The Lure of ‘Alternative Facts’ and The Danger of Democratic Deconsolidation
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TISARANEE GUNASEKARA on 02/19/2017
“Social implosion handed opportunities to those who spotted a basic weakness in the theory and practice of representative democracy.”John Keane (The Life and Death of Democracy)
President Donald Trump’s senior counsellor Kellyanne Convey came up with a superb Orwellian term when she dubbed Presidential spokesman Sean Spencer’s outright lies about inauguration crowds as ‘alternative facts’. ‘Alternative facts’ are not just the propagandistic lies governments tell people; they are also the comforting lies governments and people tell themselves. Basing political calculations and political decisions on ‘alternative facts’ is often a suicidal exercise, as Mahinda Rajapaksa discovered when he held a presidential election two years ahead of time on the basis of astrological predictions, made-to-order opinion polls and sheer wishful thinking.
