Postfactual politics

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” said US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan a generation ago, “but not his own facts.”  What would Moynihan say if he were alive to witness an election in which so many facts have disappeared into the unfathomable data stream of social media? An election in which a nominee can half-seriously invite Russia to hack his rival, routinely share misinformation (with the disclaimer “I hear that…”), or grudgingly allow his campaign to own up to plagiarism in a major speech – without being affected in public opinion polls.

Neetzan Zimmerman delivered a memorable epigram on this vanishing world of agreed facts. Zimmerman is a former Gawker editor whose virtuosity at creating viral content – 30 to 35 daily posts, even on weekends – remains a legend.  Two years ago he told an interviewer: “Nowadays it’s not important if a story’s real. The only thing that really matters is whether people click on it … If a person is not sharing a news story, it is, at its core, not news.”

By this measure, Trump has become the most newsworthy candidate in recent memory – a fact that is not lost on his campaign. Rarely does he miss a chance to take advantage of his seeming omnipresence. Should anyone quibble over something he has said, he simply reminds the faithful of the need to “Make America Great Again.” If you doubt the slogan, haven’t you already shown that you have lost faith in the country?

For the last 20 years, the US media have constructed the infotainment universe that has enabled the rise of Donald Trump. In the 1990s, as digital media swept aside traditional newsrooms, little thought was spared for the consequences of closing down local newspapers, or dispensing with beat reporters. Profit-driven outlets never figured out how to ‘monetize’ the old content, so they chose to let it go. A visually dazzling, infinitely customisable and up-to-the-second journalism took its place, but since the new content resided on screens and cellphones, it felt more like television and was usually treated that way. Complex journalism migrated elsewhere while the big media learned how to chronicle the cultural ephemera that captured the most clicks.

Globally, one of the most harmful consequences of this shifting media paradigm was our increasing isolation from opinions we don’t share, or like. In the wake of the Brexit referendum, for instance, the British Internet activist Tom Steinberg noted that his Facebook feed contained no support for the Leave vote, even though half of the country was clearly in favour of it. Steinberg wrote that the chronic “echo chamber” created by major social media and technology platforms was “tantamount to actively supporting and funding the tearing apart of the fabric of our societies.”

When dissenting opinions and contradictory facts disappear, and more of us learn to live in informational bubbles, government becomes a morality tale. Imaginary weapons of mass destruction can legitimize costly foreign wars. The threat of migrant hordes and meddling bureaucrats can determine a referendum. One of the key oversights of Trump’s critics so far is their refusal to acknowledge that, like the Leave voters, he lives in a different informational world. However successfully he may be refuted by mainstream journalists and commentators, he remains invulnerable to his base.

In the London Review of Books, John Lanchester writes that “there’s never been a time in British politics when so many people in public life spent so much time loudly declaring things they knew not to be true.” Across the Atlantic the situation is even worse. Who can doubt that the final weeks of the forthcoming US elections will raise the level of self-serving political fictions to new heights?

The Republican primaries were a masterclass in postfactual politics, the hustler’s playbook that may well make Trump the next American president. Like a taunting schoolboy, he rebranded any opponents that were foolish enough to engage in ad hominem exchanges, reducing them to punchlines. There was “low-energy” Jeb Bush, “little” Marco Rubio, and lyin’ Ted Cruz. Even Chris Christie, who stuck with Trump after his ignominious trouncing has been rebranded as a sort of king’s fool. As Crooked Hillary wanders into Trump’s crosshairs, she should learn from their mistakes.

Donald Trump cannot be sidelined by facts, nor can he be argued away but embarrassing disclosures, at least no more than an established brand, like Volkswagen can be set aside, even after it has been caught cheating. Like the rogues gallery of right-wing pundits who precede him – Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter – he is a performance artist who delivers odious opinions then changes the conversation before he can be held accountable. Trump uses key words and phrases hypnotically, like the brand marketer that he is, making vague assertions that leave precious little factual content for traditional critics to seize on.

Donald Trump is a natural postfactual politician, an instinctively evasive character, whose angry rhetoric presents a moving target that is hard to locate, much less hit. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has a long and contentious record, filled with difficult decisions, votes and statements. Unfortunately, when they meet in the televised debates, what ought to be her clear advantages – decades of experience as a public figure and politician – will matter much less than they have done at any other point in her political career, and her chances of prevailing in what looks like a tight race, are far from a foregone conclusion.