Manu Joseph: Trump’s victory has exposed the worst argument of the West

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The worst argument of the West that I have encountered is that fake news changed public opinion and gave the world Donald Trump, and that this sort of propaganda creates the myth of other strongmen across the world. Like some bad Western theories, the view has developed the aura of a common truth even as evidence grows that it is highly unlikely and this view itself could be a piece of fake news.

It is an idea constructed by sophisticated American intellectual systems, and the idea has two parts. One is that the Russian state succeeded in influencing US elections by manipulating public opinion. The second is that Russia and other antagonists of the liberal West did this through the diabolical power of social media, especially Facebook.

Thus the good guys could not exert a moral influence on Americans. This is particularly amusing if you have a long memory. Because just about eight years before the political emergence of Donald Trump, when Barack Obama used Facebook effectively to campaign, you were told what a great innovation social media was, how the young and the good had found a new tool, leaving conservative uncles clueless.

But later, when the uncle constituency started using social media very effectively, Facebook suddenly became a dark force. Even if you do not follow Western media, you couldn’t have escaped the view that fake news had an outsized role in the rise of Trump because Western media is so influential that whatever they say reaches you, like it or not. And you would have noticed that this time round, as Donald Trump won again, claims of Russian interference and the hysteria around fake news have been muted.