Fake news and “post-truth” politics have been taken up by American media outlets, and those further afield, as the explanation for the ascension of Donald Trump to the United States presidency. So potent has this maelstrom media discussion become that both Facebook and Google have publicly tweaked their algorithms to limit the appearance of “fake news” results.
There is a whole column to be written about the reaction of the US media to its failure to recognise that Mr Trump, far from being merely a loud-mouthed reality TV star, was actually tapping into some very deep issues among, particularly, the white working class in the US. Rather than tackling its own inability to get beyond the urban media bubble, the media has looked for other explanations, even scapegoats.
Even this idea of post-truth politics, however, is a media bubble creation. Because post-truth – the appeal to emotional beliefs rather than established facts – is actually part of a much wider failure of the establishment. And far from being limited to political campaigning, it has found its way into international relations, into the very ways that war and peace are conducted.
In his campaign speeches, Donald Trump stood out from other politicians for his willingness to say things that were outrageous, that went beyond the limits of established political decency. His supporters applauded him for being politically incorrect. Even now, as Mr Trump sparks a diplomatic row with China, his supporters cheer at his plain speaking. Careful language, gradual diplomacy – all of this, the thinking runs, is establishment thinking, part of the “Washington bubble”. Whatever happened to the days when you could call a spade a spade?
Established norms, such as diplomatic protocols or even law and order, can seem like old-fashioned conservative notions – until they are gone.
Anyone who has lived in a society where the rule of law is weak will know that the resulting corruption, insecurity and daily infringements become corrosive. They eat away at society, in a way that is difficult to conceptualise before it happens, but that becomes astonishingly clear and directly experienced after. The first time someone slaps you verbally or physically, and no one around you reacts, is not a moment you forget.
Because what some call political correctness, others call public decency. It can seem like an infringement of freedom not to be able to, for example, speak in a vulgar manner about women in public. But once those words become normalised, the violence behind them soon follows. The same applies to ethnic or religious minorities – look at the sudden increase in hate crimes across the US and Europe.
The same applies to diplomacy. No doubt, Mr Trump's sweeping away of 40 years of careful diplomacy with the Chinese government will be much applauded in his constituency circles. And, to be fair, there is something stifling about too much diplomatic dialogue – it can obscure genuine problems and disagreements.
But a lack of diplomacy is similar to political incorrectness: only those delivering the insults feel good. And if the other side is China, there is likely to be some pushback.
All of which brings us to war. Because the anti-establishment feeling goes far beyond voters in western countries. On a global scale, there is a feeling that the establishment – by which is meant the handful of powerful western countries that set the global order – have merely benefited themselves at the expense of others.
Everything that some voters feel about politicians – that they are too close to big business, that they moralise about laws while breaking the rules when it suits them – countries such as Russia and China feel about the United States. In that way, both Russia and China are the “insurgent” political parties – and just like them, they are willing to break the rules and the norms if it suits them.
The established order in western countries has benefited a political and financial elite. The same is true on a global scale. Those who have benefited most from free trade and a rules-based global system are those who themselves wrote the rules. And just as with political parties, these establishment players broke the rules.
For every political scandal in which politicians are found to be writing laws but not obeying them, there is an example from the global order – whether it is industrial espionage, undermining nation states, arming unsavoury regimes or ignoring human rights, every violation that “insurgent” countries such as Russia, China and many others have been accused of by the West have themselves been carried out by the West.
In western countries, such crimes are framed as anomalies, just as corrupt politicians in democracies are viewed. But from the perspective of insurgent countries, these acts are not anomalies, but part of an attempt to impede their development with rules that the West both imposes and ignores.
This global order of careful words and prudent laws is being undermined. An anti-establishment order is rising. Its results can be seen from the rise of hate-crimes on the streets of New York to the use of chemical weapons on the streets of Syria.
If the old world order goes, we will miss it. As the Arab Spring has shown, with shocking clarity, it is much easier to demolish a system than it is to build a new one up again.
falyafai@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai
