By LUIZ MARQUES*
The importance of trust in the post-truth era and the effects of the internet on politics and everyday life
1989 is the year the Internet was born, and it became commercial and accessible to the public in the following decade. Twenty years earlier, research focused on military and national security issues. With the threat of nuclear attack, there was a desire for a technology that would not suffer from a possible interruption in communications. The pioneers are still hailed for the expansion of this revolutionary invention.
This led to the HTTP protocol for transferring hypertext – computer texts linked to each other via hyperlinks, with access to the web and navigation for exchanging data on interconnected computers. Hypertext leverages sharing. The University of California inaugurates the connections and procedures that result in the transmission of information through digital networks.
In 2019, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the internet and director of World Wide Web Foundation write an article for the New York Times where, nostalgic, he claims to have always dreamed of the positive impacts of the web for humanity. At the same time, however, he accuses the spread of prejudices, violence, misinformation, the deregulation of content, the platformization of life, the formation of megacorporations and the empowerment of Big Tech about free internet users only in the imagination.
The disenchantment is justified as the internet is part of everyday life in education, work, the market, social life and also in the villainy with robots against the reputation of adversaries. Dictionary of negationisms in Brazil, organized by José Szwako and José Luiz Ratton, places the emancipating word – “Internet” – in an entry squeezed between the “denialist press” and the “lawfare”. In times gone by, this would have been attributed to chance. Today the location seems consistent.
A search for likes
George Orwell had a premonition about the “post-truth” adopted by those in power. In an essay on the Spanish civil war, he wrote: “What is peculiar to our time is the abandonment of the idea that history can be written truthfully.” The problem is not lies, but rather their acceptance as something natural. The healthy indignation of yesteryear has given way to indifference and connivance. Donald Trump (United States), Recep Erdogan (Turkey), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Javier Milei (Argentina), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil) are not the cause of evil; they are the effect of the erosion of democracy.
Among us, the Judiciary, formed by a caste with two months of vacation per year, and a retinue of perks in their salaries, delays reporting the crimes of the ineligible militiaman and, just like the Legislature with its “secret amendments”, erodes the scant trust in the Republic. The physiological coalition to ensure the governability of the Executive contributes to the increase in discredit and the crumbling of what was solid. What remains is hatred and resentment for the common people.
False notifications promoted by the production of fake news make them blush even LOBBY corporate, with the systematic dissemination of absurdities. The champion in bizarreness is the creation of Olavo de Carvalho, the “dick bottle”. It inspired the electoral campaign in which Fernando Haddad faced the ogre representing the neofascist, neoconservative and neoliberal triad. Tough choice, said the newspaper The State of S. Paul.
Those who deny vaccines and the climate catastrophe are the heirs of maneuvers that delayed the fight against the pandemic and the thaw. The trick is to provide disruptive entertainment to distract from the essential. By covering the conflicts, the media legitimizes the unspeakable in the hunt for audience. The internet enhances likes and the profit from the monetization of the show, which stages the horror.
The value of trust
“Trust is a fundamental mechanism of human survival, the basis of coexistence that allows any relationship—from a marriage to a complex society—to function with any degree of success. A community without trust ends up becoming little more than an atomized collection of individuals trembling in their palisades,” observes Matthew D'Ancona, in Post-truth: The new war against facts in times of fake news. When the vigilant guarantors of honesty falter, so do truth and democracy. Without a compass, they are lost.
The old ideological oppositions respected the epistemological value of “truth” in public discussions. Now, that is counterbalanced by hypocrisy and cynicism. Emotions take precedence over discursive rationality. The stigma of being a liar fades along with the lie that, five decades ago, led Richard Nixon to resign from the US Presidency. The condescension towards liquid morality is a product of the collapse of trust in institutions. Insecurity is the rule.
The attack on truth and science began in 1954, on the initiative of the American Tobacco Industry Investigation Commission, with the tobacco industry's subtle response to public anxiety about the connection between smoking and lung disease. The Commission avoided confronting the evidence head-on; it sought to undermine scientific consensus and sabotage reality with a false equivalence between “narratives”. This was the beginning of the so-called postmodern era.
The goal is not academic victory; it is to stir up confusion in the public consciousness. In the meantime, the industry continues to slaughter addicts. When freedom of expression becomes a shelter for discrimination and relativizes the parameters of civility, anything goes. A responsible definition of “democracy” must classify it by the cumulative process of civilizing values, with an emphasis on valuing gender, racial, and social equality. Stopping setbacks is the categorical imperative.
A mistreated country
Contardo Calligaris says that when he put down roots in Brazil, he heard from native friends that “This country is no good.” To a European, it seems strange for someone to disparage his country. The government or the people, whatever; but nationality is a surname – it cannot be erased. The enigma lies in the subjectivity of Brazilians, divided between the “colonizer” and the “colonist.” Both face the challenge of living in a new world. The first commits limitless and shameless extractivism; the second wants to gain citizenship and gain recognition in the hard-earned condition of a subject, in the motherland.
The far right embodies the colonizer that inhabits our Brazilian identity and the long tradition of command and obedience. Hence the kick in the pants; the option to exhaust the land, water and air; the recourse to slave labor; the precariousness of the worker; the impetus to prove the thesis that the country is useless. Institutional actions reveal the predatory continuity incorporated into the colonization process, with advantages for the privileged. The path of the internet is confused with financial capital, for whom no country is good unless it provides income while the binge lasts.
On the contrary, progressive forces resist the wrath of destruction with the ideals of the settlers who are found in the camps of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), occupations of the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), community organizations, students, unions and political parties in the fight for a welcoming nation. The feeling of collective integration prevails, which confronts the logic of exclusion of patriarchy (sexism) and colonialism (racism). Class identity is forged in popular struggles in the countryside and cities, with criticism of status quo.
There are several ways of thinking about the changes that are taking place, with the urgency of the turning point: (i) in the economic infrastructure; (ii) in the ideological superstructure; (iii) in the socialization of consumption and; (iv) in the relationship with time and space. The Internet has an impact on each of these moments, especially in the adventure of time with immediacy and, in space, with the symbolic tearing down of the walls of national states to guarantee the circulation of finances, without legal obstacles. It has been captured by technocratic monopolies. It is therefore necessary to democratize the ownership of the cybersphere. Capisce?
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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