Post-truth: What if the truth were no longer the issue?

“There is no established, consensus-based definition of ‘post-truth,’” warns Olivier Sartenaer, director of the Department of Sciences, Philosophy, and Society and a member of the ESPHIN Institute (Namur Philosophical Forum). He prefers to describe four trends that, together, shape the phenomenon.

First observation: our relationship with established consensus is becoming more fragile. Ideas that were once marginal now enjoy unprecedented visibility thanks to social media. Second transformation: the line between opinion and knowledge is blurring. “Everyone’s opinion is considered knowledge.” ” Third change: lying has lost some of its symbolic cost. “Until recently, when a political figure was caught lying shamelessly, they had to pay a price—whether electoral or symbolic. Today, lying can even become a sort of badge of honor.”

The fourth transformation, the most subtle, concerns what philosophers call “rhetoric.” “While a liar knows the truth and conceals it, a rhetorician produces discourse to seduce, frighten, or convince, regardless of whether it is true. ” Thus, when Donald Trump claims that one should drink bleach to treat COVID, the most important thing may not be the content of the statement. “Saying that positions him against the elites and gets people talking about him. Is it true? He doesn’t even ask himself that question.”

Olivier Sartenaer explains the emergence of post-truth through the “epistemic deluge”—this overabundance of information driven in particular by digital technologies. Our critical faculties have not necessarily weakened, but the environment in which they operate has become infinitely more complex. This complexity also poses challenges for the law.

Olivier Sartenaer

The Law in the Face of Information Chaos

While “post-truth” is not a legal category in and of itself, Alejandra Michel, a researcher at CRIDS (Center for Research on Information, Law, and Society) within the NaDI Institute (Namur Digital Institute), approaches the phenomenon through what are known as “information disorders.” A key distinction sheds light on the mechanisms at work: “misinformation” refers to incorrect information disseminated without the intent to deceive; “disinformation,” by contrast, implies an intent to manipulate; and “malinformation” is based on true information that has been taken out of context or used to cause harm. In practice, however, these categories remain difficult to distinguish. Intentionally produced false information can be shared in good faith by thousands of people who believe it to be authentic, and its status then changes as it circulates.

From a legal perspective, the issue is all the more delicate because freedom of expression protects both the speaker and the recipient of the information. Should the authors of false information be punished? It’s not that simple: criminalization could backfire on journalists, whistleblowers, or those who disseminate information that is inconvenient for those in power.

Alejandra Michel is therefore more interested in the right to receive high-quality information—not with an absolute obligation to truth, but with a requirement to strive for accuracy and to comply with the rules governing the collection and dissemination of information.

On the European front, the Digital Services Act addresses the information environment itself, notably by requiring large digital platforms to implement measures related to moderation, transparency, and the adaptation of recommendation systems.

Alejandra Michel

The fight against disinformation cannot, therefore, be solely a legal one. It also requires media literacy, support for quality journalism, and the protection of pluralism. One question remains that the law cannot resolve: when no one seems to regard the truth as a common reference point anymore, what still underpins a person’s credibility?

Authenticity: The New Currency of Credibility

Part of the answer lies in humor, which has become a dominant form of communication on the web. According to Fanny Barnabé, a lecturer at CRIDS/NaDI, memes, parodies, trolling, and shitposting play such a significant role in digital cultures that they, too, blur our relationship with the truth.

In classical irony, the speaker says the opposite of what they mean while leaving their listener enough clues to grasp the message’s true meaning. Irony has now lost its transgressive nature because it has become ubiquitous. To continue to surprise, internet users have therefore developed new levels of ambiguity. Today, the lines are blurred: “We no longer know whether a statement is ironic, sincere, or partly both.” This is what is known as post-irony.

A content creator’s credibility therefore no longer rests on their relationship to the truth, but on their authenticity. Fanny Barnabé observes this shift on the streaming platform Twitch, where the relationship between streamers and their community hinges on a sense of direct and sincere connection: awkward moments, spontaneous reactions, and an unfiltered personality are valued more highly than accuracy.

For Fanny Barnabé, the real question, then, may be whether it’s still possible to be serious on the Internet. On Twitch, the reversal has become so complete that “users sometimes explicitly state that they’re being serious. People no longer indicate that a message is ironic. It’s the literal meaning that now needs to be made clear.”

Fanny Barnabé

When Authenticity Becomes a Political Issue

We see exactly this same mechanism at work in politics. Figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk now use memes, provocation, trolling, and references to gaming culture to speak directly to their audience. Post-irony offers them powerful rhetorical protection. Serious statements can be made in a joking manner, and if the reaction is negative, all one has to do is say, “I was just kidding.”

For Arthur Borriello, a professor of political science at UNamur and a researcher at the Transitions Institute, credibility in politics is measured the same way as it is on Twitch: by perceived authenticity rather than truthfulness. “Trump can afford to come across as a liar or a crackpot. What matters is that he appears authentic,” explains the political scientist. Insults, extravagance, and the transgression of linguistic norms thus become markers of closeness to ordinary people, as opposed to the polished discourse of the elites.

Arthur Boriello

Authenticity doesn’t promise virtue; it promises closeness. It means standing with ordinary people, with all their flaws, their anger, and sometimes even their transgressions. Facing off against Hillary Clinton, Trump essentially declared: Yes, the Wall Street system is corrupt—since I make use of it myself. He didn’t promise to put an end to it; he promised to be authentic.

The political scientist goes further. He questions the very idea that politics is a matter of truth. “Political discourse is not a discourse of truth. That is not its aim.” Its strength lies rather in its internal coherence and its ability to give meaning to lived experience. Trumpism, for example, links economic decline, unemployment, immigration, and a sense of American decline into a single narrative. “Do immigrants eat pets? It doesn’t matter whether that statement is true or false. What matters is that it fits with the other elements in this coherent narrative,” summarizes the political scientist.

The Cost of Distorting the Truth

For Olivier Sartenaer, the consequences of this new relationship with the truth are not merely rhetorical. “If, for example, one claims that the recommendations of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are merely the ‘religion’ of bourgeois-bohemian environmentalists and that one prefers the popular common sense that favors coal-fired power plants, one creates a climate that becomes uninhabitable. ” The problem here isn’t just being mistaken about a scientific phenomenon; it’s choosing to ignore available knowledge even when the consequences are predictable.

The same mechanism is at work in debates about vaccination. When scientific knowledge gives way to “common sense” or political convictions, collective decisions can have dramatic consequences. “The resurgence of measles in the United States is directly linked to the spread of doubts about vaccines. Today, children are dying from a disease that had been eradicated long ago,” laments the philosopher.

Beyond poor decision-making, it is the very possibility of living together as a society that is at stake. “To discuss and reach agreement, we need a shared world. If we polarize to the extreme, we lose that shared world. We can no longer understand one another or act together.”

Respond Differently

Beyond fake news and conspiracy theories, the “post-truth” and “post-irony” eras thus reveal a profound transformation in our relationship with the shared world. Authenticity versus expert opinion, humor that obscures intentions: the issue is becoming less one of truth and more one of trust. Hence the importance, for researchers, of rebuilding shared spaces through quality information, media literacy, a vibrant civil society, forums for debate, and collective narratives. For without a shared world, it becomes difficult not only to agree on the facts, but also to form a society. One final, distinctly political question remains: can we even combat this obfuscation with “truth” alone? Arthur Borriello believes not, and explains why in the sidebar.

Arthur Borriello: “You have to fight ideology with ideology.”

According to political scientist Arthur Borriello, we must first distance ourselves from two concepts that have become ubiquitous. “The concepts of ‘post-truth’ and ‘populism’ play the same role in public debate today: they serve as catch-all terms that allow us to broadly describe political developments without always analyzing them with the precision they deserve.”

The dominant definition of populism is based on a contrast between a “virtuous people” and “corrupt elites,” which leads to very different movements—including those on the far right—being labeled as populist. In his book *Populism: The Misnamed Phenomenon*, the political scientist defends a view—which he acknowledges is in the minority—that populism is above all a democratic moment, driven by a desire to deepen democracy and return more power to the people. “This definition effectively excludes the far right, which does not seek to deepen democracy but rather to restrict the circle of those who benefit from it.”

But why is this promise to return power to the people used by so many political movements, including the far right? It responds to a very real experience. Many citizens feel they have lost some of their ability to influence political decisions. Arthur Borriello attributes this to the disintermediation observed since the 1970s: political parties, unions, and associations—which traditionally served to transform individual concerns into collective demands—have lost their significance.

The power of political discourse therefore rests more on its ability to give meaning to lived experience and on its internal coherence. This perspective leads him to question the effectiveness of a strategy that consists solely of “fact-checking” the rhetoric of the far right. He illustrates this with a deliberately radical example: “Faced with Hitler, who claimed that Jews were the cause of all evil, would fact-checking have weakened that discourse? Certainly not. The only way to combat this type of rhetoric is to offer an alternative narrative that is sufficiently convincing and resonates with people’s lived experiences. Ideology must be countered with ideology.”

In practical terms, Arthur Borriello advocates for the rebuilding of spaces for mediation: associations, collective organizations, and forums for debate and mobilization that enable citizens to regain their capacity for action and representation. French-speaking Belgium offers an interesting point for reflection in this regard. While the far right is making significant gains in several European countries, it has so far remained relatively marginal there. He attributes this resilience in particular to the persistence of a dense network of associations and to the local roots of certain political groups, such as the PTB through its youth organizations, community health centers, and so on.

The response to the far right, therefore, is not solely a matter of the accuracy of information. It also hinges on a society’s ability to forge connections and offer collective narratives in which everyone can see themselves reflected.