Are We Really In A Time Of “Post-Truth”? That Presumes A Lot

Post-truth’s stations of the cross are pretty familiar. Most if not all of them are given some attention in each of the books under review. In terms of contemporary evidence, any journalistic book on the subject will do what all three of the ones here do at some length. They pick over the global warming “debate”; over claims made in the Brexit referendum – especially the notorious £350 million figure on the side of the Vote Leave bus; and the various lies of the great orange elephant in the room, the forty-fifth President of the United States. The row over the crowd size at the Presidential inauguration, the “birther” conspiracy, “alternative facts”, “fake news” – it’s all here. Where they differ a little in their approaches is in how they unpick what led us here, and in their more or less optimistic ideas as to how we (that we being less interrogated than perhaps it should be) can fight back.