Resumen de Post-truth: Nothing new really
In a recent article, Will Fish defines what he calls ‘post-truth politics’ as ‘a form of politics where there is a willingness to issue warnings regardless of whether there is any real sense of the events being likely to come about, or make promises that there is no real commitment to keeping, or make claims that there is no real reason to believe are true, all for the purpose of gaining an electoral advantage – and, as the Brexit case and the Trump campaign both demonstrate, this has significant consequences for international as well as national politics’ (Fish, 2017: 211). By mentioning the by-now obligatory examples of the BREXT referendum in the UK and Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in the United States as examples of what a post-truth politics can lead to, Fish situates such politics in the present, which, independent of Fish’s views on the matter, aligns with a general perception among many in the media (and also in academia) that the behaviour that he describes in the quote above is somehow new.
However, mendacity, coupled with a cynical intention to deceive, has for some time now formed part of politics as practised by politicians around the world. A good example of this can be found in post- Franco Spain, where the Partido Popular - a party which brings together Franco-style National-Catholics, old-school Christian democrats and conservative ‘liberals’ - has over the past 25 years practised post-truth politics with brutal effectiveness in terms of the power that it holds in Spanish institutions. Adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, I will examine several episodes in which Partido Popular members have employed post-truth discursive strategies when confronted with challenges to the party’s reputation, authority and permanence in power. I will also assess the relative effectiveness of their post-truth strategy, before closing with a consideration of more general issues around post-truth politics, such as whether or not ‘the truth’ actually matters to electorates and other domain-specific populations in contemporary societies.
