The Dialectics of Truthiness

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So, ‘post-truth’ has entered the lexicon. And not just via the boffins at the Oxford English Dictionary, who have made it their word of the year for 2016, but also via our own Prime Minister, who this week dismissed Bill Shorten’s attempts to elicit some answers about the Bell Group affair and Senator George Brandis’ role in it as ‘the absolute embodiment of post-truth politics’.

Actually I think that title’s taken; but let’s leave Donald Trump to one side for a moment and reflect on Turnbull’s rhetorical manoeuvre. For in deploying the post-truth meme in this way the PM has given a good indication, not only of how it will be deployed in the future, but also of the inseparability of post-truth politics and its supposed alternative. [More at The Monthly.]