Facts, lies and the ballot box

It is unfair to pin the whole blame on Donald Trump and his election win in the United States on the new political concept of "post-truth." 

Wikipedia gives the flowing definition for the concept: "Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored."

The Oxford dictionary chose "post-truth" as the word of 2016.

This is something much more than the classical line which goes "perceptions matter more than realities in politics." It is rather close to the Turkish proverb which goes "if you say the same thing 40 times it becomes real." In the post-truth, post-fact world, what you say 40 times need not be the truth as well.

For example, in an IPSOS-Mori study cited by a Munich Security Conference 2017 report, this question was asked to citizens in different countries: "Out of every 100 people in your country, about how many are Muslims?"

The answers showed remarkable difference between the facts and the perceptions.

In France for example, where the Muslim population is about 7.5 percent, the respondents believed that there were 31 percent - something that explains the Islamophobic tendencies in politics. So in France, if a politician comes up and says that France has been overwhelmed by Muslims who are taking jobs from the hands of good Christian French men and women, there is a chance that it could work.

In Germany the actual percentage is 5 percent but the perception is 21 percent. In the U.S., just 1 percent of the population is Muslim, but the majority believes it is 17 percent. In Poland where...

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