Ideas in Combat Gear: Divinity, Anarchy, ‘Democracy’ & ’Post-Truth’ Electioneering RL Vol XI No XIII, CXXIV, MMXVII

Ideas in Combat Gear:

Divinity, Anarchy, ‘Democracy’ & ’Post-Truth’ Electioneering

Public Lecture - RL Vol XI No XIII, CXXIV, MMXVII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

This lecture addresses the various dominant religious and ideological leanings that have made all political efforts destined to convince the electorate on a post-truth world that their religious and ideological leanings should be heard to get to the helm of the regime. Post-truth politics is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. In the representation of the supreme being (Divinity, theists, and atheists…) and ideologies (Communism, Anarchy, Democracy) of the centuries, a convergent set of developments have created the conditions of post-truth society.

These include inert alia, the development of professional political communication informed by cognitive science, which aims at managing perception and belief of segmented populations through techniques like micro-targeting (includes the strategic use of rumours and falsehoods); the frag­mentation of modern more centralized mass news media gatekeepers that largely repeated one another's scoops and their reports; the fierce attention economy marked by information overload and acceleration, prolific user-generated content and fewer society-wide common trusted authorities to distinguish between truth and lies, accurate and inac­curate; the algorithms that govern what appears in social media and search engine rankings, sometimes based on what the algorithm thinks users want and not on what is necessarily factual; and news media that has itself been marred by scandals of plagiarism, hoaxes, propaganda, and changing news values, all of which some scholars say issue from economic crises resulting in downsizing and favouring trends toward more traditionally tabloid stories and styles of reporting, known as tabloidization and infotainment. While some of these phenomena (such as a more tabloidesque press) may suggest a return to the past, the whole effect of the convergences creates a socio-political phenomenon that exceeds a mere return to earlier forms of journalism.

Democratic transitions are initiated at three levels: state led transitions, society led transitions and a combinations of state led and society led transitions. Three main strategic and processual issues are usually considered in the study and analysis of ideologies. The key characteristics of such state building are the intransigence of the executive and the ability of opposition in civil society to gather enough organisational and ideological strength to force the executive into a series of concessions. Institutions draw attention to the regularities rather than the quirks of individual behaviour. Hence, political institutions are more proximate to transition dynamics than deep socio-economic structures and contingent actions of individual political actors.

Key words: Communism, Anarchy, Democracy, Divinity, Theists, Atheists, Social Darwinism

See link here or  https://www.academia.edu/33350303/Ideas_in_Combat_Gear_Divinity_Anarchy_Democracy_and_Post-Truth_Electioneering_RL_Vol_XI_No_XIII_CXXIV_MMXVII