Kairos n°34

Those who undo — and make — the Fake News

Whoever has the power to decide what information is or is not Fake News has, paradoxically, also the power to create Fake News. Mastering the ability to say what is or isn’t true, what has or hasn’t happened, and the communication networks to say it, he can propagate all the ideas that serve him, without having to justify himself. In this process, contradictions and facts do not matter, just say. The enunciation is sufficient in itself and, as emanating from God, the word becomes truth. What does it matter if the facts are not proven, if testimonies prove the contrary of what is said, if the concordance of time makes it impossible, or if a complete absence of logic in the action reproached to the enemy makes it completely incoherent and improbable.

In this new mode of production of reality, where we pretend to fight against disinformation while we are its main agent, the past has no importance and can teach us nothing. Of course, the Unknown Soldier is celebrated and past genocides and slaughters are commemorated, but no lessons are learned from history to avoid repeating it. The lies that justified the Western interventions in Iraq and Libya, once made public, do not temper the warlike intentions of the governments and the media, which are indispensable to them in order to prepare public opinion.

The indignities here are selective. Nothing or almost nothing when IDF snipers shoot Palestinians like pigeons⁽¹⁾; silence on the mass crimes in Yemen, orchestrated by Saudi Arabia; little on the death and destruction of the « Free Syrian Army ». Self-interested humanism, where the aim is to select the victims worthy of interest and, if necessary, to invent facts to emotionally stimulate the population. Former friends quickly become tyrants, as soon as they no longer bend to the Western diktat. The friends who remain so, and therefore obey, can continue to tyrannize their people: as long as the trade is done, we will close our eyes.

Perhaps the worst thing about this formidable organized amnesia is that it will be in the most conservative newspapers of the mass media that we will sometimes be able to read the most pertinent analyses among the jumble of disinformation.⁽²⁾ Without forgetting where they speak from, what they say on most subjects and their classic propaganda that identifies them with the other mass media, we will however not fail to recognize, if need be, the episodic relevance of their words. But intellectual honesty as a line of conduct to follow will enjoin us to also appreciate the ineptitude of certain productions, even though they emanate from media considered as alternative.⁽³⁾

Alexandre Penasse