In the opportunistic outbreak of fake news that came in the wake of the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, the most difficult thing to understand is not the motivation of those who are dedicated to fabricating lies in series to, at the cost of lives, disrupt the State's actions and take away political benefit from the tragedy.
This motivation may seem alien to people of good faith who maintain their basic circuits of compassion, humanity and sense of community in a functional state. However, it is a recognizable and somewhat banal behavior.
We are talking about the old banditry, the ancient pistol-whipping, criminal actions of those who should be in jail – and, if one day we manage to fix it in our country, it will be. There has never been a shortage of bad people in the history of the species.
Much more difficult to understand is why such gross forms of disregard for life and pain are embraced by so many people who are not, themselves, criminals, and who believe they are moved by the sincere desire to fix what is broken in society.
Although both sides contribute to the lethality of the phenomenon, the makers of fake news and the masses who consume and help propagate it inhabit different moral realms. There is the difference between the manipulators and the manipulated, between the loud crowd and the cattle.
The distinction is fundamental to begin to understand this contemporary plague that is the lying industry, one of the most powerful weapons with which the extreme right has been wreaking havoc on the democratic fabric around the world.
Forcing social networks to take responsibility for the lies, slander and insults conveyed on them may be a fair and inevitable path, but it will be insufficient as long as nothing is done to drain the swampy psychosocial soil in which the fake news virus thrives.
Let's understand: the political use of lies is as old as the history of humanity. Marie Antoinette never said that, in the absence of bread, people should eat brioche. This cupcake was so well baked in the oven lit by the French Revolution that it still sells well today.
The novelty of our time is the electronic means of distributing and reproducing malicious speeches on a network. Even technology, however, would not be able to provide such destructive power if it did not encounter a society in a profound crisis of values.
The crisis is one of democracy, but it can be framed in terms of a crisis of trust and language. For understandable reasons, many people no longer believe anything politicians say.
Now, all language is based on a pact. Speaker and listener need to be in agreement about certain things before the word “popsicle” can be exchanged between them to mean… popsicle.
The breach of the agreement, encouraged by politicians who cleverly present themselves as “anti-politicians”, occurs when the loss of trust in the sender of the message leads someone to suspect that the word “popsicle” can mean everything, from fern to rifle – except popsicle.
This creates a situation in which the parties speak different languages. Not entirely distinct, like Portuguese and Greek, but similar enough, like Portuguese and Spanish, for false cognates to multiply – what seems to be a good translation of reality, but is a red herring.
Fake news are interested false cognates, forged with method and tailored for a world in crisis.
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