In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations. As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek’s view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way – among American apostles such as Milton Friedman – to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency. After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services.1
Billionaires do not hesitate to present their ideology as interpretation of truth. Hedge fund billionaire Bob Mercer and his family spent millions in GAI (Government Accountability Institute), Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 campaign to get Trump elected. Hillary Clinton did propose a tax on high-frequency trading of securities, which is reportedly a favorite of Mercer’s Renaissance Technologies. The Mercer Family Foundation gave nearly $3.6 million to Citizens United between 2012 and 2014, which sued for access to Clinton Foundation-related emails and whose president David Bossie also got a senior job on the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica was a data mining and data analysis company that obtained the data of 50 million Facebook users, constructed 30 million personality profiles, and sold the data to US politicians seeking election to influence voters, without the users’ consent. Mercer’s investments helped Trump win the 2016 election.
We are in debt to Donald Trump for exposing the ugly network of lies that Rousseau predicted that creates the society in which we live. He pulled back the curtain on the metaphor of the invisible hand exposing the oligarchy that is responsible for the increasing economic inequality between the wealthy and the rest of society. The ideology of neoliberalism drives the social agenda and economic goals of the economic elites. Trump also illustrated how emotion drives decisions – facts are now secondary – how politicians promise change to get elected, then once elected do an about turn and cater to corporate money. Trump ushered in the post-truth era in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts. Now that it is no longer necessary to debate what is true from what is false; we can now focus on distinguishing what is life-enhancing, and what is life-destroying.
Just as the early Internet fostered the illusion that it was inherently supportive of competition, so it fostered the illusion that it was inherently protective of personal autonomy. After all, no one compelled you to disclose your true identity online. Yet the digital world today has made possible the most comprehensive system of surveillance ever created; networked devices track our every movement and communication. The neoliberal consensus was that commercial surveillance on the Internet was a business like any other: best to let the market sort out the details. Both of these moments reflect the increasingly anti-democratic nature of communications policy-making in the United States. A new form of enterprise has emerged that Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism,” as Google, Facebook, and other firms sweep up data about our lives, preferences, personalities, and emotions “for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.”2
Propaganda isn’t just about war and lies. It’s about influential rhetoric that shapes public opinion. It doesn’t have to be a lie or come from the government. In fact, it thrives when it’s mundane. The real magic happens when propaganda molds our habits and opinions, making us accept certain ideologies as natural. Contrary to popular belief, neoliberalism isn’t about shrinking government; it’s about reshaping it. It uses state power to create and sustain free markets, pushing its jargon and way of thinking into almost every aspect of our lives. From increasing incarceration to tying welfare to work, neoliberal policies aim to change people by making every area of life amenable to market practices. Neoliberalism often co-opts terms like “democracy” and “freedom,” associating them with market logic. This stems from a flawed understanding of these concepts, reducing them to mere buzzwords that serve the interests of the market.
The so-called “free market” is anything but free. Under neo-liberalism, which is the most recent, viral form of capitalism, the 99 percent have become increasingly beholden to the top one percent of the rich. One of the actions taken by the rich this time around is that they have pretty much entirely bought up and controlled the news and entertainment media – which in this day and age aren’t necessarily two distinct categories. This means, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, that conventional wisdom is very largely under elite control … more so – ironically – in an “open and democratic society” than in an autocratic one where people know they are being manipulated. We think we are free and so we are easier to manipulate. Neoliberal propaganda is more than just flashy ads and political speeches; it’s a pervasive force that shapes our lives, values, and beliefs. Recognizing this is the first step toward meaningful change.
From 1977 to 1987, the difference in income between the top 1 percent of Americans and bottom 10 percent of Americans grew from 65 times as great to 115 times as great. This tremendous shift in income inequality may be attributed to the various neoliberalist policies Reagan enforced. These included sizable tax cuts which allowed affluent individuals to increase their wealth while removing money from government programs that could help poorer communities. Another way money moved from poor to wealthy communities was through lowering wages, which decreased the average income for low pay workers, while increasing the margins of profit for large scale investors and businessmen. Income inequality did not stop growing after Reagan’s reign – from 1979 to 2007 (18 years after Reagan left office) the incomes of the bottom 20 percent only rose 18 percent, while the incomes of the richest 1 percent rose 275 percent.3
Post-truth is a term that refers to the widespread documentation of, and concern about, disputes over public truth claims in the 21st century. In an era when technological innovations support increasingly inexpensive and easy ways to produce media that looks official, the ability to separate real from artificial has become increasingly complicated and difficult. Conspiracy propagandists are part of the antigovernment movement. These groups and individuals intentionally spread disinformation and advance misinformation about government institutions and officials. The QAnon movement is the conspiracy theory probably most intensely connected to politics. The entire movement had originated from Internet sites and then spread into social platforms including Twitter or Facebook gathering thousands of believers. The idea started from an anonymous Internet user calling himself “Q.“, who, shortly after settling Donald Trump in the White House, claimed to be a top-clearance military official that would slowly reveal the “truth” about the political “deep state”.
It is often said that for ‘post-truth’ politicians like Donald Trump, ‘truth itself has become irrelevant’. The post-truth camp rejects the consensus of established expert authorities as untrue, implying that the ‘so-called experts’ are not really experts. The truth camp, in contrast, closely follows the established experts. Moreover, Trump presents ‘facts’ of his own and even makes them central elements of his rhetoric. The purported facts are often expressed in mathematical formats signaling hard, scientific expertise, that are easy for most to fact check. By setting himself as a crusader against Washington and the media, Trump has played on Americans’ declining trust in both. The practice of post-truth – untrue assertion piled on untrue assertion – helped get Donald Trump, who lied or misled at an unprecedented level, to the White House. With the rise of social media and partisan news outlets, everyone now has their own opinions and their own facts.4
Neoliberalism has not replaced the state with market mechanisms but has compromised the state’s ability to be self-enforcing. One of the goals of big businesses, which rely on PR firms that often hand copy to journalists, is to perpetuate a “narrative of normality,” in which their greed is kept out of public view for as long as possible. Media specialist Dr Joanna Redden notes that “mainstream news coverage narrows and limits the way poverty is talked about in a way that reinforces the dominance of neoliberalism and market-based approaches to the issue.” It’s important to realize that we are not being manipulated by a clever group of powerful people who benefit from manipulating us. Rather, we are being manipulated by a deluded group of powerful people who think they benefit from it – because they buy into the basic illusion that their own well-being is separate from that of other people.5
While post-truth is not synonymous with lying, fake news or other deception – but is about a public anxiety that there is no confident way to secure publicly accepted facts in political culture. The truth is important because it enables us to see the world how it really is, which in turn allows us to focus and solve the real problems we are facing. Social media plays a major role in spreading misinformation. Scientists and higher education institutions need to be more proactive in developing creative and compelling ways to communicate research findings to broader audiences. We need to get the gatekeepers back at the gates. If the media professionals restore public trust, they can still play the role of mirror for society, facilitate informed public debate and discussion, shedding light where there is darkness, pursuing vital stories that those in power try to hide from the public.6
1 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
2 https://prospect.org/power/how-neoliberal-policy-shaped-internet-surveillance-monopoly/
3 https://medium.com/of-course-global/how-neoliberalism-has-caused-income-inequality-9ec1fcaacb
4 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02632764221119726#bibr14-02632764221119726
5 https://medium.com/@renegadeinc/how-fake-news-perpetuates-neoliberalism-cb9bf53c4952
6 https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/conspiracy-propagandists