When did post-truth begin? From climate change denial to war-mongering nationalism

This article argues that the media structure created by the framework of climate denial in the 2000s was foundational in the subsequent SYSTEMATIC use and DIFFUSION of FAKE NEWS and ‘post-truth’, culminating around the Copenhagen agreement in 2009. The article therefore places the negation of climate change at the roots of the persisting appeal of fake news. The shell-shocking discovery that fake news travels much further, and faster, than real news (Vosoughi, Roy et al. 2018) has thus deeper social, political, economic, health, medical, and life-changing implications than everything else that has been said about these fields taken together: All societies are based on TRUST and the circulation of reliable information. If systematic misinformation prevails, societies tend to break down at various levels, from the individual to the national and the supranational. On the other hand, few have speculated on how the phenomenon was shaped by nationalist ideology, even though it was clearly identified as originating from far-right agendas. I therefore argue that two variables must be jointly investigated to explain the appearance of nebulous post-truth politics: the denial of climate change and state-led nationalism, the former supported by the latter. Thus, the origin of post-truth needs to be connected to the campaign of misinformation initiated with climate change denial around the Copenhagen accord — and, earlier in the USA. This approach brings us nearer to finding a series of solutions for rebuilding public trust: if trust in science is not promptly re-established, then the very basis of modern societies can easily collapse bringing down with them everyone else.