On the tyranny of the posts

THE era of “alternative facts” that we are living through and which is named the “age of post-truth” is so powerfully represented by Donald Trump.

And that is not a problem. Trump believes in his own “alternative facts” that are removed from the reality of multitudes in the world. He truly represents a “post-truth” political world that believes that facts and reality are not important; what matters is power. The problem is that academics, journalists and even some intellectuals want to pretend that the “post-truth” era is new and that it was invented by Trump. Some journalists also believe and write as if the “post-truth” political tendency is an invention of politicians. I write in this short piece to note that throughout posterity tyrannical power has always invented alternative facts of its own and practised post-truth politics that does not care about the reality of the oppressed and marginalised. I also write to state that it is intellectuals and their cousins the academics that invented the “post-truth” political paradigm; politicians only, as true opportunists, took the idea and not only ran with it but also took it to its monstrous levels. One can go further and argue that Trump and his like are not created and produced as monsters by politics but intellectualism, and they are maintained by academicism and journalism as tired disciplines that have become increasingly uncritical. Even the most rabid of despots and tyrants in the world rely on, at best some knowledges and at worst, some ideologies. Some scholar or ideologue somewhere was responsible for the ideas that led to such catastrophes as the Holocaust and the many genocides and massacres that the living world has witnessed. It is scholars, be they simple academics or proper intellectuals, that invent ideas which some power hungry and power drunk politicians go on to implement to disastrous ends. Some of the most toxic forms of politics are linkable to the development and flourish of certain ideas and ideologies traceable to the desk of some thinkers somewhere. That the pen is more powerful than the sword is a feel-good slogan of scholars and journalists that forget the rude

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