By Steve Baxi

“I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality”

Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 216

POST-TRUTH

In 2016, the Oxford English dictionary word of the year was “Post-Truth,” which it defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The next year, in response to false claims about the size of President Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd, Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said “sometimes we can disagree with the facts,” a position that was dubbed “alternative facts” by Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s campaign manager. In the years since, social media has facilitated the modern iteration of “fake news,” situations in which false reports are made to advance political agendas, though sometimes is used pejoratively to dismiss accurate reporting that might seem politically damaging.

Post-Truth, Alternative Facts, and Fake News form the backbone of a current political paradigm that is unembarrassed by its conflation of truth with power. Where it once made sense to “speak truth to power” in a way celebrated by culture, paraded triumphantly in films like All the President’s Men, it's become increasingly clear that truth is merely an expression of power. For something to be true, all it takes is for those in established institutions to state a claim, and a willful mass with the means to repeat it, regardless of truth-value. In these circumstances, Post-Truth is allowed to flourish, conspiracy theories are the new normal, and reality seems to conform to political narratives rather than capital-T-Objective-Truth which was lionized in the past.

The Department of Truth — created by James Tynion IV, Martin Simmonds, Aditya Bidikar and Dylan Todd — comes in response to this era of Post-Truth, arguing an alternative view that truth has not been corrupted by the powerful, but rather has always been an expression of power. The series primarily follows Cole Turner as he slowly becomes inducted into the Department of Truth, a post-World War II organization designed to police truth by investigating the kinds of beliefs people hold and how they manifest in reality. Cole goes to a Flat Earth Conference and witnesses, through the collective power of belief, the world literally becoming flat. Similarly, the widespread crisis actor theory of school shootings manifests in reality, mysteries about government hideaways in airports transform airports into exactly what people believe them to be. In the world of The Department of Truth, what is true is a function of the collective power of belief. However, this is not merely a fictional premise to get the ball rolling, it's a disturbingly accurate account of what truth has always been.

The Department of Truth rests on three primary concepts. The first is Truth: what is it? How is it formed? Is it ever objective or good in itself? Second: what is power? Who has it? What does it influence? How does it shift? Third, Discourse: how does the relationship between truth and power rest on discursive policy? How does this intermediary function with respect to truth and power? Each of these questions can only be answered with respect to each other. Truth is a function of power, power and truth are communicated through discourse.

TRUTH/DISCOURSE

*Figure 1: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #1 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

The Department of Truth posits the idea that reality shifts to reflect the dominant beliefs of a culture found in discourse. As in, if enough people think and spread the idea that politicians are running a pedophile ring under a pizzeria, then the world will alter to accommodate that belief. It's not so much that there is a capital-T-objective truth that we attempt to stay within or defend, it's that whatever is true is purely whatever has purchase within discourse. If you can speak it, spread it, and make it communicable, it could be true.

Discourse as a concept can often be simplified to mean “conversation,” and while that is not an inaccurate way of using the term, it's less precise then what I mean here. According to philosopher Michel Foucault, discourse is an intermediary force within which statements of truth operate. If you’re on Twitter, for example, what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to is dictated by the norms and structure of Twitter. That you use threads, four images at most, 280 characters and hashtags as your vocabulary for tweets are part of what it means to be within “twitter discourse.” At the same time, statements that make sense as tweets are the subject of norms within a given community. If you’re on Comics Twitter, you obey the rules of that space, and what counts as breaking the rules is equally defined by that space.

This is the heart and soul of what we mean by truth. Truth is made possible only within discourse. Foucault writes “it is always possible one could speak the truth in a void; one would only be in the true, however, if one obeyed the rules of some discursive ‘policy’” (Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 224) Meaning, it’s always possible there is an objective truth out there, but it's only “in the true,” in our reality or daily lives, if it obeys the rules of discourse, if it's intelligible within the world we live in right now. Just like a tweet has to make sense, is forced to make sense, within the larger structure of Twitter, truth can only make sense within discourse, within norms and communities. Indeed, to make “sense” is itself to identify a discourse. In what context are these words intelligible? By what metric is this “sensible?”

*Figure 2: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #1 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

Reality has always been flexible to the nature of discourse. As The Department of Truth demonstrates visually, the lettering of Aditya Bidikar is bold, clear and presented in a typewriter style font that gives it the character of an archive, of something historically solid. In contrast, the art by Martin Simmonds is impressionistic, sketchy with numerous lines that do not always coalesce perfectly. The reality shifts in accordance with the discourse in a way that gives words and ideas more power than the assurance of some objective world we can observe.

To be in discourse is not simply limited to our language, either. It contains the whole spectrum of communication and existence within a given society, and we depend on it to facilitate truth. Following the declaration of our Post-Truth age in 2016, numerous arguments were made about the need to return to objectivity, going so far as Time magazine declaring their 2018 person of the year “The Guardians” of truth. They argued we need to reinforce the importance of the “facts,” we can meet lies with the truth, we can and ought to verify the information presented to us. In his book, Post-Truth, Philosopher Lee McIntyre similarly argues for the age-old need to rigorously identify the facts. He writes “the ‘proof’ game cannot be won, so we are going to play the ‘evidence’ game instead, then where is your evidence?” (McIntyre, p. 20) This has not only proven to be completely ineffective but it also misses the heart of the matter when it comes to what truth is. Rather than objectivity and evidence in the concrete sense, truth has long depended on circumstances where it could not be so clearly verified, or so easily delineated as true or false.

In their 1985 book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer argue that in situations where evidence cannot be readily accessed or replicated, those with social standing are invited to witness what evidence does exist, and their testimony suffices for the truth. In other words, sometimes we do experiments or make scientific claims that the layperson does not have access to, or does not understand. So in place of access, we use social standing and testimony to demonstrate truth-value. “Because the King said it, and because I understand and trust the king within the community I live in, I take this claim before me as true.” If you read a claim in a scientific journal, you trust that peer-review has been properly conducted, that peer-review works, and all the equipment for the study does in fact exist, even if you never see it in person. The social standing of what it means to be a scientific journal is a testimony for something to potentially be true, but it doesn’t guarantee that it is true in an objective sense. It can’t. It can only be framed in a way that appears true.

*Figure 3: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #2 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar.*

When you apply this logic to social media, you create the phenomenon of Fake News. As Regina Rini argues, a belief is held online not because it can be verified or even should be, but “because it was presented as truth by another person” (Rini, 2017). Thus, fake news is designed to be shared and shareability is what substitutes for testimony online. When people like Joe Rogan make skeptical claims about vaccine effectiveness, or Eric Clapton makes the claim that people are brainwashed into mask mandates, whether their claim is true or not doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the claim can be spread, and others have the ability to believe it.

*Figure 4: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #5 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

The function then of the Department of Truth is to curb what beliefs have the quality of shareability. It does not defend truth as a concept, it merely controls the discourse. As Cole wrestles with the irresponsibility of making false claims, he’s met with resistance because the dichotomy of truth and falsehood as such does not make sense if we submit that truth is a function of power, and is mediated by discourse. As Foucault notes, the problem with true and false as concepts is that it's taking sides with reality rather than accepting it as it is. And as it is, whatever is true is whatever has the character of being taken as true. What can be taken as true is always at the mercy of discourse and power.

TRUTH/POWER

Foucault once claimed “What I am doing is something that concerns philosophy, that is to say, the politics of truth, for I do not see many other definitions of the word ‘philosophy’ apart from this” (STP, p. 3). Truth is something in contention, in need of investigation from a historical and sociological perspective. This is even true of scientifically verifiable claims, as the whole idea of what counts as “verifiable” has been in contention for the entire last century. Capital T-Truth is something that’s often taken for granted in Post-Truth society, despite this constant need for proper investigation. To say we need evidence is compelling, to say there are indisputable facts less so. Foucault, rather than simply accepting this, contends that knowledge and truth are different things. What we can know, and that we desire the truth are different. In other words, for something to fit inside a social framework where it makes sense, like the idea that Kings are divinely chosen by god, is what it means to have knowledge. To desire truth, on the other hand, is to ascribe a value to the idea that truth is a good thing. One is about the character of life, to enhance existence based on utility, the other is a value judgment, one often based on the knowledge but not necessarily so.

When we say Truth is a function of Power, we do not mean power maliciously and domineeringly looms over and manufactures truth for selfish ends. We are not arguing that society is inherently propagandistic, churning out beliefs it sinisterly wants you to hold. Rather, truth is something that is socially determined, and social determination is based on circumstances and the push/pull of various forces in play. In other words, power. What is true is what makes sense for our survival. We know fire is hot because we need to know fire is hot, but saying it’s good to know fire is hot depends entirely on what kind of world you’re living in such that the temperature of fire matters.

*Figure 5: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #9 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

Foucault coined the term “Regimes of Truth” which referred to the societal mechanisms by which one can distinguish between truth and falsehood. These mechanisms include community guidelines or norms, the institutions of power, like the government or private entities, and the cultural trends that thread together facts into narratives we can share. Regimes are by their nature temporary, and thus truth shifts based on who is in power and what historically constitutes having power. Foucault scholar, Paul Patton, notes “Foucault wants to show that political and economic conditions are not merely obstacles for the subject of knowledge but ‘the means by which subjects of knowledge are formed, and hence are truth relations’” (Foucault and Nietzsche: A Critical Encounter, p.40). Truth is a contingent, not a necessary, feature of reality. In other words, we come to a concept of truth based on what is around us. We do not uncover, we stitch together the world and call it truth.

*Figure 6: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #4 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

In Issue #4 of The Department of Truth, reporters wrestle with their place as institutions that create truth, that produce and depend on social norms to discern truth from falsehood. As previously mentioned, Regina Rini argued the unique quality of fake news today is that it shifts our understanding of truth to focus solely on that which can be shared online. One reason this shift is so effective is that norms for what is true and false are much less rigidly defined online, compared to things like newspapers which have been around for decades, have editorial practices, and substantial vetting of sources. However, as the two newsmen discuss, newspapers work the same way Fake News online does, by asserting and distributing a belief that we function off of because we have faith in the testimony it provides. Perhaps we don’t trust a retweet from a stranger online, and we’re just more historically inclined to believe a newspaper. But neither has special access to an objective truth that the other lacks. The quality and character of truth is the same, even if the specific mode of discourse changes. That doesn’t mean newspapers are as bad as social media fake news, it just means that the truth was never perfectly clear. It has always rested on testimony.

However, what becomes important here with Regimes of Truth is that we are institutionalizing something that is inherently unstable. Truth is a piecing together of norms, practices, values, and information into something that works for us. Overtime, those steps become shorthanded into a value. Working knowledge, common sense and utility get confused for “The Truth” as a quasi-platonic form that we must cherish. Time magazine's guardians of truth are the epitome of this confusion, taking the unstable nature of what can be true and marketing it as something solid. However, the very thing that gives reporters and truth-seekers their power is the ability to question truth, to alter discourse. That truth is unstable is why it matters. Truth must adjust and contort to what is necessary, rather than rigidly and dogmatically stabilize into an idol. This is because the second it becomes stable, it becomes totalizing and oppressive.

The danger of our Post-Truth society is that it should reveal to us that truth is a social construct, that people will do, say and believe anything as long as it makes sense with their idea of reality. And yet instead, there’s a nihilistic nostalgia for the days where truth was thought to be objective. Rather than seeing truth as a patchwork, something we are all responsible for, it's turned into an abstract that doesn’t help anyone. Telling a conspiracy theorist their beliefs are untrue is completely ineffective because their belief has become a core of their identity, they piece together their truth and so they have little use for an abstract Truth that is purely based on cold facts.

TRUTH/IDENTITY

On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch drove from North Carolina to Washington, DC. He took three guns, and fired into Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria he believed to be housing a pedophile ring run by democratic politicians. In June 2020, Alpalus Slyman, accompanied by his 5 children, led police on a high-speed chase across New Hampshire, motivated by the ongoing QAnon conspiracy. He live streamed the event, claiming that his neighbors were spies, the coronavirus was man made, President John F. Kennedy faked his death, and pleaded for President Donald Trump to save him.

In both these cases, individuals were radicalized by online conspiracies but what becomes apparent is that both men felt, however misguided, a deep moral obligation to do something about the events that were described to them. Welch immediately surrendered to the police once he confirmed there was no hidden pedophile ring inside Comet Ping Pong, and issued an apology after being sentenced to prison. Similarly, the saga of Slyman’s QAnon conspiracy reveals a man who was deeply disturbed by what he thought to be true, and acted in a reckless and dangerous way to save his children and tearfully request the help of the one person he believed in, Donald Trump.

*Figure 7: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #1 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

Post-Truth is the culmination of modes of discourse that exploit the ambiguous nature of truth to radicalize people through deep ethical convictions. If there is a common thread in both these cases, and in what Tynion asserts with The Department of Truth, it’s that people demand to believe in something. Individuals, to paraphrase Nietzsche, can withstand any amount of suffering. What they cannot withstand, however, is that there is often no (good) reason for that suffering. In Department of Truth #10-11, we read the letters of a man who believes in bigfoot, how that belief was instilled by his father, and how it infected him to the point of alienating his whole family. The recurring theme in this story is that he felt sympathy for his father, he wanted to believe in something greater in the world, and that he did not want to rob his own children of the belief that the extraordinary exists in a world of ordinary pain and suffering. He needed to believe in bigfoot because he could not bear the thought of living in a world without a belief to sustain him.

*Figure 8: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #11 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

Similarly, in The Department of Truth #3, we meet Mary, a grieving mother who lost her child to a school shooting. Over the course of the story, she becomes engrossed by online conspiracy theories spread through social media which argue school shootings are an example of a “false flag” operation. False Flag theories, and the crisis actor theory explored in this particular issue, center on the idea that the government, specifically liberals and democrats, are using covert operatives to plant the idea that right-wingers are radical and violent in order to mitigate constitutional freedoms and human rights. If there is an outbreak of school shootings, then the government has cause to take away civilian owned guns. Thus, they plant “crisis actors” to pretend children have been killed, and parents to pretend to grieve. Mary knows this isn’t true, but as the belief spreads online she receives evidence to the contrary. She sees videos of herself, or someone who looks like her, auditioning to be a crisis actor, and quickly comes to believe that even if this wasn’t true, the possibility of it is enough to give her life meaning, to give her the chance to see her son again.

*Figure 9: DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #3 by Tynion/Simmonds/Bidikar*

Today conspiracy theories online function as hijacking that need for belief. They tell you just enough to keep your mind going but never enough to fall under the weight of themselves. They take disenfranchised, socially awkward, chronically online individuals and give them a hive of belief, purpose and moral obligation. They not only believe everything they read, but they do not want to live in a world where they cannot act on those beliefs. In the end, that Pizzagate was false didn’t matter because the need for action and purpose is much louder. These same events repeated themselves with the Texas National Butterfly Center being forced to close due to right-wing threats alleging a connection to human trafficking.

In its more basic sense, identity is to tell a story about yourself based on what you believe yourself to be. It’s a patchwork of memories, ideas and values. Truth is this on a grander scale, and it becomes enmeshed with our sense of identity. Truth is a value, an absolute good. But its character is merely contingent, a function of what could be the case right now. When truth and identity are on such shaky ground, rather than accept the challenge of defining ourselves in the void, we cling to narratives that mean a lot to us to affirm the value of truth rather than recognize its contingency. In essence, truth and identity are impressionistic, not concrete. Post-Truth takes advantage of the impressionistic, it facilitates the extremes of who we believe ourselves to be and reveals truth to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. Post-Truth takes the fear of a shaky truth and grants you an explanation to hang your identity on. Ironically, the people most engaged with online conspiracies have some of the strongest convictions that value truth above all. They want to uncover the truth, they claim reality is filled with lies, they believe in a good surrounded by a world of evil. And it’s this very search for truth that corrupts them. Conspiracies work because they say the truth is out there, and thus it does no good to fact check them. The belief is enough. The tragic irony of it all is that their belief in an eternal truth is what ultimately damns them. As Nietzsche observes: “everything evolved: there are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths” (Human, All Too Human, §2).

Read The Department of Truth, Vol. 1
Read The Department of Truth, Vol. 2
Read The Department of Truth, Vol. 3

Steve Baxi has a Masters in Ethics and Applied Philosophy, with focuses in 20th Century Aesthetics and Politics. Steve creates video essays and operates a subscription based blog where he writes on pop culture through a philosophy lens. He tweets through @SteveSBaxi.