We are said to live in a ‘post-truth’ world. In 2016, the term was named Oxford Word of the Year. While the immediate motivation for the term may have been a description of Donald Trump’s “war on truth”, in reality, the subversion of truth has been a strategy used for millennia by rulers, their emissaries and their spies.

From the Trojan Horse to the falsehood of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, certainty and doubt, trust and deception keep exchanging places, confusing the general populations.

History is riddled with ‘double-speak’. While one hand is held out to help, the other is filling a pocket. Where the world sees genocide in Palestine, Zionists see the ‘promised land.’ Artist Khalil Chishtee made a sculpture with plastic bags of two men embracing while each holds a gun behind his back.

Taking liberties with the truth is justified by advertisers, by politicians and by defence lawyers. It is considered acceptable because people are aware these are strategies and learn to read between the lines. People learn to negotiate fake news, as the saying goes now: “Swipe for truth and scroll for doubt — the........

© Dawn (Magazines)