"Fake News" and "Post-Truth": Not Recent Phenomena

Did you think that “fake news” arose in the Age of Social Media? That the transition to the “post-truth” world happened only recently? That the tendency accelerated with Putin, Trump and the rise of right wing? Wrong, writes Yuval Noah Harari, in his forthcoming book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Wiping out or creating countries to suit one’s agenda is an age old tactic. In 1931, Japan created a fake country called Manchukuo to justify its aggression against China. China in turn denies the existence of Tibet. Britain called Australia “nobody’s land” and set about occupying it. The Zionists called Palestine “a land without a people”.

“In fact, humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions.”

And no, continues Harari, it isn’t only in politics we do this:

“We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries an Untouchable – yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts for ever.”

Offended by the religion reference? The intent was to provoke you to think:

“When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath).”

And no, it doesn’t stop with politics and religions either. Remember advertising?

“What images come to mind when you think about Coca-Cola? Do you think about young healthy people engaging in sports and having fun together? Or do you think about overweight diabetes patients lying in a hospital bed?”

But myths aren’t all bad:

“If you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you. In fact, false stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people.”

Think of a sports fan(atic):

“Football can help formulate personal identities, it can cement large-scale communities, and it can even provide reasons for violence. Nations and religions are football clubs on steroids.”

But with a caveat:

“In practice, the power of human cooperation depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction.”

But is that really necessary? Doesn’t economics prove that self-interest can achieve the same goal? Not entirely, says Harari:

“When most people see a dollar bill, they forget that it is just a human convention. As they see the green piece of paper with the picture of the dead white man, they see it as something valuable in and of itself. Hence in practice there is no strict division between knowing that something is just a human convention and believing that something is inherently valuable. In many cases, people are ambiguous or forgetful about this division. Humans have this remarkable ability to know and not to know at the same time.”

Even though we claim to want the truth, once we “have” it, we inevitably behave like this:

“One of the greatest fictions of all is to deny the complexity of the world, and think in absolute terms of pristine purity versus satanic evil.”

In religion, politics, morality. And so, says Harari, what has been happening for millennia (not just since Facebook) is but inevitable:

“Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate ways. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power.”

And you know which way we lean on that choice:

“As a species, humans prefer power to truth.”