Media collaboration with Trump serves as salutary lesson

Donald Trump's campaign and ascension to the highest office in the United States confirms that we are living in a post-truth society where facts don't matter.

Trump’s political career began with him insisting on an idiotic conspiracy theory about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He launched his presidential campaign saying Mexicans were rapists, and throughout that campaign peddled lies, fabrications and falsities, as well as conspiracy theories previously relegated to the most ludicrous corners of the internet.

His speeches were often nonsensical, as he rarely managed to form coherent sentences beyond a paragraph’s length. Nor did he outline any detailed policies based on reality or fact, and he often blurted out ridiculous statements, figures, lies and obfuscations that even the most gullible online troll would check the legitimacy of before posting anonymously.

We cannot give Trump credit for masterminding a post-truth plot to propel him to power, yet his penchant for lying happens to align with a contemporary culture where facts play second fiddle to sensationalism, memes, wolf-crying, and fake news. This was one of the reasons he was so hard to stop.

Until very recently, candidates for the office ran in the same reality, but Trump and his supporters live in a parallel universe where Obama hid his "real" birth certificate; Muslims cheered in New Jersey as the Twin Towers fell; Mexicans are all criminals; Syrian terrorists pour into the US masquerading as refugees; Hillary Clinton was nowhere to be seen on 9/11 – and for some reason should be in jail; women who are assaulted by him are making it up; a giant wall Mexico will pay for is a credible solution to border control; that he never supported the war in Iraq; and so on and so forth.

Beyond the pale

When someone’s rhetoric and demeanour and behaviour is so beyond the pale, it is impossible to contend with in the traditional parameters of a political battle. Trump entered a surreal realm. He brought a bag of snakes to a water pistol fight and left everyone wondering how on earth they were meant to deal with that. The playing field was not just uneven, it was operating on parallel plains lightyears away from each other. Hillary Clinton continued a campaign down here on Earth outlining real policies, while Trump was off at his rallies whipping up mobs with vicious nonsense.

In the aftermath of his election win, liberals will wring their hands and wonder what great disenfranchisement occurred, how they managed to not understand the discontent in America, where they slipped up on not listening to people, how they can engage with people who do not live in their universe. But the reality is, you cannot engage with anyone who does not accept truth or facts as the baseline of reality. And on top of that, you cannot engage politely with anyone for whom racism, bigotry and intolerance are worn as badges of honour.

You cannot say the swathes of white men who voted for Trump are “disenfranchised”, when there is probably no more privileged position in the world than that of the straight, white, American man. They are at the top of the food chain. Yet they are also scared of that privilege and power being taken away. This election was a referendum on tolerance, on acceptance of diversity, and valuing socially progressive politics. Angry white America shouted “stop”.

For Europeans and others, the ordinary American punter has long been the butt of jokes based on their perceived ignorance, and a conversation with the average Trump voter would confirm this stereotype. But since we are in a post-truth world, intelligence, nuance, facts and evidence are no longer valued by many people, as we also saw in the thuggish anti-intellectualism of Brexit, where we were told the British people are sick of “experts”. Liberals talk about their own “echo chambers”, and say that they “live in a bubble”, yet those on Trump’s side have little interest in reaching out and understanding people beyond their own worldview. They too live in a bubble. Ignorance is a choice.

Trump’s rise to power, with his ugly form of fascism, is not the fault of liberal, progressive America. It is the fault of racist, bigoted America. We like to pretend that all humans are ultimately decent, but we engage in something of a masquerade in most of our political campaigns, talking about ideals and aspirations with politeness and PR.

In this campaign, Trump threw that out, and instead lifted the lid on the ugliest aspects of humanity, inviting his supporters to roll around in the mud with him. This was not dog-whistle politics, it was blatantly appealing to the lowest common denominators of hate.

Broadcast ratings

If there is a fault to be placed elsewhere than Trump and his supporters, it is with how the media collaborated with him. We are not just realising this in hindsight. The minute Trump dipped his toe in the water, broadcast media rushed to him for ratings, giving him all the free publicity he could possibly desire.

Instead of shutting him down from the get go, they legitimised him as a potential candidate and gave credence to his bigotry.

And all of the time, other journalists and members of the public said “don’t play with fire”. When you give a platform to hate, when you decide that it is valid for coverage or “content”, when it goes unchallenged and unquestioned, this is what happens.

This was not just false equivalence, it was allowing a fascist his propaganda on primetime. And the media will continue this torrid game, as if allowing hateful people a platform in pursuit of viewers and clicks and reaction on Twitter has no consequences.

Well guess what? It does. Someone spewing racist nonsense with hundreds of thousands watching actually leads to our worst fears realised.

A man shot an MP dead in England because of it. America elected a fascist because of it. Back in Ireland, shame on RTÉ, The Late Late Show has booked the spiteful Katie Hopkins as a guest, all in the pursuit of ratings.

If we learn anything from Trump, can it be a measure of decency in our broadcast media, and to stop giving bigotry a platform as if this is all a game? Because this is not a game. This is all very, terrifyingly, real.