10 minute read
Kevin Jae
By Kevin Jae
IN 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary declared posttruth the word of the year, describing the adjective as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The choice of the word reflected the emergence of fake news and conspiracy theories in the public discourse. This essay will attempt to analyze the topic and to examine it with a different frame: fake news and conspiracy theories are a signal of decaying dominant narratives.
I propose that we begin by considering this passage by Nietzsche:
“The signs of corruption.— Consider the following signs of those states of society which are necessary from time to time and which are designated with the word ‘corruption.’ As soon as corruption sets in anywhere superstition becomes rank, and the previous common faith of a people becomes pale and powerless against it. For superstition is second-order free spirit: those who surrender to it choose certain forms and formulas that they find congenial and permit themselves some freedom of choice… Those who then complain of corruption are the adherents of the old religion and religiosity, and they have also determined linguistic usage hitherto... [emphasis added with bolded text]” (p. 96).
A brief explanation is in order to translate the passage for our discussion. Nietzsche speaks of the “corruption” of society as being designated as such by the old establishment—the “old religion”—when confronted by new, alternative narratives. These alternative narratives are designated by the established elite class as “superstition,” or in our contemporary equivalents, fake news and conspiracy theories. Nietzsche contributes two things to our discussion. Firstly, there is a power dynamic at play: the established elite class (whether cultural, economic, political, or otherwise) can designate some narratives as “true” and designate other narratives as “fake news” or “conspiracy theories.” Secondly, we can read “superstition,” (or “fake news” and “conspiracy theories”) as the liberation of alternative narratives, perspectives, and ideologies, which the established elite class experiences as “corruption”—or the decline of their own ideological control over dominant narratives. This is not to deny that certain narratives or perspectives are factually untrue. However, if we pause the element of facticity for now, we come up with an interesting new frame of analysis: fake news and conspiracy theories are the signal of a declining dominant narrative. As previously dominant narratives decay, there is space for new narratives to appear and fill in the gaps.
Numerous signals point to the deterioration of dominant narratives in our contemporary society. I demonstrate this with a brief overview of some leading intellectual movements. According to postmodern theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard, the post-modern
philosophical movement emerged in the wake of the death of metanarratives that characterize modernity, like the Enlightenment or “the progressive emancipation of reason and freedom,” communism or “the progressive or catastrophic emancipation of labour” and technological development or “the enrichment of all humanity through the progress of capitalist technoscience” (p. 17). These metanarratives are not divorced from material conditions, as they had once legitimated “social and political institutions and practices, laws, ethics, ways of thinking” (p. 18).
In the field of political science, Francis Fukuyama declared the End of History after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, declaring “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” There are challenges to the universal dominance of liberal democracy by external factors like China and by internal factors, such as the inability of the current system to adequately address urgent existential problems, some of which include wealth inequality, environmental devastation, climate change, and risks from biotechnology. With climate change, human society is potentially faced with an End of Human History if there is no change to the current (political) status quo.
In economics, neoliberalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1970s and extolled the values of the free market, arguing for the greater role of the private sector in economy and society through deregulation, privatization, free trade, and cuts to the public sector. The growing political challenges to neoliberal dogma throughout the decade were capped off with the COVID-19 pandemic, when governments all over the world demonstrated their necessity for the good welfare of their citizens. Alongside government support for citizens during the pandemic, the post-COVID era has been marked by regulation of technology (e.g. Big Tech), repatriation of supply chains, increased support for domestic industries, and other assertions by the government. This has led many to identify the death of the neoliberal experiment.
In futures studies, polymath futurist Ziauddin Sardar’s elaboration of the Postnormal Times attempts to provide terms of analysis for the current global problems (some of which are discussed above) that humanity confronts. According to Postnormal Times scholars, the current, post-normal historical moment is a transitional period from normalcy; we live in a world beset by uncertainties. The Postnormal Times is marked by the death of the dominant paradigms and orthodoxies of the past: without a dominant narrative of the present, new narratives brew beneath the surface.
What do these intellectual movements mean for ordinary people? All of these movements have massive potential ramifications for individuals and it is important to connect these ideas to the terrain of everyday lives. There has been similar decay of dominant narratives that structure individual experiences. The next section will focus more specifically on examples in the U.S. context, although some of these trends apply more globally.
During his election campaign, Donald Trump touched an important, unaddressed sentiment when he claimed that “the system is rigged.” The diagnosis was felt to be accurate for many, although remediatory actions failed to follow from a policy standpoint. Economic conditions for the average citizen have
NOTES:
1 Oxford Languages (n.d.). Word of the Year 2016. https://languages.oup.com/word-ofthe-year/2016/ 2 Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Random House. (Original work published 1887) 3 A perfect translation between a) Nietzsche’s discussion on superstition and b) our contemporary usage of the terms fake news and conspiracy theories is not possible; however, the comparison suffices to advance our discussion 4 Lyotard, J.-F. (1997). The Post-Modern Explained (D. Barry, B. Maher, J. Pefanis, V. Spate, & M. Thomas). University of Minnesota Press (1988) 5 Francis, F. (1989). The End of History? The National Interest, 16, 3-18. http://www.jstor.
org/stable/24027184 6 Meadway, J. (2021, Sept 3). Neoliberalism is dying – now we must replace it. Open
Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/neoliberalism-is-dying-now-wemust-replace-it/; Tooze, A. (2021, Sept 2). Has Covid ended the neoliberal era? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/02/covid-and-the-crisis-of-neoliberalism; Eaton, G. (2021, June 16). Is the neoliberal era finally over? The New Statesman. https://
failed to improve; real wages have been stagnant since the 1970s. Workers are increasingly transformed into precariats. They work as contractors, Uber drivers, and freelancers and are stripped of stability to conform to labour market signals. Meanwhile, the cost of housing, the single most important indicator of middle-class stability and success, have increased exponentially. Both rent and ownership is unaffordable for many, leading to a housing crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the livelihoods of many, but as of October 18, 2021, billionaires in the U.S. have made $2.1 trillion during the pandemic while evading taxes.
The previous dominant myth of the American Dream, or the belief in correlation between hard work and personal success, is turning to be just that: a myth. As previously dominant narratives become nonsensical, new narratives emerge to explain contemporary phenomena; these narratives theorize a different set of cause and effects. Why is it that despite the existential crisis of climate change, politicians fail to legislate and to create policies to meet the urgent need? How is it that billionaires manage to evade taxes legally and that they have made trillions during the pandemic, while ordinary people have suffered? To explain phenomena like thes, “conspiracy theories” like the Great Reset emerge to make sense of reality, where global political and economic elites have conspired to control the world economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is necessary to address a final point, and this is how ideas are mediated in contemporary society, which adds to the fragmentation of public discourse. Media production and distribution in the internet age is radically different from the production and distribution of media in the past. In the past, the production and distribution of media required large capital expenditures. With the internet, the everyperson operating alone is able to write, produce, and distribute media online; through the internet, the amateur content creator has the same potential reach as large media corporations. The internet has also changed media consumption with online tribes, who are groupings of individuals that have overcome spatial boundaries to form groups of voluntary association. These groups communicate with each other online, and eventually develop an interpretative lens through which they comprehend the world. Online tribes often descend into echo chambers, and can become small islands of interpretation. In these circumstances, a unified, singular narrative to unite numerous interpretative perspectives is difficult.
It is easy to dismiss fake news and conspiracy theories as a signal of the irrationality of the masses, fuelled by social media. However, through the article, I have endeavoured to present an alterative mode of thinking about the growth of fake news and conspiracy theories. From this alternative lens, we can see fake news and conspiracy theories as a signal of the decline of dominant narratives, which open up gaps for alternative narratives to emerge. A review of various intellectual movements show that dominant narratives are declining in the realm of ideas and theory. In the realm of everyday lives, dominant narratives that have structured the lives of individuals are also declining, and new narratives are filling in the gaps. Finally, media production and distribution on the internet exacerbates the fragmentation and makes it difficult for a dominant narrative to emerge.
www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2021/06/neoliberal-era-finally-over 7 Sardar, Z. (Ed.). (2017). The Postnormal Times Reader. United Kingdom: Centre for Postnormal Policy & Futures Studies. 8 Desilver, D. (2018, Aug 7). For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in
decades. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-mostus-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ 9 This may be the source of another potential fragmentation. In previous times, workplaces and unions may have led to the congelation of certain narratives; now, workers are increasingly individual economic agents. 10 United States Census Bureau. (Revised 2021, Oct 8). Historical Census of Housing
Tables: Home Values. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-values.html 11 Collins, C. (2021, Oct 18). Updates: Billionaire Wealth, U.S. Job Losses and Pandemic
Profiteers. Inequality.org. https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/ 12 Nietzsche’s point must be restated again, here; there is a power dynamic that govern the definition of conspiracy theories and fake news 13 Goodman, J., & Carmichael, F. (2020, Nov 22). The coronavirus pandemic ‘Great Reset’ theory and a false vaccine claim debunked. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/
news/55017002
