Lies and bullshit

A number of books have been published lately on the 'post-truth' era, including one by  BBC Newsnight stalwart ( and piss-poor interviewer) Evan Davis. The Guardian offers precis of the books

Specifically, Davis addresses the famous'lie' about the £350m per week paid to the EU, as claimed by the Leave campaign.Liberals have been furious about this claim ever since, and it often features in debates about the evil manipulations that led to Brexit. Davis apparently clears some of it up, but still goes for the 'lie' in a big way.

It is not £350m a week, he tells us, but a mere £285 million per week.That is net. That is a lot of money that could indeed be spent on more urgent causes. Is this exaggeration devoid of truth altogether? Is it 'post-truth'?

It was wrong of the Leavers to guarantee that this money would be put into the NHS. But they didn't say that. They said it could go into the NHS. They obviously could not guarantee that it would becasue they were not inGoverbnment. It is a politician's claim but never a guarantee. If we're going to be picky about figures or words...

There is, to be fair,quite a good review of the post-truth books, including Davis's also in the Guardina. The reviewer is J Gary.  The piece begins by saying the most mendacious and consequential example of 'post-truth' cynicism was Blair's campaign to enter the Iraq War -- which is not discussed amid all the latest hoo-ha about Trump and Brexit. While he is there, Gray also points out that relativism did not begin with the dreaded postmodernists but was central to the Enlightenment and featured in writers like Marx and Mannheim (he's s bit determinist but on the right lines.You could argue it all began with the dethronement of God as first cause and all that -- so Spinoza? ).

Anyway, Gray says:

[Post-truth is] A catch-all term used by today’s liberals to describe upheavals that confounded their most basic beliefs, “post-truth” politics is like “populism” in implying that these unexpected shifts occurred because reason had been subverted. Duped by demagogues deploying new information technologies, voters disregarded argument and evidence in favour of manipulated emotion and fake news...It’s an appealingly simple tale, which many liberals are more than happy to believe

And

One of the implications of his [Davis's] analysis is that bullshit can be found across the political spectrum. He devotes remarkably little attention to the fact, but liberals engage in bullshit as much as populists. While leave campaigners may have exaggerated Britain’s financial contribution to the EU, as he shows at length, remainers launched “Project Fear” – a naked appeal to the emotions deploying unverifiable figures about the economic consequences of leaving the EU that were plucked from the air.

When [ the] leave [campaign]  prevailed, such liberals suffered something like a collective nervous breakdown. How could their obviously superior rationality have failed to persuade? Either much of the population was incurably ignorant, or the debate had somehow been rigged. Over the course of the last year, the latter view has gained the upper hand. There was a time, not so long ago, when no self-respecting liberal would go anywhere near conspiracy theory...