{"id":269067,"date":"2021-01-18T20:25:34","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T01:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/trumps-assault-on-truth-will-continue-to-trouble-american-democracy\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T23:21:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:21:50","slug":"trumps-assault-on-truth-will-continue-to-trouble-american-democracy","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2021\/01\/trumps-assault-on-truth-will-continue-to-trouble-american-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s assault on truth will continue to trouble American democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s said you can\u2019t reason a person out of a thing she or he was never reasoned into, which explains the dilemma America faces with its many millions of voters who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election and should be kept in office by force if necessary.<\/p>\n

Storming the US Capitol was the culmination of a collection of related American crises stacked one on top of the other like figures in a Russian nesting doll; a political crisis wrapped in an epistemic crisis inside a media crisis that, together, amounts to an assault on reason itself.<\/p>\n

The path to the insurrection in Washington runs through the various earlier hoaxes and conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump \u2013 that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, that Bill and Hillary Clinton committed several dozen murders, that climate change is a ruse perpetrated by the Chinese, and so on. Believe those lies and you\u2019ll have no trouble swallowing the canard that Democrats were somehow in cahoots with Republican governors and Republican-appointed judges to rig the 2020 election \u2013 and, conveniently, to rig it only in the swing states Trump lost, and only for the presidential race, not for the Senate and House elections.<\/p>\n

Having travelled that far from reality, it\u2019s only one small step for a gullible, MAGA-Trump mob to consider it their patriotic duty to storm the US Capitol, hang the vice-president and execute the House Speaker, thereby thwarting the confirmation of the president-elect, Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Though Trump\u2019s lies triggered the assault, the current moment has been decades in the making. The political right\u2019s descent into anti-enlightenment fabulism did not begin with him or with Facebook or the internet. It began in the last century, soon after the Reagan administration freed American broadcast media from their obligations under something called\u00a0The Fairness Doctrine<\/em>, which required holders of broadcast licenses to present honest, equitable and balanced programming. Repeal of the doctrine was consistent with then-president Ronald Reagan\u2019s facile characterization<\/a> that \u201cgovernment is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

A hard-right media quickly sprang up on the freshly deregulated airwaves and separated itself from the mainstream. The most famous and influential pioneer on that new frontier was, and to many still is, radio\u2019s Rush Limbaugh. He identified his enemies early: \u201cgovernment, academia,\u00a0science and the media.\u201d He called them \u201cthe four corners of deceit\u201d and his America was not merely divided by politics, it was divided cosmically. He made that clear in a 2009 denial of climate change<\/a>: \u201cWe live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Millions feasted on Limbaugh\u2019s decades of aggressive paranoia, particularly Trump, who last year awarded him The Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n

In their groundbreaking 2018 book Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics<\/em><\/a>, Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts find America\u2019s epistemic crisis rooted in a right-wing media for which there is not, and never has been, a\u00a0mainstream or centre-left analog. Though MSNBC is sometimes derided as the left\u2019s equivalent of FOX News because its programs and hosts are progressive and pro-Democrat, it\u2019s also pro-facts and pro-evidence. FOX News, once merely fanatically pro-Republican, was the propaganda arm and staffing bullpen for the Trump administration as well as frequently reality-agnostic.<\/p>\n

In their research, the authors cite surveys showing that conservative respondents hold FOX News, and broadcast personalities Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Limbaugh in the same high regard that liberal respondents do NPR, PBS, the BBC and The New York Times<\/em>. That\u2019s your epistemic crisis right there. The differences between the first group of media and the second are not just differences in perspective and quality, they are differences in kind. One group adheres to journalistic standards and practices, is rigorously accountable to its audiences, acknowledges and corrects mistakes, and seeks out the most accurate version of the truth. The other inflames passions with conspiracy theories, fear-mongering and frequent race-baiting.<\/p>\n

A 2020 Pew Research survey<\/a> measures consumers\u2019 attitudes: Democrats trust most of the media, Republicans distrust most of the media. Trump has something to do with that. He knows where his self-interest lies and has repeatedly characterized mainstream media as enemies of the people, while extolling FOX, Hannity, Limbaugh and others who literally serve as his messengers and advisers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A man holds a sign near the scene of a riot at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. By Johnny Silvercloud\/Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A tragic irony of this epistemic\/media\/political crisis is that technology was expected to lead us in the opposite direction; make us all smarter. The promise of the internet was the democratization of the marketplace of ideas \u2013 power redistributed among the hoi polloi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the final days of the Trump administration, as the Republican party reeled from having lost the White House, the Senate and the House just four years after winning them all \u2013 an electoral disaster on a scale not seen since 1932, when Herbert Hoover led the Republicans into the wilderness \u2013 there was much talk about Trumpism, its future and what it even means. But after four years of it, the party hadn\u2019t even defined itself with a coherent election platform. It knuckled under to Trump and accepted that the platform was whatever he might say on a given day. In the end he said it stands for working people \u2013 what party doesn\u2019t claim that?<\/p>\n

More likely Trumpism will be remembered as standing for an early 21st century era of anti-rationalism. Fact free, it defended the right of its disciples to believe whatever they want to believe regardless of evidence. It challenged the idea of a shared reality on which democracy rests, and on Jan. 6, it appeared to have eaten itself whole.<\/p>\n

But Trumpism as a movemenpolitiquegh\u2019s four corners of deceit \u2013 seems destined to trouble American democracy for a while even as it fails electorally. If nothing else, there’s money in it, as Trump proved by raising hundreds of millions of dollars to overturn the election result. And he’s never been one to pass up a good grift.<\/p>\n

Photo: The volatile scene on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. By Valerio Pucci\/Shutterstock.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s said you can\u2019t reason a person out of a thing she or he was never reasoned into, which explains the dilemma America faces with its many millions of voters who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election and should be kept in office by force if necessary. Storming the US Capitol was the culmination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":243343,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9385,9358,9372],"tags":[8637,8476],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4295],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[7189,7136],"class_list":["post-269067","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medias-et-culture","category-politique","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-canada-u-s-fr","tag-us-politics-fr","irpp-category-politique","irpp-tag-etats-unis","irpp-tag-medias-et-culture"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s assault on truth will continue to trouble American democracy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2021\/01\/trumps-assault-on-truth-will-continue-to-trouble-american-democracy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s assault on truth will continue to trouble American democracy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s said you can\u2019t reason a person out of a thing she or he was never reasoned into, which explains the dilemma America faces with its many millions of voters who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election and should be kept in office by force if necessary. 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