New technologies and the immediacy of communications have meant that the volume of information to which we have access has grown - and continues to grow - exponentially. We have the necessary tools to find out instantly what is happening anywhere in the world. Social networks, such as Twitter y Facebook, have gradually displaced the hegemony once held by traditional media, such as television, radio and newspapers. Of course, websites also converge here, for which social networks and instant messaging applications are a catapult for spreading news, sometimes virulently.
However, with huge amounts of information, discriminating what is real from what is false may not be an easy task. We are, in fact, in the era of post-truth - a neologism coined from the English term post-truth politics-The term «hoax» is used to refer to the deliberate distortion of information with the purpose of influencing public opinion. Of course, taxonomically speaking, hoax could be seen as a hyponym of «post-truth», since it refers to false news that aims to harm someone; the truth is that both terms derive from a large hyperonym: "fake news".
But is this really something new? While «post-truth» is a new term, hoax is not; and the truth is that post-truth, as an act, is not a contemporary invention either. In fact, both practices evoke atavisms whose origin would be impossible to decipher, since lies and deception have existed since human beings became conscious as such. Therefore, both hoaxes and post-truth are forms of deception revitalized and enhanced by the modernity in which we live and the vertiginous nature of information.
From a diachronic point of view, both resources have served as political and other stratagems and, by making some analogies, it is impossible not to observe the immutability of certain features. For example, before the rise of radio, the printing press was mainly responsible for the massification of information. At that time, hoaxes and post-truth - not yet existing at the lexical level, but still de facto- They took the form of leaflets, booklets, pamphlets and pamphlets full of philippics, invectives and anathemas that were hung outside the shop windows of the main avenues and in the kiosks on the sidewalks, and were also distributed clandestinely among the members of censored political factions.
As an example of the above, in the twilight of tsarist Russia -and after the forced abdication of Nicholas II-, the anti-war propaganda proclaimed by the Bolsheviks was even distributed on the military front to incite the uprising of the troops. And what was distributed in these propagandas was nothing more than an accumulation of apologies to socialism and repetitive invectives against the monarchy, the war, the bourgeoisie and capitalism. They urged the soldiers and the population to opt for utopian socialism, existing only in the minds of Robespierre, Fourier, Marx, Engels, among others. The Bolsheviks presented themselves as defenders of the proletariat, freedom, peace, justice and class equality.
But once they took over as government de facto, The farce was more than evident, as they curtailed all freedoms, abused the proletariat, replaced one autocracy with another, substituted the tsarist Ukases with Bolshevik Ukases, instigated pogroms against ethnic minorities and political «enemies», unleashed an atrocious civil war and further accentuated the class differences between the new ruling bureaucracy, the proletariat and the peasantry. Their arguments turned out to be nothing but sophistry; they preached asceticism, but never practiced it. Thus, systematic deception contributed to the subjugation of the most populous nation in Europe by this small group of revolutionary agitators, who were a political minority - even among the left-wing parties.
Then, in the 1930s, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, said that the people had to be told that the ills afflicting their nation were the fault of Germany's enemies, and that everyone had to be made to repeat it. Is this a simile of what is happening today? Yes, but with different nuances and means that make the massive spread of hoaxes and post-truth a real threat to democracy, rights and freedoms. As a recent example of this, there are the statements made by Miguel Díaz-Canel, President of Cuba. de facto of Cuba, who, regarding the massive protests that took place on the island on July 11, stated that «there is a group of counterrevolutionary, mercenary people, paid by the government of the United States [...] to organize this type of demonstrations».
It is clear that the massive repetition of hoaxes against the enemies of the people -most of the time, imaginary ones- is still in force, is systematic, tiresome and is usually part of the communication agenda of authoritarian, dictatorial and tyrannical governments. But, of course, hoaxes and post-truth are not exclusive to a few governments and radical political parties, but are resources used by countless political actors to wear down or discredit the image of their «enemies». This has been evidenced and intensified in recent electoral processes, since, both in debates and in political campaigns, candidates seemed to focus more on attacking their contenders than on offering solutions to the country's problems.
Of course, social networks and instant messaging play a leading role; deception has circumvented the limitations of traditional media. Hoaxes and post-truth are now ubiquitous, relying on nothing more than the internet to spread like a pandemic, in a world where there are more cell phones than people, and where it may be increasingly difficult to disentangle fiction from reality. Precisely that, the ability to be able to discern what is real and what is false, can be fundamental to avoid falling into the same mistakes of the past, to distinguish between democracy and tyranny, between freedom and authoritarianism, between economic progress and the mirage of autarky, and to grow as a society more aware of its own destiny.
Aurelio Prieto
Administrative Coordinator Faculty of Humanities
