Daily Times

The year 2016 will perhaps best be remembered as the year of Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump; two events analysts have defined as cataclysmic because they blew away the credibility of different polls and sharply questioned the value of political correctness. Donald Trump’s campaign and the appeal to xenophobia in favor of Brexit relied on rhetoric laced with partial truths which appealed to rightist emotions among the populace. As a result, academicians and commentators on political science termed this period of time a ‘Post-Truth Era’! In fact, Oxford Dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’ as the International Word of the year 2016.

The idea that human civilization has just entered a post-truth age is one that must be explored further. Communication Studies and Social Science disciplines argue that communication — be it individual, social or political — has always been for certain objectives. Aristotle, the famous philosopher of antiquity, postulated a similar idea two and a half millennia ago when he argued that the art of discourse must appeal to logos (the knowledge), pathos (the emotion), and ethos (the character/identity and beliefs), if it has to persuade the people.

This line of argument perhaps explains why we observe that the political history of the world is so rife with rhetoric which overtly appeals to the emotions, imagined character and to the identity of a particular group of people. This rhetoric, moreover, forces the masses to think, believe and act in a certain manner. The objectives behind this appeal to emotions could be ideological such as upholding national security or something as mundane as winning political support.

World history is also replete with alternative reporting of facts such as the propaganda the west unleashed during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However, the world witnessed the most egregious of fact-twisting during the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. Just before the US led coalition forces invaded Iraq, the UN declared that the country had made ‘significant progress’ towards removing Weapons of Mass Destruction. The UN also observed that there was not sufficient basis for it to authorize the US to lead a coalition against Iraq.

The appeal to xenophobia in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and during British referendum on Brexit had relied on rhetoric laced with partial truths. With reference to such instances, academics and commentators on politics have termed this period of time as a post-truth era

Despite this, the US Congress passed a resolution which gave the green light to the invasion. This resolution was passed on the basis of exaggerated information and on the flimsy pretense that Iraq was about to launch an attack on the US’s Eastern Seaboard-which was over 6000 miles away from Iraqi shores.

Of late, several political parties in Pakistan-most prominent among them the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf — have claimed that US Drone strikes on terrorist outfits inside FATA Pakistan are in fact the root cause of terrorism in our country. These political parties also attempt to so plainly link terrorism with widespread corruption in Pakistan. The simple truth behind terrorism in our country, however, is that terrorism and violent groups existed in Pakistan long before the first US Drone strike in 2004.

Corruption, on the other hand, does not have any link with terrorism either. Then why do parties like the PTI continue to make such false claims; simply because this tactic is so successful in strengthening and further expanding their conservative voter base. Moreover, perhaps due to their ideological leanings, they cannot see that political Islam is at the core of the problem of violent extremism in Pakistan.

The fundamental idea to take out of this is that even before Brexit and even before Trump, the global political landscape was always subject to convenient truths. What has changed, however, is the increased public access to information, the rise of social media, and the 24/7 electronic news media, all of which have significantly increased the flow of information.

From a sociological standpoint, the developments in the US and Britain must be seen in the backdrop of how political correctness such as inclusiveness and multiculturalism have been enforced in most of the West. This, in tandem with emerging political and economic factors in the West such as the influx of immigrants, unemployment, and incursions of groups like ISIS in Europe and the US, have shocked conservative segments of western society. It is in these conservative segments where individuals like Nigel Farage in the UK and Donald Trump in the US gained most of their support.

Nevertheless, human civilization has always continued to survive and live through the antics of power politics and statecraft. The current phenomenon too will pass, and human beings will come out wiser once the world is through with Brexit and Trump.

The writer is a sociologist with interest in history and politics. He’s accessible:Zulfirao@yahoo.com

Published in Daily Times, June 22nd, 2017.