Introduction

Summary

In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood. (Debord, 1995)

It is true that war kills, and hideously mutilates. But it is especially true after the State has appropriated the war machine. Above all, the State apparatus makes the mutilation, and even death, come first. It needs them preaccomplished, for the people to be born that way, crippled and zombielike. (Deleuze and Guattari, 2013, p 495)

This book examines an element of Trumpism that has received little attention to date: the link between consumer culture and politics. What is this alleged link? Everything involved in the emergence of ‘post-truth’ society. While these linkages have been stewing intensely for several decades, the intrusion of Donald Trump's post-truth spectacle into the formal political sphere at the highest level has caused massive disruption, fear and resistance. No theory is required to recognize the flourishing of this post-truth politics: headline news and tweets from President Trump will suffice. While previous politicians have used similar techniques in communication and performance to gain power, and while he is not the first celebrity candidate, Trump's presidency has taken post-truth into new territory, notable for its articulation with the far right. The alarms have sounded, and we scramble to respond and, for some more than others, to survive.

Where did post-truth society and its politics come from? Although theory is not required to recognize such trends, it can help understand them. Too many (myself included) were stunned by Trump's victory in the US Electoral College in November 2016. With hindsight it is perhaps easy to ponder how progressives, and especially radicals, should have anticipated his candidacy and done more to ward off such a dangerous confluence of forces. Yes, we should have taken the politics of spectacle more seriously – the brazen outlandishness, the media-and attention-grabbing performances, the horrifying content, the conspiracy theories and lies, all of which culminated in the perceived unlikelihood of an electoral victory. In an era in which the president labels evidence-based journalism that he does not like as ‘fake news’, Guy Debord's words (1995) resonate even more strongly: ‘In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood’ (p 14, thesis 9, emphasis in original).