judaic studies at Binghamton University. He makes the following argument: Given the cultural prominence of video games in general and games with historical themes in particular it amounts to a strange case of Holocaust denial in reverse that no sophisticated game about the topic yet exists. . . . What would be wrong with designing the virtual world of Nazi-­ occupied Poland, France, the Netherlands or Denmark, having players assume the perspectives of Jews caught in

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 277 the maelstrom, seeking out the few existing loopholes to safety and learning in the process that the vast majority of Jews were increasingly faced with choiceless choices and no hope for rescue? Such a game should be at least as capable of inducing empathy with the victims as the Holocaust movies of past decades which are probably becoming increasingly ineffective as a didactic tool for younger audiences steeped in digital culture.61 Communications professor Anna Reading from Western Sydney University says that Games formats could disrupt the tendency towards re-­articulating the familiar and avatars facing moral choices could help enable visitors to understand their own responsibilities in the steps on the road to tyranny and genocide. . . . When Art Spiegelman’s Maus was first published, people worried about the appropriateness of its graphic novel form. The book is now translated into many languages including Japanese. When it comes to understanding genocide, it is not the form we should be scared of but ourselves.62 Nearly all the comments left in the survey argue that games and genocide are incompatible and that games would trivialise genocide. One American academic gives a different reason for opposing such games: Again, it depends. I  don’t think the Holocaust or other genocides should be used as entertainment, strictly speaking. I also think the voyeuristic quality of video games is greater than other media, so I am dubious that video games are a good site for the representation of genocide. That said, better accurate portrayals than inaccurate ones. (A40) Nevertheless, the overall results in Table  15.8 show that, contrary to what one may read in publications, there is no consensus on the subject among academics. Interestingly, the Polish sample revealed the highest level of acceptance of genocide-­themed video games. Why this should be so is rather difficult to explain, although one can speculate that the considerable controversy in Poland in 2018 over the Ukrainian concentration camp game The Cost of Freedom, which triggered an investigation by Warsaw’s District Prosecutor’s Office, may have raised public awareness on the issue of historical video games and polarised opinion.63 These results need to be interpreted with care because as the comments hint at, some of the respondents may be giving their views on the moral implications of depicting suffering as art or entertainment, rather

278  Marius Gudonis Table 15.8 ‘Should professional academics (employed in a relevant discipline) help in creating historically accurate computer games that feature the Holocaust or other genocides?’

Poland France United States

Yes

No

I don’t have an opinion on that

33.3% 19.4% 18.5%

28.6% 30.6% 35.2%

35.7% 44.4% 44.4%

than – as I had intended – on the educational role of academics in creating accurate games to educate people on the historicity of genocide.

Factors Inhibiting Activism Against Genocide Denial One factor which may affect academics in all three countries of this study is the corporatisation of the university. Corporatisation is the implementation of a neoliberal culture that introduces professionalisation, competition, privatisation, and depoliticisation. The end result for many academics is, according to some, a withdrawal from public life and an exclusive focus on professional objectives.64 In particular, corporatisation increases the academic workload and reduces available time and energy that could be devoted to social activism.65 Education expert from the University of Gdańsk Joanna Rutkowiak has posited an interesting hypothesis about how corporatisation could render academics less compassionate and public spirited when confronted with genocide denial: The promotion of competitiveness of academic behaviour that requires ruthlessness and cold calculation, at the same time weakens the traditional ethos of scholars with their aspirations towards selflessness, cooperation, sensitivity and solidarity, as well as activities for the common good.66 One could therefore hypothesise that the higher the level of university corporatisation, the more the academic culture and increased workload would discourage scholars from extracurricular activity against genocide denial. The most recent 2015 OECD statistics on the percentage of tertiary education spending from private sources gives a figure of 64.8% for the United States, 20.3% for France, and 16.2% for Poland.67 Despite this indicator suggesting that corporatisation is highest in the United States and the lowest in Poland, the survey data in Table 15.9 and Table 15.10 show no substantial country differences in terms of academic culture or workload inhibiting activism. There are also cultural country specificities that may affect academics’ desire and ability to react to genocide denial. Regarding Poland, Łukasz

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 279 Sułkowski, management sciences professor at the Jagiellonian University, describes Polish academic culture as a ‘conservative post-­grange culture’, a concept originally constructed by Jerzy Hryniewicz, which discourages academics from participating in social activism.68 By ‘grange’, the author refers to a certain traditional agrarian culture comprising, among others, nepotism, low self-­initiative, a low degree of mobility, and autocracy.69 In France, there is the well-­known tradition of the intellectuel engagé, which has its roots in the French 19th-­century educational reforms and the Dreyfus Affair.70 In fact, the word intellectuel as a noun emerged directly from that controversy.71 As for the United States, Thomas Bender’s 1997 article ‘Politics, Intellect, and the American University’ suggests that American academics have for a number of reasons been discouraged from social activism. Such reasons include Cold War McCarthyism’s causing a general defensiveness, growing federal support giving universities greater autonomy, and the elevation of peer review to a ‘sacred level’, distancing academics from the wider society.72 Some famous American academics explicitly criticised academic social activism. For example, Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons gave a speech to the American Sociological Association in which he argued that as a scientific discipline, sociology ‘is clearly dedicated to the advancement and transmission of empirical knowledge’ and only ‘secondarily to the communication of such knowledge to non-­members’.73 These factors could suggest that the academic culture would least inhibit scholars in France and more in Poland and the United States. And yet Table 15.9 shows similar results, with Poland slightly ahead in terms of a less constraining university culture. Historically, before the age of the Internet, denialist groups were institutionally strongest in France and especially the United States. However, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, overall antisemitism and Holocaust minimisation is currently significantly higher in Poland. Nevertheless, the survey does not show large national differences regarding academic fear over denialist harassment (Table  15.11), although a number of Polish respondents are concerned about the future: ‘If the president in my country tolerates the “Jedwabne lie” and neo-­Nazism gains the acquiescence of the ruling party, such a threat [of denialist harassment] is undoubtedly on the horizon’ (P12). Table 15.9  ‘The academic culture in my country discourages extracurricular activity that opposes genocide denial’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

21.4% 16.7% 13.0%

47.6% 61.1% 66.7%

26.2% 22.2% 14.8%

280  Marius Gudonis Table 15.10 ‘An academic’s typical professional workload in my country makes it difficult to participate in activity that opposes genocide denial’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

21.4% 16.7% 20.4%

61.9% 69.4% 68.5%

16.7% 11.1% 5.6%

Table 15.11 ‘Public activity that opposes genocide denial entails a high risk of harassment from denialist groups in my country’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

23.8% 16.7% 24.1%

57.1% 63.9% 46.3%

14.3% 19.4% 29.6%

The results for the Polish sample here may underrepresent the true value for ‘disagree’, because it is not clear whether the Polish respondents understood ‘genocide denial’ as a broad category that includes denial of Polish responsibility of certain wartime massacres of Jews. Denial of the existence of the Holocaust is extremely rare in Poland, so it is unlikely that anybody would experience harassment on this issue alone; denial of Polish responsibility of certain massacres is by contrast widespread, and opposing this denial would trigger innumerably greater opposition.

Conclusion As I mentioned in the method section, the low response rate from confirmed scholars of genocide, ranging from 6.7% to 16.5% (or 14.2% to 21.2%, for all scholars), raises justifiable concerns over possible nonresponse bias. Are the respondents representative of their population (i.e. genocide scholars on the faculties of Polish, French, and US universities)? Alternatively, do the nonresponding genocide scholars have different views on the subject of academic response to genocide denial than their responding colleagues? Whereas it is often assumed that nonresponse inevitably leads to biased results, this is true only if the population is heterogeneous or if survey questions deal with traumatic issues. Larry Leslie, as long ago as 1972, demonstrated convincingly from an intricate six-­year analysis of mail surveys that if a population was homogenous, where group members have a strong collective identity, differences between respondents and nonrespondents on the dependent variables (the survey questions)

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 281 were unlikely. Leslie hypothesised that the reason for such a result was that members of homogenous populations responded as group members rather than as individuals. Interestingly, some of his examples of homogenous populations actually included university faculty,74 which is consistent with research indicating the importance of collective identity among academics within institutions and disciplines.75 More recent studies of nonresponse rates have largely confirmed Leslie’s findings.76 It is therefore reasonable to assume that the academics in my target populations also have strong professional group identity and that they are responding as members of their group. Group-­member (as opposed to individualistic) responses were probably encouraged by the fact that most of the survey questions refer to academics rather than to individuals. If significant nonresponse bias were present, suggesting that those who responded to the survey were equally those who were more likely to respond to genocide denial, then it would have been highly unlikely for as many as 11.9% to 30.6% of respondents to declare that they have never publicly condemned such denial (see Table 15.4). Consequently, I argue that the results presented in this chapter are broadly representative of the opinions of genocide scholars in the three surveyed countries. As for the results themselves, I note three general points: 1. Genocide scholars strongly support responding to denial and actively do so. 2. In nearly all issues regarding genocide denial, there is either a solid international consensus among genocide scholars or a similar range of opinions. 3. There is frequently considerable discrepancy between the printed views of a handful of prominent academics and the surveyed collective views of their colleagues. First, averaging the results from the Polish, French, and US samples (where the results were similar), we note that 89.9% of genocide scholars consider it their duty to respond to instances of denial; 63.7% have publicly condemned denial either ‘a few times’ or ‘often’; and 91.2% say genocide scholars should debunk denial in popular media. These figures do not lend any credence to the pervasive ivory tower myth of academics disengaged from practical problems.77 Second, I was surprised to find that despite the vastly different national cultural contexts, the results for many questions across the samples were similar, which may constitute evidence for the increasing globalisation of academia that has been observed in other studies.78 There were, however, substantial differences in the issues of denier–scholar debates, genocide-­ themed computer games, denialist harassment, personal public condemnation of denial, and the use of social media to discuss history. Third, the well-­known public proclamations by certain scholars do not always reflect the broader opinion of

282  Marius Gudonis their colleagues. This is particularly clear in the issue of genocide representation in computer games, where public pronouncements suggest a consensus against the use of games, in contrast to the survey results, which demonstrate a discernible range of opinion in all three countries. Finally, our interpretation of the results is somewhat constrained by the vagueness and polysemantism of certain key words and expressions found in some questions. As a result, certain statistics (notably Tables  15.2, 15.3, 15.4, and 15.9) may hide as much as they reveal. Although Tables 15.2 and 15.3 show a consensus that academics should respond ‘in some way’ or ‘react’ to genocide denial, the scope of the recommended response could be so large as to render the apparent consensus less meaningful. Is the act of disliking a denialist YouTube video as important as debunking denialist claims in the media? Clearly, a consensus on the latter is far more important than on the former. Similarly, in Tables  15.4 and 15.9, the expressions ‘publicly condemn’ and ‘academic culture’ can mean a variety of different things, and it is not at all obvious that respondents understand the terms in the same way. For instance, academic culture might refer to issues of workload or the norms of a discipline. In addition, one component of such culture might inhibit extracurricular activism, whereas another might encourage it. Since a short quantitative survey cannot cover all the permutations of ‘response to genocide denial’, further research on this issue should focus on a series of semi-­structured interviews with a selection of genocide scholars, to elicit a better understanding of their actions. Overall, this study has demonstrated that despite high levels of antipathy towards expertise in our post-­truth environment, scholars have not retreated to the safe confines of academia. Some external data on attitudes towards science in our three featured countries suggest that levels of cynicism may be high. The most recent Eurobarometer survey from 2010, for example, found that 48% of Poles and 65% of French people either tended to agree or totally agreed with the statement ‘We can no longer trust scientists to tell the truth about controversial scientific and technological issues because they depend more and more on money from industry’.79 As for the United States, the latest Pew Research Center survey shows that Americans taking the view that ‘colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country’ has risen from 26% in 2012 to 38% in 2019.80 And yet such cynicism that partly characterises the post-­truth phenomenon has not had a dissuasive effect on our sample of academics who research and teach historical cases of genocide. On the contrary, they very much take an active interest in contemporary social problems. In fact, if we exclude the results for video games, the other seven questions with the response option ‘I don’t have an opinion on that’ reveal a rate of disinterest ranging from just 0% to 16.7% in five questions, and from 14.3% to 29.6% in the remaining two. Post-­truth may have eroded

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 283 public confidence in some expert opinion, but we may, at least, have grounds for optimism that academics are prepared to respond in earnest. Acknowledgements I thank Brian Porter-­Szűcs, Małgorzata Baran, Alexandra Richie, and Andrea Pető for their invaluable and extensive critical comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Notes 1. Czerep, “Śmierć ekspertyzy,” 139; Kinna, “Post-­ Truth Politics,” 4; Sismondo, “Post-­truth?” 4. The notion that there is a general blanket rejection of expertise, as these authors suggest, is, however, somewhat exaggerated. A white nationalist, for example, may reject expert opinion on indigenous history while having complete trust in their oncologist. The post-­truth rejection of expertise thus occurs in specific domains, especially when it contradicts a deeply held political or emotional belief. My thanks go to Benjamin T. Jones for bringing this point to my attention. 2. Block, Post-­Truth and Political Discourse, 48–49. 3. Zappavigna, “Ambient Affiliation,” 49–50. 4. Farrell and Quiggin, “Consensus, Dissensus and Economic Ideas,” 29. 5. Hyvönen, “As a Matter of Fact,” 122, 30. 6. Jane and Fleming, Modern Conspiracy, 53–61. 7. Sengul, “Populism, Democracy, Political Style and Post-­Truth,” 10–12. 8. Nichols, The Death of Expertise, 72–76, 84–89, 94–95. 9. Ibid., 5. 10. Grey, “Activist Academics,” 702. 11. Blomley, “Activism and the Academy,” 383. 12. Flood et al., “Combining Academia and Activism,” 18. 13. Oldfield, “Moral Judgments in History,” 2–3. 14. Evans, “History, Memory, and the Law,” 330, 34–35. 15. Thomas, “History as Moral Commentary,” 185–191. 16. Porter-­Szűcs, “On Being a Professor.” 17. Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 91; Swedberg, “On the Uses of Exploratory Research.” 18. The other questions concern the definition of ‘genocide’, the severity and causes of genocide denial in their country (see Conclusion), the historicity of post-­truth (see Conclusion), whether post-­truth encompasses genocide denial, and classification data. Due to space limitations, the results to these questions are analysed elsewhere. 19. Kuzel, “Sampling in Qualitative Inquiry,” 41. 20. Palys and Atchison, Research Decisions, 114; Patton, Qualitative Research, 238. 21. Etikan et  al., “Comparison of Convenience,” 1; Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 128–129. 22. Reiter, The Dialectics of Citizenship, 12–13; Etikan et al., “Comparison of Convenience,” 2. 23. Due to the different historical development of higher education in Europe and the United States, the top universities are almost all public in the former and largely private in the latter. Therefore, the US sample had to include private institutions, to ensure representativity. For further information on the

284  Marius Gudonis differences between the public and private academic sectors in Europe and the United States, see Brezis, “Why Are US Universities,” 163. 24. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, vii–viii; Vidal-­Naquet, Assassins of Memory, 1–3. 25. Zorn, “NU is Wrestling Slippery Problem.” 26. The letter represents the origin of the sample (A = United States; P = Poland; F = France), and the number is the respondent in chronological order. A39 is thus the 39th US scholar to respond to the survey. 27. Bellamy, “ ‘Laboratories’ Against Holocaust Denial,” 88. 28. Marrus, The Holocaust in History, xii. 29. Patterson, “How Sociologists Made Themselves Irrelevant.” 30. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 219. 31. Shermer and Grobman, Denying History, 17. 32. Rousso, Rapport sur le racisme, 98. 33. Farnum, “Scholactivism.” 34. Wittel, Digital Transitions, 75. 35. The ADL’s extensive 2019 global antisemitism survey reported that 21% of Poles believed ‘The Holocaust happened, but the number of Jews who died in it has been greatly exaggerated by history’ compared to 6% of French people. The overall ‘Anti-­Semitism Index Score’, meaning ‘the percentage of adults in this country who answered “probably true” to a majority of the anti-­Semitic stereotypes tested’ was 48% for Poland and 17% for France. See “ADL GLOBAL 100.” 36. “Anti-­Semitic Symbols.” 37. Bartrop, “A Little More Understanding,” 6. 38. Baddiel, Confronting Holocaust Denial, 23:55–24:57. 39. Tatz, “Combating Denialism.” 40. Shermer and Grobman, Denying History, 109–114. 41. Vidal-­Naquet, Assassins of Memory, xxiv; Patrick Finney, “Ethics, Historical Relativism and Holocaust Denial,” 364; Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 1, 28; Klein, “Truth’s Turning,” 55. 42. It would be interesting to know why such an exercise, equally public, differs ethically from oral debate on radio or television. Practically speaking, though, the debates with Butz, Cole, and Smith demonstrate that such live media tend to favour the rhetorically guileful denier. 43. Morcan and Morcan, Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories. 44. “Debunking Holocaust Denial.” 45. Drobnicki, “The Nizkor Project,” 4. 46. “Présentation de PHDN: Qui sommes nous?” 47. Zollo et al., “Debunking in a world of tribes.” 48. Ibid., 7, 9. 49. Flynn et al., “The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions,” 130–131. 50. “How to Teach about the Holocaust in Schools.” 51. Lipstadt, “Foreword,” vi. 52. Lipstadt, “Holocaust Denial: Flat Earth Theory or Classic Antisemitism.” 53. Lyotard, The Differend, 19. 54. Badiou and Hazan, Reflections on Anti-­Semitism, chapter 2. 55. Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, 230. 56. Drobnicki, “The Nizkor Project.” 57. Petropoulos, “Confronting the Holocaust as Hoax,” 527. 58. Kansteiner, “Transnational Holocaust Memory,” 311. 59. Ibid., 312. 60. Reading, “Digital Interactivity in Public Memory Institutions,” 80. 61. Kansteiner, “Transnational Holocaust Memory,” 313, 34.

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 285 2. Reading, “Digital Interactivity in Public Memory Institutions,” 80, 82. 6 63. Łukaszewicz, “Chcą zarobić na tragedii w Auschwitz.” 64. Grey, “Activist Academics: What Future?” 707; Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals, 118, 47. 65. Grey, “Activist Academics: What Future?” 700–703. 66. Personal communication, 5 September 2018. 67. “Education resources,” OECD iLibrary, 2019. 68. Personal communication, 6 August 2018. 69. Sułkowski, “Academic Culture,” 15. 70. Charle, “Academics or Intellestuals?” 99–100, 2–4. 71. “Intellectuel.” 72. Bender, “Politics, Intellect, and the American University,” 7, 10, 13. 73. Quoted in Halliday, “Introduction: Sociology’s Fragile Professionalism,” 6. 74. Leslie, “Are High Response Rates Essential to Valid Surveys?” 324, 27–30. 75. Kolsaker, “Relocating professionalism,” 134–136; Becher and Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories, 44–51; Henkel, “Academic Identity and Autonomy,” 44–51. 76. Rüdig, “Assessing Nonresponse Bias in Activist Surveys,” 179; Groves, “Nonresponse Rates,” 69–70, 662–663. 77. The myth of academia constituting an ivory tower disengaged from public life first emerged in the interwar period and then accelerated in usage after the war to the point that it has today become a ubiquitous term of abuse. For more information on the history of the term, see Shapin, “The Ivory Tower,” 4, 6–8, 13–14, 22–27. 78. Umpleby et al., “A Global University.” 79. “Special Eurobarometer 340.” 80. Parker, “The Growing Partisan Divide.”

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286  Marius Gudonis Bellamy, Elizabeth Jane. “ ‘Laboratories’ Against Holocaust Denial – or, the Limits of Postmodern Theory.” Parallax 10, no. 1 (2004): 88–99. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/1353464032000171127. Bender, Thomas. “Politics, Intellect, and the American University, 1945–1995.” Daedalus 126, no. 1 (1997): 1–38. Block, David. Post-­Truth and Political Discourse. Cham: Palgrave Pivot, 2019. Blomley, Nicholas K. “Activism and the Academy.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12, no. 4 (1994): 383–385. Brezis, Elise S. “Why Are US Universities at the Top of the International Rankings?” In The University in the Age of Globalization: Rankings, Resources and Reforms, edited by Wojciech Bienkowski, Josef C. Brada, and Gordon Stanley. Basingstoke, Hants; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Charle, Christophe. “Academics or Intellectuals? The Professors of the University of Paris and Political Debate in France from the Dreyfus Affair to the Algerian War.” Chap. 5 In Intellectuals in Twentieth-­Century France: Mandarins and Samurais, edited by Jeremy Jennings. Basingstoke, Hants: The Macmillan Press, 1993. Czerep, Jędrzej. “ ‘Śmierć Ekspertyzy’ w debacie publicznej: zmiana trwała czy stan tymczasowy?” In Postprawda jako zagrożenie dla dyskursu publicznego, edited by Tomasz W. Grabowski, Mirosław Lakomy, and Konrad Oświecimski. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Ignatianum, 2018. “Debunking Holocaust Denial.” Holocaust Denial on Trial, Emory University, 2018. Accessed 20 September 2019. www.hdot.org/debunking-­denial/. Drobnicki, John A. “The Nizkor Project and the Fight Against Holocaust-­ Denial.” The ’Net Homesteader 1, no. 4. (October–November 1996). Accessed 20 September 2019. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/yc_pubs/18/. Eaglestone, Robert. The Holocaust and the Postmodern. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. “Education Resources.” OECD iLibrary, 2019. www.oecd-­ilibrary.org/education/ spending-­on-­tertiary-­education/indicator/english_a3523185-­en. Etikan, Ilker, Sulaiman A. Musa, and Rukayya S. Alkassim. “Comparison of Convenience Sampling and Purposive Sampling.” American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics 5, no. 1. (2016). https://doi.org/10.11648/j. ajtas.20160501.11. Evans, Richard J. “History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness.” History and Theory 41, no. 3 (2002): 326–345. www.jstor.org/stable/ 3590689. Farnum, Rebecca L. “Scholactivism – a Growing Movement of Scholar-­Activists.” University World News, 3 June 2016. Accessed 19 September 2019. www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20160530142606345. Farrell, Henry, and John Quiggin. “Consensus, Dissensus and Economic Ideas: The Rise and Fall of Keynesianism During the Economic Crisis?” RSMG Working Paper Series 11, no. 2 (2011). https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/ 151527/. Finney, Patrick. “Ethics, Historical Relativism and Holocaust Denial.” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 2, no. 3 (1998): 359–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529809408972. Flood, Michael, Brian Martin, and Tanja Dreher. “Combining Academia and Activism: Common Obstacles and Useful Tools.” Australian Universities Review 55, no. 1 (2013): 17–26. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/103832/.

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 287 Flynn, D. J., Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler. “The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics.” Advances in Political Psychology 38, no. S1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1111/ pops.12394. Grey, Sandra J. “Activist Academics: What Future?” Policy Futures in Education 11, no. 6 (2013): 700–711. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2013.11.6.700. Groves, Robert M. “Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias in Household Surveys.” Public Opinion Quarterly 70, no. 5 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1093/ poq/nfl033. Halliday, Terence C. “Introduction: Sociology’s Fragile Professionalism.” In Sociology and Its Publics: The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, edited by Terence C. Halliday and Morris Janowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Henkel, Mary. “Academic Identity and Autonomy in a Changing Policy Environment.” Higher Education 49, no. 1–2 (2005): 155–176. www.jstor.org/ stable/25068062. “How to Teach About the Holocaust in Schools.” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA, 2018. Accessed 20 September 2019. www.holocaustremembrance.com/educational-­materials/how-­teach-­about-­holocaust-­in-­schools. Hyvönen, Mats. “As a Matter of Fact: Journalism and Scholarship in the Post-­ Truth Era.” In Post-­Truth, Fake News: Viral Modernity & Higher Education, edited by Michael A. Peters, Sharon Rider, Mats Hyvönen, and Tina Besley. Singapore: Springer, 2018. “Intellectuel.” In Dictionnaire de la Sociologie, edited by Christophe Le Digol. Paris: Albin Michel, 2019. Jacoby, Russell. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Jane, Emma A., and Chris Fleming. Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid. New York; London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Kansteiner, Wulf. “Transnational Holocaust Memory, Digital Culture and the End of Reception Studies.” Chap. 13 In The Twentieth Century in European Memory: Transcultural Mediation and Reception, edited by Tea Sindbæk Andersen and Barbara Törnquist-­Plewa. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. Kinna, Ruth. “Post-­Truth Politics and the Defence of the Status Quo.” Stimulus: Respond (2017). www.stimulusrespond.com/. Klein, Wayne. “Truth’s Turning: History and the Holocaust.” In Postmodernism and the Holocaust, edited by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. Kolsaker, Ailsa. “Relocating Professionalism in an English University.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 36, no. 2 (2014): 129–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2013.861053. Kuzel, Anton J. “Sampling in Qualitative Inquiry.” In Doing Qualitative Research, edited by Benjamin F. Crabtree and William L. Miller. London: Sage, 1999. Leslie, Larry L. “Are High Response Rates Essential to Valid Surveys?” Social Science Research 1, no. 3 (1972): 323–334. Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: The Free Press, 1993. ———. “Foreword.” In From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Holocaust Denial Trials: Challenging the Media, the Law, and the Academy, edited by

288  Marius Gudonis Debra Kaufman, Gerald Herman, James Ross, and David Phillips. New York: Vallentine Mitchell & Co. Ltd, 2007. ———. “Holocaust Denial: Flat Earth Theory or Classic Antisemitism.” Nederlands Auschwitz Comité (2018). Accessed 20 September 2019. www.auschwitz. nl/media/pdf_bestanden/2018_Amsterdam_lecture.pdf. Łukaszewicz, Agata. “Chcą zarobić na tragedii w Auschwitz  – ukraińska gra komputerowa pod lupą prokuratury.” Rzeczpospolita, 29 October  2018. www.rp.pl/Prawo-­karne/310299933-­Chca-­zarobic-­na-­tragedii-­w-­Auschwitz  – ukrainska-­gra-­komputerowa-­pod-­lupa-­prokuratury.html. Lyotard, Jean-­François. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Marrus, Michael R. The Holocaust in History. New York: Meridian, 1987. Morcan, James, and Lance Morcan. Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories: Two Non-­Jews Affirm the Historicity Of the Nazi Genocide. Papamoa, New Zealand: Sterling Gate Books, 2016. EPUB e-­book. Nichols, Thomas M. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Oldfield, Adrian. “Moral Judgments in History.” History and Theory 20, no. 3 (1981). www.jstor.org/stable/2504557. Palys, Ted, and Chris Atchison. Research Decisions: Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed-­Methods Approaches. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2014. Parker, Kim. “The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education.” Pew Research Center: Social  & Demographic Trends, 19 August  2019. Accessed 2 December  2019. www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/the-­growing-­partisan­divide-­in-­views-­of-­higher-­education/ Patterson, Orlando. “How Sociologists Made Themselves Irrelevant.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 December  2014. Accessed 19 December 2019. www.chronicle.com/article/How-­Sociologists-­Made/150249. Patton, Michael Quinn. Qualitative Research  & Evaluation Methods. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002. Petropoulos, Jonathan. “Confronting the ‘Holocaust as Hoax’ Phenomenon as Teachers.” The History Teacher 28, no. 4 (1995): 523–539. Porter-­ Szűcs, Brian “On Being a Professor in a Time of Extremism.” Brian Porter-­Szűcs, 14 March 2016. http://porterszucs.pl/2016/03/14/professor-­time­extremism/. “Présentation de PHDN: Qui Sommes Nous ?” Pratique de l’histoire et dévoiements négationnistes, PHDN, Updated 2 April  2019. Accessed 20 September 2019. https://phdn.org/presentation.html. Reading, Anna. “Digital Interactivity in Public Memory Institutions: The Uses of New Technologies in Holocaust Museums.” Media, Culture & Society 25, no. 1 (2003): 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344370302500105. Reiter, Bernd. The Dialectics of Citizenship: Exploring Privilege, Exclusion, and Racialization. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Rousso, Henry. Rapport sur le racisme et le négationnisme à Lyon III. [Report on Racism and Holocaust Denial at Lyon 3 University]. Ministère de l’éducation nationale, de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, 2004. Rüdig, Wolfgang. “Assessing Nonresponse Bias in Activist Surveys.” Quality & Quantity 44, no. 1 (2010): 173–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-­008­9184-­9.

Academic Activism in the Age of Post-­Truth 289 Sengul, Kurt. “Populism, Democracy, Political Style and Post-­Truth: Issues for Communication Research.” Communication Research and Practice 5, no. 1 (2019): 88–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2019.1561399. Shapin, Steven. “The Ivory Tower: The History of a Figure of Speech and Its Cultural Uses.” The British Journal for the History of Science 45, no. 1 (2012). Shermer, Michael, and Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Updated and Expanded ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. Sismondo, Sergio. “Post-­Truth?” Social Studies of Science 47, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312717692076. Sułkowski, Łukasz. “Academic Culture from the Perspective of Polish Universities.” Przedsiębiorczość i Zarządzanie 17, no. 2 (2016): 7–21. Swedberg, Richard. “On the Uses of Exploratory Research and Exploratory Studies in Social Science.” In The Production of Knowledge: Enhancing Progress in Social Science, edited by Colin Elman, John Gerring, and James Mahoney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Tatz, Colin, “Combating Denialism.” The Combat Genocide Association, 8 December 2013. http://combatgenocide.org/?author=0&paged=2. Thomas, Courtney. “History as Moral Commentary: Ideology and the Ethical Responsibilities of Remembrance.” Nebula. A  Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship 1–3 (2005). http://nobleworld.biz/images/Thomas.pdf. Umpleby, Stuart A., Konstantin Mekhonoshin, and Zhelyu Vladimirov. “A Global University for a Global Village.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 9, no. 3 (2009). Vidal-­Naquet, Pierre. Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust. Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Wittel, Andreas. Digital Transitions. Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2016. Wright, Gordon. “History as a Moral Science.” The American Historical Review 81, no. 1 (1976): 1–11. Zappavigna, Michele. “Ambient Affiliation and #Brexit: Negotiating Values About Experts through Censure and Ridicule.” In Discourses of Brexit, edited by Veronika Koller, Susanne Kopf, and Marlene Miglbauer. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019. Zollo, Fabiana, Alessandro Bessi, Michela Del Vicario, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, Louis Shekhtman, Shlomo Havlin, and Walter Quattrociocchi. “Debunking in a World of Tribes.” PLoS One 12, no. 7 (2017). https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181821. Zorn, Eric. “Nu Is Wrestling Slippery Problem.” Chicago Tribune, 7 May 1991.

16 Essence of Post-­Truth History and Ways to Respond Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones

The term ‘post-­truth’ is relatively new. As noted in the introduction, it was possibly coined simultaneously but separately by Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas and Serbian-­American playwright Steve Tesich in 1992.1 Over two decades later, it saw a dramatic spike in usage in 2016 after the election of Donald Trump as US president and the Brexit referendum. Oxford Dictionaries made it their 2016 word of the year. Unfortunately, the early journalistic accounts of post-­truth did little to distinguish the term from lying or other synonyms of disinformation, and its meaning remains contested. It is therefore not surprising that the term’s fame has been accompanied by criticism of its utility. Even within this book, a divide of opinion is evident. While the editors contend that post-­truth is a new phenomenon emerging in the past few decades (pp. 113–4, 266), authors like Alana Piper, Ana Stevenson, Gerald J. Steinacher, and Ben Mercer suggest that it has been around for much of human history (pp. 184–5, 124, 223). Indeed, the survey of Polish, French, and US genocide scholars in Chapter 15 also reveals an interesting split in opinion. Having presented the Oxford Dictionaries definition of ‘post-­truth’, where ‘objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’, respondents gave their assessment on the novelty of the phenomenon (Table 16.1). This conclusion has a dual objective: 1. We will bring together some of the main findings of the various chapters and some ideas from the latest research on the topic elsewhere and describe post-­truth history as a dialogical concept depicting a relatively new phenomenon. 2. We will then briefly assess the dangers of post-­truth history and discuss how it can be countered in the light of current scholarly literature.

What Is Post-­Truth History? In the introduction, the editors offer a succinct definition of post-­truth history. We will now elaborate on some points by drawing in examples

Essence of Post-­Truth History 291 Table 16.1  ‘Post-­truth is a new historical phenomenon’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

42.9% 47.2% 25.9%

33.3% 36.1% 57.4%

16.7% 13.9% 13.0%

Source: all tables in this chapter are based on the research presented in Chapter 15

from the book. One conclusion to be drawn from the chapters in this volume is that to understand the idea of post-­truth more clearly, we need to think about it as a dialogue between the purveyor and the recipient. The characteristics of both and the particular environment that they are in together constitute the post-­truth phenomenon. Whereas it has traditionally been located in the sphere of electoral politics, this book reveals that it is equally pertinent in the spheres of popular history, politics of history, and so-­called memory wars. The Purveyor Gerald J. Steinacher (p. 124) argues that post-­truth can be seen as a fashionable label for lying and other forms of disinformation. This is a reasonable criticism if post-­truth is used synonymously – and early texts on the topic indeed conflated post-­truth almost entirely with mendacity.2 While we will show that there is more to post-­truth than disinformation, there is no doubt that some form of disinformation is an essential characteristic of the phenomenon. As this book has shown, disinformation in the communication of history can take on a wide variety of forms, such as conciliatory discourse in South Africa (p. 240), ‘saffronisation’ in India (p. 165), and the ‘theory of the two demons’ in Argentina (p. 142). Stanley Cohen’s classic tripartite typology of denial – literal, interpretive, and implicatory – is a useful way of categorising much of this disinformation.3 Literal denial, the one most people are familiar with, simply negates a historical event. Examples featured in this book include the explicit denial of the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust (pp. 129–32) or the implicit denial, through omission, of slavery in South Africa (pp. 236, 242, 243) and interethnic post-­partition massacres in India (pp. 168–9). Interpretive denial acknowledges the basic facts of what happened but interprets them in such a way that alters the overall meaning of the event. For example, while apologists for eugenicist policy in 20th-­century Australia do not deny that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families, they interpret it as a benevolent act of child protection (p. 108). Similarly, in Argentina, apologists for the dictatorship do not deny state-­sponsored

292  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones violence against civilians but interpret it as part of an internecine conflict between two equal extremes (pp. 144–5). Implicatory denial, perhaps the most subtle and hard to spot, acknowledges both the basic facts and the general scholarly interpretation of the event but denies the psychological, political, or moral implications that arise from such an understanding. One example is Cape Town’s Prestwich Project exhumation of between 2000 and 3000 indigenous cadavers, which are now stored in a building with a café that sells ‘Resurrection Coffee’. The raw facts – these were bodies of slaves and a black underclass – are not denied and neither is the conventional interpretation that they were victims of white colonialist violence and discrimination. But the nature of the exhumation, irreverently treating the remains as if they were Neolithic skeletons far removed from today’s population, and facetiously allowing a café to be situated in the ossuary, the former taking advantage of the location’s past through macabre branding, reveals a grave ethical transgression – not a denial of the facts but a denial of the gravity of historic human suffering.4 Closely related to the denial of a documented historical event is the affirmation of a false one. Such ‘mendacious affirmation’  – that one might more intuitively correlate with classic political post-­truth such as Donald Trump’s fictitious Sweden terror attack5 and the false Brexit £350m EU contribution claim6  – subsumes two broad categories: the myth and the conspiracy theory. According to the Lithuanian political scientist Ignas Kalpokas, ‘in both its practicality and lack of reality-­ representing ambition, myth can be see[n] as an earlier, more traditional representation of post-­truth’.7 Piper and Stevenson also closely associate post-­truth with myths, describing the latter as ‘things people believe and feel to be true’ and where such resonating stories ‘are more important than the facts or histories that lie behind them’ (p. 184). André Brett describes the case of the ‘pre-­Moriori myth’ in which, supposedly, the nonviolent but militarily inferior Moriori were cannibalised to extinction by Māori colonists, thereby rejecting the Māori claim to indigeneity in contemporary New Zealand. Here we have a clear affirmation of a fictitious event: in fact, both ethnic groups are descendants of the same East Polynesians, developing concurrently on different islands, and the Moriori population was decimated by imported disease and British-­ backed Māori violence (pp. 199–205). The conspiracy theory is the other form of mendacious affirmation and is omnipresent in Trump’s political discourse.8 Examples from this book include the relatively benign assertion that modern art is produced to secure the privilege of intellectuals (pp. 93, 98 – ft. 54) and the deadly long-­standing notion of a global Jewish conspiracy (pp. 126–7). To close our analysis of the content of post-­truth history, we need to consider two other key characteristics: appeal to emotions (mentioned in the Oxford Dictionaries definition) and cynicism towards experts. The

Essence of Post-­Truth History 293 scholarly literature on post-­truth greatly emphasises the role of emotion. American rhetorician Bruce McComiskey has stated that ‘pathos occupies an important function in post-­truth rhetoric. . . . if rhetors can control the emotional foundations of their audiences’ beliefs, then they can feed their audiences any line of bullshit or fake news whatsoever’.9 Kalpokas similarly posits that ‘post-­truth is clearly part of the advent of the Experience Age, characterised by the dominance of emotional connection’.10 Expanding the context to the politics of history, we equally note the appeal to emotion. Benjamin T. Jones, for example, identifies the emotional form of Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s critique of supposed left-­wing guilt-­laden pro-­Aboriginal history (p. 105). As for Daniel Feierstein’s account of the Argentine ‘reloaded’ theory of the two demons, it is largely an affective construct that redirects compassion from the victims of state-­sponsored terrorism to its rehabilitated authors (p.  153). More often, though, the affective mechanism of post-­ truth rhetoric is much simpler, consisting of an ‘empty signifier’ (a semantic vehicle) that is filled with whatever emotion and meaning the recipient chooses for the purposes of instant gratification.11 Such ‘metapopulist’ signifiers would include ‘greatness’ in Trump’s electoral slogan and ‘heroism’ in Howard’s definition of Australian history (p. 105). The distrust of expertise, often propagated by high-­flying politicians, is also widely noted in the literature (p. 266). Jędrzej Czerep, in Chapter 2 of this volume, considers post-­truth primarily as a ‘crisis of trust in sources’, including expert opinion. Of course, the paradox of anti-­ establishmentism, including institutional expertise, is that those who rail against the establishment are often very much a part of it.12 There is a similar irony in Donald Trump’s campaigning against elites when his wealth and power clearly make him an elite. One might think that such contradictory information would create substantial cognitive dissonance, but as psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz has pointed out, it is precisely post-­ truth’s focus on what feels to be true, blending fiction with fact – similar to an audience’s voluntary suspension of disbelief during a theatrical play or Trump’s much-­loved bouts of professional wrestling – that has made it so successful.13 The disinformation of history can be disseminated through any medium, but as Ben Mercer reminds us, post-­truth has been able to flourish on social media (pp. 223, 227). Czerep describes some important characteristics of social media that has made it fertile ground for disinformation: the filter bubble; the blurring between source and recipient; public publishing; the absence of quality-­control gatekeepers; instantaneous online fame; the abolition of source hierarchy; and the suspension of rules of discussion (see Chapter 2). Perhaps the most recognisable embodiment of all these problems is the Internet meme, an annotated image that is often satirical and scandalous and that is easily created and shared online. One interesting example that captures the multiple

294  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones

Figure 16.1  Donald Trump meme denigrating Republicans.

ambiguities that such memes exhibit is the photo of a younger Donald Trump with an apparent quote denigrating all Republicans, referenced ‘People Magazine, 1998’ (see Figure 16.1). The information is entirely fictitious, yet one cannot know this without conducting some research. And the ambiguity does not end there: alongside the blurring of fact and fiction is a further blurring, that of the message itself. Is this pro-­or anti-­Trump? On the one hand, this seems anti-­Trump in that he ridicules Republican voters and trivialises political mendacity. On the other hand, the quote seems so farfetched and evidently made up that it supports Trump by highlighting the ‘fake news’ and dishonest ‘liberal-­left opposition’ that is trying to attack him.14 Such a meme resembles the aforementioned ‘empty signifier’: it can carry any number of emotions and meanings and thus is more likely to ‘go viral’.

Essence of Post-­Truth History 295

Figure 16.2  Menachem Begin meme promoting Jewish racial supremacism.

Internet memes are equally used to communicate false or distorted history. One particularly flagrant meme shows a photograph of former Israeli prime minister and founder of Likud Menachem Begin (1913– 1992) with the fictitious quotation promoting Jewish racial supremacism and global domination (see Figure 16.2).15 The Recipient Most writing on post-­truth has focused on the purveyor’s disinformation or  – some philosophers argue this is the essence  – their indifference to truth.16 Yet the phenomenon is a dialogue, and the recipient also plays a role, perhaps even a defining one.17 Many authors have argued that the recipient, like the purveyor, is indifferent to truth,18 with two studies from 2017 demonstrating that Trump supporters did not revise their opinions of their favoured politician despite knowing that some of his statements were false.19 Not everybody takes this view. Adam Chmielewski, in this volume, for example, argues that citizens, rather than being indifferent to truth, feel a general impotence in their lives and reject truthful statements out of sheer expressive frustration (p. 62). Avishai Green, political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, equally refutes the idea of

296  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones popular indifference to truth and instead suggests that populists perceive truth in terms of ‘sincerity without accuracy’ – that is, truth is the condition of a sincere representation of one’s thoughts and feelings rather than an accurate representation of the external world.20 This conception of truth can be heard in a recent radio interview on the BBC, where Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax and friend of Donald Trump, responds to the accusation that the latter makes hundreds of false claims by emphasising the president’s ability to speak spontaneously: ‘This president is the first unscripted president we’ve had in recent memory. Most presidents speak almost entirely from the script whenever they’re in public’.21 Trump is thus seen as authentic, ‘unscripted’, or true to himself. One way of exploring the paradox of real or apparent indifference to truth is to consider what happens in the world of art and imagination. One could start with Coleridge’s famous 1817 observation that readers undergo a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’22 and that they ‘chuse [choose] to be deceived’.23 However, such self-­deception seems highly unlikely, because we simply do not physically react as dupes: a person viewing a monster in a horror film may feel as if the film were real but does not act out their fear by running away or calling the police.24 We argue that in the experience of art as in the reception of post-­truth, the recipient voluntarily discerns the existence of distinct, sometimes-­overlapping worlds of fiction and reality, and drifts back and forth between the two.25 When we enter a fictional world, be it J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-­earth or President Trump’s Great America, the things in that world need not correspond to reality for them to be true. They are ‘true’ in the sense of being conceivable within the confines of that fictitious world. Thus, Trump’s false claim that Obama was born outside the United States is nonetheless perfectly conceivable in the alt-­right ‘Great America’. A willing participant in that world may well feel real indignation at Obama’s ‘foreign birth’, even though they may know that this is not true in the real one. Also, we do not necessarily think in the same way in fictional worlds as in the real world. Jerome Bruner’s two modes of cognitive functioning, analytical and narrative, seem to apply to differing degrees in fiction than they do in reality. The analytical mode deals with empirical truth, consistency, and argument, while the narrative mode deals with emotions and verisimilitude, defined as ‘conceivable experience’.26 It is thus perfectly possible for one to know, for example, that ghosts do not exist in the real world and yet feel that they exist in a horror film. Similarly, there is no contradiction or cognitive dissonance in a Brexiter feeling the emotional truth, the verisimilitude, of the £350m EU contribution claim (i.e. ‘I feel as if the UK gives a lot to the EU without getting anything in return’) while knowing that the claim itself may be empirically false. The two thoughts can coexist because they occupy separate worlds with their own specific modus operandi, in much the same way that a cinema audience easily straddles fiction and reality simultaneously.

Essence of Post-­Truth History 297 As regards post-­truth history, Ben Mercer provides a good example of such dissociation between fiction and fact in Nazi Germany. Observing that many Germans were at the same time aware of Nazi crimes but not fully cognizant of its familial pertinence, Mercer notes that ‘public memory was impervious to the disciplinary impact of historians’ (p. 222). Public memory here would be the ‘fictional’ world of verisimilitude, as opposed to the real factual world of the historians. In other words, one can know the truth about Nazi crimes while feeling – perhaps through knowledge of one’s own affectionate grandparents – that it just does not ring true. An example from Benjamin T. Jones’s chapter indicates that the narrative mode can even manipulate reasonably straightforward facts. His chapter notes that as prime minister, Scott Morrison took to Twitter to declare that the ‘modern Aus[tralian] nation began on January 26, 1788’ (p. 106). This is demonstrably false. It is likely that Morrison and his supporters know analytically that the British penal colony of New South Wales began in 1788 and that the Australian nation began only at Federation on 1 January 1901. Nevertheless, for him and many others, it feels right to trace the Australian narrative back to the 18th century because it fits a particular ideological agenda and justifies a lingering emotional attachment to Britishness. Objectives of Post-­Truth Rhetoric Let us clarify the intent of the post-­truth purveyor: unlike the lie, post-­ truth is not about deception. As we have seen earlier, both the purveyor and the recipient know that a particular assertion may not be true. While their dialogue purports to communicate factual information, it actually endeavours to enact other aims, most notably to build a collective identity or to accomplish some other political goal. Banerjee and Stöber note that recent post-­truth history in Indian textbooks serves to maintain the Hindutva national identity (p. 164), and André Brett observes that the pre-­Māori myth buttresses an unapologetic white New Zealand national identity (pp. 205–6). Czerep also describes identity in the case of anti-­ mainstream moral communities, such as Alex Jones’s InfoWars portal (pp. 40, 42). In fact, many scholars closely associate post-­truth with the protection of a – perceived vulnerable and dishonoured – collective identity. The American philosopher Steve Fuller, for example, states that ‘identity politics presents itself as a post-­truth paradise’27 and the Colombian philosopher Juan Pablo Bermúdez has written that ‘the post-­truth temperament . . . seems to be about perceiving evidence contrary to your beliefs as a threat to your own identity’.28 The construction of collective identity, of course, is inherently political, but post-­truth rhetoric can aim to accomplish any number of political objectives, as some of the chapters in this volume have shown. For instance, Feierstein affirms that

298  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones the unfounded quibbling over the dictatorship’s number of victims ‘seeks to delegitimize the social recognition of human rights organisations’ (p.  151), and June Bam-­Hutchison’s analysis of South Africa demonstrates that a virtual reality was created to encourage South Africans to live together peacefully, a ‘reconciliation discourse at all cost’ (p. 244).

Dangers of Post-­Truth History While the post-­truth phenomenon represents the convergence of a number of societal trends – most notably the growth of social media, individualism, and dissatisfaction with liberal politics – warnings of imminent catastrophe are less than helpful when considering an appropriate response. English critical theorist Stuart Sim, for instance, claims that ‘the death of democracy always has to stand as a distinct possibility’29 and American literary critic Michiko Kakutani remarks that the actions of Donald Trump ‘ripple outward like a toxic tsunami, creating havoc in the lives of millions’.30 Paradoxically, such hyperbole is itself, according to some, characteristic of post-­truth rhetoric.31 The level of outrage to post-­truth in some quarters appears to correspond to this hyperbole. Some lecturers fearfully suppress or disparage any expression of emotions that they identify as post-­truth, and others pre-­emptively steer the class away from controversial topics.32 Kalpokas observes more generally a ‘patronising discourse sometimes directed towards the adherents of post-­truth’.33 It is precisely this type of apparent exaggerated liberal outrage that forms the basis of Chmielewski’s critique in this volume. He describes the people who demonstrate a disproportionate reaction to post-­truth as alethic populists who fail to understand that political truth is less about factual knowledge and more about ‘performative purpose’ – that is, wanting to do something. This cognitocratic fallacy, where the mere possession of factual knowledge is falsely deemed sufficient for people to assume the position of power, has in his analysis contributed to the overreaction at the slightest deviation from fact. It is similar to misinterpreting the expression ‘I am starving’ as a literal ‘constative’ statement of fact rather than a rhetorical ‘performative’ device to express simple hunger and the desire to get food. Chmielewski further criticises alethic populists as hypocritical, suggesting that they do not wish to live in truth themselves but instead prefer a virtuous politician to do it for them (pp. 48, 57, 62). Such a vicarious and perhaps sanctimonious pleasure by the critics of post-­truth has also been described by Grosz, who considers them to be duplicitous in the whole post-­truth phenomenon – that is, it makes us feel good to point out the misinformation of others.34 Nevertheless, there are very real dangers, the most obvious being disinformation that directly affects people, such as anthropogenic climate change denial and HIV/AIDS denial. Also, the aforementioned survey

Essence of Post-­Truth History 299 Table 16.2 ‘The current climate of post-truth has exacerbated genocide denial’

Poland France United States

Agree

Disagree

I don’t have an opinion on that

50.0% 50.0% 64.8%

19.0% 22.2% 13.0%

28.6% 27.8% 22.2%

of international genocide scholars reveals that between 50% and 65% of such scholars believe that genocide denial has been aggravated by the current post-­truth climate (Table 16.2). In this volume, both Benjamin T. Jones and André Brett note that the disinformation of history is, because of the Internet, incomparably easier, quicker, and cheaper to produce and publish than genuinely researched history, and once disseminated widely, it is almost impossible to reverse (pp. 114, 212). As our two examples of post-­truth history from the introduction reveal (the case of the fake death camp and Irish slaves; see pp. 9–13), their falsehood is not immediately obvious and necessitates critical thinking and some knowledge of rhetorical criticism to identify, skills that take time to develop.35 Other scholars note less-­discernible psychological dangers: Grosz calls Donald Trump a ‘psychic imperialist . . . [who] aims to colonise our minds . . . and dominate the external and internal landscape’,36 and the philosopher Lee McIntyre notes that if we ‘allow our opinions and feelings to play a role in shaping what we think of as facts and truth’ we risk ‘being estranged from reality itself’.37 Political consequences of post-­truth involve the danger of manipulation by demagogues38 and the diversion of public opinion from other important issues like wealth inequality and ecological calamities.39 Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael Rich devote a whole chapter to political consequences: the erosion of civil discourse, political paralysis, voter alienation and disengagement, and political uncertainty.40 Regarding the erosion of civil discourse, Sim observes that the post-­truth climate has encouraged the proliferation of the death threat, which has become a ‘standard tactic of public discourse, so readily adopted to signal profound disagreement – even with members of one’s own political party’.41 These dangers notwithstanding, the economist Alex Edmans believes that having hit rock bottom in 2016, the public is aware of post-­truth and ‘now realises that it shouldn’t accept everything at face value’.42 Let us turn to how we can counter this phenomenon.

Countering Post-­Truth History Long-­term solutions inevitably involve better education, although what that should consist of divides opinion. Most scholars of and writers on post-­ truth describe the need for courses that teach critical thinking, rhetoric,

300  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones news literacy, and curiosity.43 Others, while not discounting these skills and attitudes, focus on the need to engage with students therapeutically, commiserating with their emotions, though not with extreme misinformed views  – for these scholars, post-­truth is primarily a personal emotional malaise rather than an issue of ignorance or faulty epistemology.44 Our short-­term response to post-­truth, as described in the scholarly and popular literature, can be divided into two main strands: fact-­checking and mimesis. Both, however, are problematic, featuring practical and ethical conundrums. Fact-­checking has been the most popular response: many reputable websites now debunk fake news. Most authors believe that only a consistent and relentless bombardment of facts can undermine and disprove false beliefs.45 Contributors to this volume also emphasise the importance of fact-­checking: Jones, for example, invokes the ‘urgent need for historians to explain their work and methods and resist popular assaults on truth and memory’ (p. 115), and Feierstein warns that ‘refutation of post-­ truth discourse needs to simultaneously deal with both empirical facts and sets of interpretations’ (p. 154). Intuitively, of course, this makes perfect sense, and it would be hard to imagine the absence of fact-­checking as at least part of any overall response. However, it costs a great deal of time and effort, and by the time a piece of fake news has been rigorously refuted, it has already been propagated virally around the world and successfully impressed on countless minds. Not only does disinformation spread faster, but it also reaches a much wider audience than corrective information, possibly because the former caters to emotional needs.46 As a result, various initiatives are currently trying to automate the fact-­ checking process, involving, for instance, the instantaneous flagging of factually dubious posts on social media.47 Even if the speed and scope of corrective information could be significantly amplified, a more serious objection remains: it might be ineffective or, worse yet, counterproductive. In this volume, both Gerald J. Steinacher and Ben Mercer doubt the efficacy of debunking false history through purely factual methods (pp. 124, 230–1). If a message appeals principally to emotion, it is probably impervious to factual challenge. As the computer scientist Hal Berghel quips, fact-­checking post-­truth is akin to verifying that a painted tree has the correct number of leaves or trying to shovel smoke.48 Furthermore, responding to disinformation rationally, however well intentioned, inevitably propagates the original falsehood and could even ‘backfire’ by convincing the recipient of the veracity of the latter.49 This may sound counterintuitive, but if the false message is couched in the belief that the establishment is nefarious (one of the key traits of post-­truth), corrective information only demonstrates its existence. The other mode of response to post-­truth is mimesis: fighting like with like. The fundamental question that we need to ask ourselves is whether we should imitate those aspects of post-­truth discourse that has made it

Essence of Post-­Truth History 301 so successful, notably its narrative structure, empty soundbite signifiers, or appeals to emotions. Many scholars associate post-­truth with narrative, a coherent story that converts an assortment of facts, experiences, and desires into one meaningful whole. Kalpokas thus asserts that ‘post-­ truth is exactly about narratives – escapist fictions that allow people to suddenly feel good about themselves and the world in which they live’.50 Similarly, Hamid Foroughi and colleagues state that ‘post-­truth is characterized by certain narrative types that dominate its cultural spaces’.51 Much of the narrative perspective of post-­truth is based on analyses comparing the Remain and Leave campaigns before the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. Leave, invoking emancipatory narratives headed by the empowering slogan ‘Take Back Control’, is often contrasted with Remain, which gave dry, factual bullet-­pointed arguments.52 As a result, authors who take a narrative perspective advocate a counternarrative in response to post-­truth.53 Sebastian Herrmann, analysing right-­wing populism in Germany and the United States, takes a different view: far from being a consistent narrative marked by ‘causality and teleological drive’, post-­truth is characterised more by an incoherent miscellany and the absence of narrative. While not discounting narrative entirely, he points to what we described earlier as an empty signifier, or what he calls ‘a single soundbite, a meme, a vignette that merely suggests narratives’ with ‘ludic dynamics’. In other words, instead of post-­truth being a narrative, it is a signifier or a symbolic vehicle that can hold numerous other personal narratives. Accordingly, instead of offering a coherent narrative, Trump ‘offered a vast database of mostly incoherent and incongruent soundbites, memes from which voters could pick and choose to manufacture their own projection of what they thought he said or meant’.54 An excellent example of such a post-­truth soundbite is the Brexit Leave campaign slogan ‘Take Back Control’. On its own, it is vacuous: take back control by whom, from whom, of what? But it is precisely this vacuity that makes it so versatile. It can refer to immigrants, the liberal establishment, the Westminster bubble, Brussels bureaucracy, the European Court of Human Rights, Franco-­German domination, and much more. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ is similar: any malcontent can idiosyncratically hark back to their actual or imagined past when things were ‘great’ – what constitutes great will vary with each individual. Although this strategy may be effective in populist politics, such empty signifiers are useless if our objective is to communicate historical facts. Perhaps the way to counter post-­truth is by couching our own factual arguments in similar emotional terms. D’Ancona and Berghel suggest that ridicule is an effective response.55 In Chapter 14 of this volume, Andrea Gallardo Ocampo and Miguel A. Híjar-­ Chiapa favour some degree of mimesis, arguing that museums can counter post-­truth not only with factual content but especially ‘through sensory experiences capable

302  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones of arousing feelings that can effectively lead to a sense of compassion’ (p. 253). Analysing myths and conflict in the Balkans, the work of sociologist Małgorzata Budyta-­Budzyńska would also seem to indicate fighting like with like: Since the myth is resistant to logical interpretation and cannot be overcome by scientific arguments, only another myth can fight it, preferably equally fantastic, equally incredible. An amazing narrative should therefore be countered by another, equally or even more amazing one.56 And yet even if the efficacy of such mimesis can be proven, do we not find ourselves trapped in a moral dilemma? By resorting to the tactics of post-­truth, are we not legitimising it? Bruce McComiskey has stated that ‘fighting post-­truth rhetoric with post-­truth rhetoric is unethical’,57 and Stuart Sim similarly states that ‘[revealing the unacceptability of Trump– Coulter–Breitbart politics] does not mean reverting to the same dirty tactics of fake news and alternative facts that they deploy’.58 Likewise d’Ancona advocates that ‘the means of correction have to match the prevailing culture’ but recognises that ‘an endless battle of distraction and counter-­distraction would do nothing for the democratic discourse’ and that ‘veracity must never be compromised by theatricality’.59 Our ability to counter post-­truth history and prevent the radicalisation of people like the Christchurch mosque attacker may depend on academics and journalists finding a way forward through this moral and practical impasse.

Notes 1. Malpas, “Retrieving Truth,” 288; Tesich, “A Government of Lies.” 2. Rabin-­Havt, Lies, Incorporated; Pawełczyk and Jakubowski, “Postprawda.” 3. Cohen, States of Denial, 7–9. 4. Ernsten, “A Renaissance with Revenants,” 216–219; Worden, “The Changing Politics,” 37. The editors thank June Bam-­Hutchison for bringing the case of the Prestwich ossuary café to our attention. 5. Topping, “Sweden, Who Would Believe This?” 6. Ahmed, “Brexit,” 98–99. 7. Kalpokas, A Political Theory of Post-­Truth, 98. 8. Hellinger, Conspiracies, 26–30. 9. McComiskey, Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition, 27. 10. Kalpokas, A Political Theory of Post-­Truth, 125. 11. Ibid., 28. 12. Ball, Post-­Truth, 262–263. 13. Grosz, “Why Trump tells it like it isn’t.” 14. Ross and Rivers, “Internet Memes,” 302–303. 15. Yisrael Medad, the former director of Information and Educational Resources at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, has investigated the provenance of this particular fabrication. Medad, “Correcting a Misquotation Reputedly by Menachem Begin.”

Essence of Post-­Truth History 303 16. Broncano, “Posverdad”; Warzyński, “O współczesnych problemach,” 138; Pingeot, “Pour mieux saisir.” 17. ‘What is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public’s response to it’. See d’Ancona, Post Truth, Chapter  1, ‘Truth Out, Emotion In’, para. 8. 18. Ball, Post-­Truth, 239; Keane, “Post-Truth Politics.” 19. Nyhan et al., “Taking Corrections Literally but Not Seriously?”; Swire et al., “Processing Political Misinformation.” 20. Green, “Speaking Bullshit to Power,” 8. 21. Ruddy and Ley, “Christopher Ruddy: How much trouble is Donald Trump in?” 22. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 6. 23. Coleridge, Lectures 1808–1819, 266. 24. Walton, “Fearing Fictions.” 25. Mary Jacobsen’s survey of student readers also revealed this drifting back and forth between real and imaginary worlds. See Jacobsen, “Looking for Literary Space,” 28. 26. Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, 11, 52. 27. Fuller, Post-­Truth, 56. 28. Bermúdez, “The Post-­Truth Temperament,” 101. 29. Sim, Post-­Truth, Scepticism & Power, 59. 30. Kakutani, The Death of Truth, Epilogue. 31. Constance de Saint-­Laurent et al., “Collective Memory,” 149; McComiskey, Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition, 29, 33. 32. Nelson, “(Dis)orderly Potential,” 79, 81, 86–87. 33. Kalpokas, A Political Theory of Post-­Truth, 116. 34. Grosz, “Why Trump tells it like it isn’t.” 35. McComiskey, Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition, 40–41. 36. Grosz, “Why Trump tells it like it isn’t.” 37. McIntyre, Post-­Truth, 172. 38. Sim, Post-­Truth, Scepticism & Power, 155. 39. Keane, “Post-Truth Politics.” 40. Kavanagh and Rich, Truth Decay, 191–221. 41. Sim, Post-­Truth, Scepticism & Power, 167. 42. Edmans, “Why truth is not enough,” 54. 43. Bermúdez, “The Post-­Truth Temperament,” 101–103; McComiskey, Post-­ Truth Rhetoric and Composition, 38–43; Sim, Post-­Truth, Scepticism  & Power, 160–163; d’Ancona, Post Truth, Chapter 5, ‘The Scrutiny Spectrum’, para. 1–3. 44. Nelson, “(Dis)orderly Potential,” 87–88; Zembylas, “The Affective Grounding of Post-­Truth,” 3–6, 8–11; Zembylas, “Pedagogies of Strategic Empathy,” 113–114, 18, 20–22. 45. McIntyre, Post-­Truth, 158–161; Sim, Post-­Truth, Scepticism & Power, 156– 157, 63; Haack, “Post ‘Post-­Truth’,” 274; McComiskey, Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition, 44. 46. Ball, Post-­Truth, 242–244, 55. 47. Gilchrist, “Post-­truth,” 21; Wardle and Derakhshan, “Information Disorder,” 61–63. 48. Berghel, “Alt-­News and Post-­Truths in the ‘Fake News’ Era,” 113. 49. Dieguez, “Post-­Truth: The Dark Side of the Brain,” 47; Lockie, “Post-­truth Politics and the Social Sciences,” 1. 50. Kalpokas, A Political Theory of Post-­Truth, 16. 51. Foroughi et al., “Leadership in a Post-­Truth Era,” 142.

304  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones 52. Browning, “Brexit Populism and Fantasies of Fulfilment,” 11; Evans and Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Chapter  3, ‘Facts, farce and fiction’, para. 4–8. 53. d’Ancona, Post Truth, Chapter  5, ‘Trump the Narrative’, para. 4, 7. Although Layota Lee does not address ‘post-­truth’ as such, Lee’s analysis of Black Twitter demonstrates the potential efficacy of counternarratives in ‘resisting dominant degrading narratives placed on black and brown bodies through mainstream news coverage’. See Lee, “Black Twitter.” 54. Herrmann, “Post-­truth = Post-­narrative?” 55. d’Ancona, Post Truth, Chapter 5, ‘So True, Funny How it Seems’, para. 1; Berghel, “Alt-­News and Post-­Truths in the ‘Fake News’ Era,” 43. 56. Budyta-­Budzyńska, Socjologia narodu i konfliktów etnicznych, 75. 57. Personal communication, 5 November 2019. 58. Sim, Post-­Truth, Scepticism & Power, 163. 59. d’Ancona, Post Truth, Chapter 5, ‘Facts are not Enough’, para. 14.

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306  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Michael D. Rich. Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018. Keane, John. “Post-­Truth Politics and Why the Antidote Isn’t Simply ‘Fact-­Checking’ and Truth.” The Conversation, 23 March  2018. https://theconversation. com/post-­truth-­politics-­and-­why-­the-­antidote-­isnt-­simply-­fact-­checking-­and-­ truth-­87364. Lee, Latoya A. “Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media.” Social Sciences 6, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010026. Lockie, Stewart. “Post-­Truth Politics and the Social Sciences.” Environmental Sociology 3, no. 1 (2017): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2016.127 3444. Malpas, Jeff. “Retrieving the Truth: Modernism, Post-­modernism and The Problem of Truth.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 75, no. 2–3 (1992). McComiskey, Bruce. Post-­Truth Rhetoric and Composition. Colorado, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2017. McIntyre, Lee. Post-­Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Medad, Yisrael. “Correcting a Misquotation Reputedly by Menachem Begin.” Begin Center Diary (2009). http://begincenterdiary.blogspot.com/2009/05/ correcting-­misquotation-­reputedly-­by.html. Nelson, Peter M. “(Dis)Orderly Potential: Ways Forward in ‘Post-­Truth’ Social Studies.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 43, no. 3 (2019). Nyhan, Brendan, Ethan Porter, Jason Reifler, and Thomas J. Wood. “Taking Corrections Literally but Not Seriously? The Effects of Information on Factual Beliefs and Candidate Favorability.” SSRN (2017). https://doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.2995128. Pawełczyk, Piotr, and Jakub Jakubowski. “Postprawda i nowe media. Czy potrzebujemy postprawdy?” Środkowoeuropejskie Studia Polityczne, no. 1 (2017): 197–212. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssp.2017.1.11. Pingeot, Mazarine. “Pour mieux saisir la post-­vérité, relire Hannah Arendt.” 20 January  2017. Accessed 18 February  2018. https://theconversation.com/ pour-­mieux-­saisir-­la-­post-­verite-­relire-­hannah-­arendt-­71518. Rabin-­Havt, Ari. Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-­Truth Politics. New York: Anchor Books, 2016. Ross, Andrew S., and Damian J. Rivers. “Internet Memes as Polyvocal Political Participation.” In The Presidency and Social Media: Discourse, Disruption, and Digital Democracy in the 2016 Presidential Election, edited by Dan Schill and John Allen Hendricks. New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018. Ruddy, Christopher, and Shaun Ley. “Christopher Ruddy: How much trouble is Donald Trump in?” BBC Hardtalk, 22 November  2019. www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/w3csy946. Sim, Stuart. Post-­Truth, Scepticism & Power. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Swire, Briony, Adam J. Berinsky, Stephan Lewandowsky, and Ullrich K. H. Ecker. “Processing Political Misinformation: Comprehending the Trump Phenomenon.” Royal Society Open Science 4, no. 3 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1098/ rsos.160802. Tesich, Steve. “A Government of Lies.” The Nation 254, no.1 (1992): 12–14.

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Contributors

June Bam-­Hutchison is an African Studies researcher at the University of Cape Town. Lead editor of Whose History Counts: Decolonising African Pre-­colonial Historiography (2018)  – shortlisted for a 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Award in South Africa – her project at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation won UNESCO’s Peace Education Prize in 2008. André Brett is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wollongong. He publishes on Moriori history in a broader research profile on Australasia’s colonial history. He is the author of three books, including Acknowledge No Frontier: The Creation and Demise of New Zealand’s Provinces (2016). Adam Chmielewski is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wrocław, Poland, where he chairs the Department of Social and Political Philosophy. He is also the editor-­in-­chief of the philosophical quarterly Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia. His latest book is titled Politics and Recognition. Toward a New Political Aesthetics (Routledge 2020). Jędrzej Czerep lectures at Collegium Civitas University and has a seminar titled Fake News, Post-­Truth and Politics of Information in the XXI century. Analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), he has recently published ‘Social Media Dynamics as a New Factor in African Politics’ (2018). Daniel Feierstein is a director of both the Center for Genocide Studies at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) and the State Crimes Observatory at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). His recent books include Genocide as Social Practice (2014) and the Spanish-­language The Construction of the Fascist Dwarf (2019). Andrea Gallardo Ocampo is a PhD candidate in political and social sciences and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her recent Spanish-­language publications explore,

Contributors 309 among others, artistic visual communication from a phenomenological hermeneutic perspective and the role contemporary museums play in fostering a pluralistic public discourse. Marius Gudonis is a PhD candidate at Collegium Civitas University, Poland. His research interests include Jewish identity, post-­truth rhetoric, and the sociology of genocide denial. His most recent publication is ‘How Useful is the Concept of Post-­Truth in Analysing Genocide Denial? Analysis of Online Comments on the Jedwabne Massacre’ (2017). Miguel Alejandro Híjar-­Chiapa is an associate professor at the University of Guadalajara and a president of the Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, Austin, and Massey University, New Zealand. His research focuses on the international relations of the Indo-­ Pacific region. Benjamin T. Jones is a lecturer in history at Central Queensland University and a foundation fellow of the Australian Studies Institute. He has published extensively on Australian politics and history, particularly on the history of republicanism. His most recent book is This Time: Australia’s Republican Past and Future (2018). Basabi Khan Banerjee is a pedagogue, social scientist, and associate faculty member at the Georg Eckert Institute, Germany. Formerly an associate professor at both Calcutta University and the National Council of Educational Research and Training, India, she has contributed to the 2015 UNESCO publication The International Status of Education about the Holocaust. Ben Mercer is a lecturer in the School of History at the Australian National University. Specialising in the history of postwar Western Europe, in particular the relationship between different forms of social, political, and cultural change, he has just recently authored Student Revolt in 1968: France, Italy and West Germany (2020). Alana Piper is a chancellor’s postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney. With Ana Stevenson, she produced the edited collection Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives (2019) and is author of over 30 scholarly publications. Henry Rousso is a historian of the Second World War and senior researcher at the CNRS, France. He is particularly known for his seminal work The Vichy Syndrome (1991, first published in 1987). He created the concept of negationism and is widely considered an authority on collective memory and the uses or misuses of the past in contemporary societies.

310  Contributors Gerald J. Steinacher is the James A. Rawley professor of history at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His research on the Holocaust, national socialism, and Italian fascism has repeatedly been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, and the German weekly Der Spiegel, among others. Ana Stevenson is a postdoctoral research fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, South Africa, and coeditor of Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives (2019). Recently, the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association awarded her the 2019 W. Turrentine Jackson (Article) Prize. Georg Stöber has a doctorate in geography and field research experience in Iran, Morocco, and Pakistan. Former head of the Textbook and Society Department at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany, his current research focuses on textbooks and conflicts in, among others, South Asia. Adrian Wesołowski is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany, and at the History Department of the University of Warsaw, Poland. He has recently published in historical journals (Kwartalnik Historyczny, Historyka) as well as wider interdisciplinary publications (Celebrity Studies, Kultura Popularna). Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski is affiliated with SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Previously a lecturer of philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), he has published widely on social philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences and, most recently, ‘Dissidents and Nomads in [Not Only] Post-­totalitarian Countries’ (2019).

Index

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 103 – 104, 106 – 115, 188 – 189, 203, 291, 293 alethic populism 48 – 49 alternative facts xiii, 11, 34, 41 antisemitism: spelling of xvn1; in the United States 121 – 135 anti-vaccination movement 42 apartheid 235 – 237 Arendt, Hannah 8, 55 Attwood, Bain 104 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 161 – 166, 167 – 168, 170 – 172 Bieszk, Janusz 35 – 36 Bolsonaro, Jair 16, 251 Bolt, Andrew 103, 108 – 110, 112 – 114 Brennan, Jason 69 Burawoy, Michael 72 Carr, E.H. 6 Christchurch mosque massacre 1 Classe, Léon-Paul 2 – 3 conspiracy theory: concept of 9, 39 – 40; efficacy of debunking 274; examples of 1, 11, 34 – 35, 40, 93, 98n54, 207, 292; ‘Great Replacement’ 1, 128, 134 – 135; ‘Jewish’ 126 – 128 d’Ancona, Matthew 7, 114, 301 – 302 Denial (film) 129 denial and denialism 104, 112 – 113 dirty war (Argentina) 143 disinformation of history: in Brazil 16; in colonial Rwanda 2 – 3; in Hungary 17; in Israel 17; in Myanmar 4 – 5; in Nazi Germany 1 – 2; in Poland 18 – 19; in Serbia 3 – 4; in Zimbabwe 18

Facebook 36, 114, 159, 161, 163 – 164, 227, 272, 274 fact-checking xiv, 6, 34, 211, 300 Faurisson, Robert xii, 275 Febvre, Lucien xiii – xiv First Nations: Australia (see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people); New Zealand (see Māori) genocide: Gukurahundi 18; Rohingya 4; Srebrenica 3 genocide denial: if academics should respond 269 – 270; Armenian xiii, 2, 152 – 154; see also Holocaust denial Gerring, John 8 Habermas, Jürgen 51, 56 Havel, Václav 60 – 61 history: feminist history 183 – 193; limits of historical analogy 229 – 231; nature of xv; as a warning 227 – 229 Hitler, Adolf 1 – 2, 17, 22n76, 127, 130 – 131, 169, 227; Indian interest in 172 – 174 Hobsbawm, Eric 4 Holocaust denial xii, 113, 129 – 134, 154, 222 – 223; factors explaining xii – xiii; response to 269 – 276 Honko, Lauri 9 Howard, John 103, 105 – 107 Internet: change in usage 36 – 38; see also social media Irving, David 129, 222, 272 Jones, Alex 40, 297 Keating, Paul 105, 107

312 Index laws prohibiting genocide denial xii, 104, 132 Machiavelli 53 – 54, 74 Malpas, Jeff 7, 290 Māori 199 – 212 McIntyre, Lee 7, 95, 184, 299 Mugabe, Robert 18 museums: as critical spaces 251 – 262; Davis Museum 256 – 257; Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa 257 – 258; Memory and Tolerance Museum 254 – 255, 260; Museum of Modern Art 255 – 256; Museum of the Second World War 19; National Museum of African American History and Culture 253; Simonstown Museum 240 – 244; Smithsonian Institution 253; University Museum of Contemporary Art 253 – 254, 257 myth: concept of 9, 184, 292; dismissal of genocide as 103, 108; gender violence and 184 – 186, 188 – 189; Heavenly Serbia 3 – 4; how to counter 302; ivory tower 267, 270 – 271, 281, 285n77; Moriori 204 – 212 Nazi collaboration: French state xii; Hungarian state 16 – 17; ‘Mufti of Jerusalem’ 17; Polish 19; Serb state 4 Nedić, Milan 4 negationism xii – xiv, 147, 150, 151, 154, 271, 275; definition of xvn3 Netanyahu, Benjamin 17 Nichols, Tom 6, 69, 266 – 267 Orbán, Viktor 17, 128, 251 Perraudin, André 2 – 3 Peterson, Jordan see Pinkerson Pinker, Stephen see Pinkerson Pinkerson 87 – 96 populism: alethic 48 – 49; in Germany and USA 301; rise of 16, 266 postmodernism: critique of 97n10 – 12; defence of 6; definition of 88 – 89 post-truth: characteristics of 7; as a condition 74 – 76; in contradistinction to lying 9, 67,

124, 223, 290 – 291; the dangers of 298 – 299; definition of 5, 33; implications for society 60 – 62; as new phenomenon xiv, 33 – 34, 113 – 114, 266, 291; as old phenomenon xiii, 124, 184 – 185, 223, 291; politics 7; relationship to postmodernism 95 – 96 post-truth history: characteristics of 290 – 297; definition of 8; examples of 9 – 13, 35 – 36, 103 – 104, 106 Process of National Reorganization (Argentina) 142 – 143 pseudohistory 9 Regal, Brian 9 resistance to facts 36 response to post-truth: difficulties of xiv – xv, 34; perverse effects of xiv revisionism xii, 104, 111 – 112 Rorty, Richard 70 – 71 Rudd, Kevin 103, 107 – 108 Rwandan genocide xiii, 2 scepticism see science scepticism science scepticism 34 – 36, 40 – 42, 68 – 70 scientism 48 social media 5, 7, 15, 33, 35 – 39, 42, 114, 128, 159, 161 – 163, 174 – 176, 185, 207, 223 – 224, 227, 230, 252, 271 – 272, 281, 293, 298; see also Facebook; Twitter Stolen Generations 14, 103, 106 – 115 Szarek, Jarosław 19 Terzić, Velimir 4 Tesich, Steve 7 – 8, 47, 61 – 62, 105, 115, 159, 290 Tito, Josip Broz 3 Trump, Donald: anti-elite paradox 293; attitude towards Jews and Israel 133 – 134; attitude towards racism 123; comparison with Mussolini and Hitler 225 – 229; denigration of Soros 128; election slogan 172, 293, 296; hyperbolic criticism of 298 – 299; institutional opposition to 252, 255 – 226; as Machiavellian fox 74; meme denigrating Republicans 294; obduracy of supporters 7, 295;

Index  313 and post-truth 7, 11, 223 – 224, 292, 301 truth: concept of xiv, 6, 49; philosophy of 49 – 52; reconstitution of 57 – 60

Twitter 37, 114, 133, 159, 200, 210, 212, 272, 297 Windshuttle, Keith 104, 106, 110 – 111, 114