In Truth: A History of Lies from Ancient Rome to Modern America
For the past few years, we have been lamenting the arrival of a “post-truth” era. In an age when opinions and emotions triumph over facts and falsehoods are widely accepted as truths, many believe that fundamental values based on reason are under threat. How did our relationship with truth become so troubled? This book attempts to answer that question.
Rigorously researched and written in a lively and engaging style, In Truth is a history of ideas book written for a wide audience. The book offers an insightful analysis of our “post-truth” culture through a historical journey exploring how different epochs wrestled with the issue of truth and lies. The book focuses on six key turning points in Western history: ancient Rome, early Christianity, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the mass media 20th century, and today’s internet age of Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
Where truth and falsehood are concerned, the march of civilization has never been a narrative of constant progress. Our relationship with truth has always been ambiguous and contradictory, passing through light and darkness. The history of truth has been a saga of constant rivalry, violence, and rupture in a ceaseless struggle to control the narrative. Schisms over truth and falsehood have triggered great upheavals, ignited revolutions, toppled monarchies, shaken entire civilizations. The story of truth is as unpredictable as history itself.
In Truth attempts to untangle the threads of history’s vast tapestry to offer insights into our own values about truth and lies. A key theme is the tension between truth and lies in the quest for power. From the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era, establishing what is true and false — through legends, myths, superstition, religion, reason, science, propaganda — has been indispensable to the conquest and exercise of power. The necessity of falsehoods in politics finds justification as far back as Plato, who argued that rulers must exploit “noble lies” to govern. Machiavelli gave the same counsel to princes. The Machiavellian spirit is pervasive in today’s backrooms, boardrooms, and war rooms.
The book examines how key figures in history — from Julius Caesar and the early Christian popes to Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler — exploited the tension between truth and lies for the purposes of power. Key turning-point events are highlighted, such as the English Civil War when the printing press empowered a new culture of pamphleteering that challenged the status quo — just as social media networks are doing today. During the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, “fake news” filled the pages of mass market newspapers and sensationalized “yellow journalism” was manipulated by press magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer to inflame public opinion.
The tension between reason and irrationality is another theme in the book. How can we understand the collective hysteria of entire populations that, suddenly, succumb to irrational passions and vile ideologies based on lies? At the height of the Italian Renaissance, the illuminated monk Savonarola mesmerized the citizens of Florence who submitted to his fanatical and ill-fated theocracy. In modern Germany, the evil ideology of Adolf Hitler entranced an entire population with a “Big Lie” in the same German culture that had produced Mozart, Immanuel Kant, and Albert Einstein.
The hold of false myths and superstitions on people’s beliefs has endured from ancient times to the modern world despite the advances of rationalism. The Romans interpreted natural events—comets, thunderbolts, the flight patterns of birds—as unfavorable portents. During the Enlightenment, the outlandish predictions of quacks were so popular that astrologers became the target of satirists such as Jonathan Swift. In the nineteenth century, a New York newspaper hoax about animal life discovered on the moon was widely believed as fact. At the outset of the twentieth century, the public was enraptured by accounts of mystical encounters with famous characters from history, such as Marie-Antoinette. Many believed in the existence of fairies; among the credulous was Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Over the past century since the First World War, we have been bombarded with a dizzying onslaught of false narratives — propaganda, disinformation, PR hype, media bias, political advertising, and spin doctoring. Today, many are doubtful about the future of journalism, a profession founded on facts and objectivity. In a digital sphere overwhelmed by falsehoods, emotions, and partisan passions, fact-based, objective truths are increasingly under attack. In the final chapters, the book analyses how entrenched perceptions of truth and lies made Donald Trump’s political triumph possible. Trump wasn’t the harbinger of a “post-truth” era. Rather, he was its political apotheosis in a culture that had already disavowed truth. If the lessons of previous eras can offer any insight, we need to reassess our fundamental values about truth and lies.
Press & Praise for In Truth:
Review in Variety magazine: “Matthew Fraser’s task in his entertaining and provocative new book, In Truth: The History of Lies From Ancient Rome to Modern America, is nothing less than charting the 2,000-plus-years path from Julius Caesar’s spin doctors to Trump’s “post-truth” America. Fraser’s many decades as an international media journalist, broadcaster and university professor have ably prepared him to take on the tome’s lofty task. Fraser makes the book’s vast political history digestible and wildly relevant, without ever losing the thread of what befalls those who use “alternative facts….Fraser’s friendly and deft historical excursions, starting with no less a top-tier star tyrant than Caesar, deepen our understanding of the current political and social moment. One of the primary appeals of “In Truth” is that Fraser’s engaging historical deep dives are a welcome antidote to TV’s hectoring talking heads.” For the full review in Variety magazine, see “Fraser’s book ‘In Truth’ Uncovers a Long History of Official Lies”.