Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less

influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal

belief.

Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political

culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion
disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of
talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from
traditional contesting and falsifying of truth by rendering it of "secondary"
importance

While this has been described as a contemporary problem, there is a

possibility that it has long been a part of political life, but was less notable
before the advent of the Internet. In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four,
George Orwell cast a world in which the state changes historic records
daily to fit its propaganda goals of the day.

Political commentators have identified post-truth politics as ascendant in

Russian, Chinese, American, Australian, British, Indian, Japanese and
Turkish politics, as well as in other areas of debate, driven by a
combination of the 24-hour news cycle, false balance in news reporting,
and the increasing ubiquity of social media.

In 2016, "post-truth" was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the

Year,[7] due to its prevalence in the context of that year's Brexit
referendum and U.S. presidential election

The term was first used in 1992 by a Serbian playwright.

The same year American journalist Eric Alterman spoke of a "post-truth

political environment" and coined the term "the post-truth presidency" in
his analysis of the misleading statements made by the Bush
administration after 9/11.[13] In his 2004 book Post-democracy, Colin
Crouch used the phrase "post-democracy" to mean a model of politics
where "elections certainly exist and can change governments," but "public
electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams
of professionals expert in the techniques of persuasion, and considering a
small range of issues selected by those teams." Crouch directly attributes
the "advertising industry model" of political communication to the crisis of
trust and accusations of dishonesty that a few years later others have
associated with post-truth politics

Post truth politics: as "a political culture in which politics (public opinion
and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from
policy (the substance of legislation)". The term became widespread during
the campaigns for the 2016 presidential election in the United States and
the 2016 referendum on membership in the European Union in the United
Kingdom.[8][9] Oxford Dictionaries declared that its international word of the
year in 2016 is "post-truth", citing a 2,000% increase in usage compared
to 2015.

The pamphlet wars that arose with the growth of printing and literacy
beginning in the 1600s have been described as an early form of post-truth
politics. Slanderous and vitriolic pamphlets were cheaply printed and
widely disseminated, and the dissent that they fomented led to wars and
revolutions such as the English Civil War and the American War of
Independence

- Mechanisms of modern technology have made the amplifications of

lies much simpler than it used to be
- Beliefs and emotions have become more important than facts

How does a person get to be a capable liar?

That is something that I respectfully inquire,
Because I dont believe a person will ever set the world on fire
Unless they are a capable liar.

Ogden Nash

What is truth? The Rashomon effect is a term used to describe the

circumstance when the same event is given contradictory
interpretations by different individuals involved. The term derives from
Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, in which a murder is described
in four mutually contradictory ways by its four witnesses. It talks about
subjectivity versus objectivity in human perception and memory, how
motivations and beliefs impact how the same event is perceived is very
different ways by different people; It talks of the contested
interpretations of events.

The effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which

observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but
equally plausible accounts of it.

We have always lived in a world where lies have been the bedrock of
politics. Propaganda has always been a fact. But has the world gotten a
bit more of a lie.