The illusion of truth: How propaganda twists reality - Ivo Vegter
Key topics:
Pravda symbolises propaganda, not genuine truth
Truth requires evidence, not blind faith or authority
Disinformation taints media, politics, and even science
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By Ivo Vegter*
The other day, a correspondent of mine made a claim, and told me sarcastically not to look it up. The implication was that I was ignoring an important fact in forming an opinion on a subject, and could be expected to continue to ignore it even after it had been pointed out to me.
So, I confounded their expectation and looked it up.
Other than social media posts and blogs, the only institutional source I could find for the claim in question was a website that calls itself Pravda, which means “Truth” in Russian. It appears to be filled with Russian propaganda written by people for whom English is a second language.
Appears to be, and is. It is part of a huge network of websites that distributes and amplifies disinformation from highly suspect sources like Russian state television and Russian-language Telegram channels.
It is not to be confused with the English edition of the commercial online newspaper, pravda.ru, nor is it the same as the print newspaper Pravda which is owned by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
Now, the claim in question might be pravda, but without independent verification from reliable and trusted sources, I cannot in good conscience repeat it. I won’t be party to spreading Russian disinformation. And it doesn’t matter for our present purpose.
History of Truth
Stumbling across Pravda in this way (from someone who really ought to know better), made me think. Pravda has a long and storied history.
Pravda was a newspaper founded in 1912 in St Petersburg by a certain Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a man who would go on to earn considerable fame in Russian affairs. At the time, he was the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party.
At first, Pravda faced frequent suppression, first from the ruling tsarist government, and after the February Revolution of 1917 which overthrew Tsar Nicholas II, from the Russian Provisional Government. After each closure it reappeared under different names, many referring in some fashion to the notion of “truth”.
At the start of 1917’s October Revolution, led by Lenin’s Bolsheviks, Pravda was re-established under its original name as the official organ of the Bolshevik party. A year later, all non-communist newspapers were liquidated, and Pravda became the official organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1991.
That means that for ordinary Soviet citizens, it was the sole newspaper of record and arbiter of “truth” as determined by the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party. One contradicted it at mortal peril.
In 1945, the Soviet Union awarded its official propaganda organ the Order of Lenin for outstanding achievement in mobilising the Soviet people for building the socialist society and defence of the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War (World War II).
Pravda was given a second Order of Lenin in 1962, and the Order of the October Revolution in 1972. The state was pleased with its own work, and it wanted the proletariat to know it.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Pravda was sold to a Greek company, Pravda International. A dispute between the company and some of the original Pravda journalists led to the formation of breakaway groups, the most prominent of which was the online newspaper, pravda.ru, which publishes in Russian and several other languages. The Pravda print newspaper was re-acquired by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and has since 1997 continued to serve as its official organ.
Truth is what we say it is
Pravda became a byword for propaganda during the 20th century.
That what the Soviet state asserted to be “truth” was nothing of the sort finds echoes in George Orwell’s masterpiece on totalitarian societies, 1984, in which the “Ministry of Truth” is a propaganda organisation in charge of rewriting history books to erase or modify the past to align it with the party’s present ideology.
The Ministry of Truth was housed in a white pyramid, upon which was inscribed the counterfactual slogans, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.”
By fighting a common enemy, the Party maintained order at home. The only true freedom was to be had in obedient submission to the state. And the less people questioned what the Party said, the stronger the nation would be.
Pravda, then, in reality came to mean its opposite. It was not “the truth” as it was, but “the truth” as its editors said it was, and that was often inconsistent with, or even diametrically opposed to, reality.
Tainted truth
On another occasion, a correspondent declared me to be “blind to the truth”. This would be a serious accusation if what they meant by “truth” was a justified belief – that is, a belief for which there is sufficient empirical evidence or logical reason.
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It wasn’t any such thing, however. My accuser was speaking about faith, not truth. Faith involves accepting certain things as being true despite logical contradictions or an absence of evidence. I don’t do that.
I accept things as potentially true only if there is sufficient empirical and logical reason to believe so.
Exactly what sufficient reason entails is beyond the scope of this article. Epistemology – the study of the nature and source of knowledge – is a broad field. More generally, what truths are, and what, if anything, makes them true, is a controversial and unresolved question in philosophy. One cannot simply answer it by invoking authority, or received wisdom, or ancient texts.
For the more practically minded, determining what is true is not easy either. All potential sources of justified knowledge are imperfect to some degree, though some are much better than others.
A lot of information is given in good faith, but tainted by political ideology. Some is tainted by outright disinformation and propaganda. Much of it is tainted by commercial interests, or outright fraud. Other information is tainted simply by nescience and the over-confident assertions of ignorant people.
Journalists do not always follow best practices in fact-checking and verifying what sources tell them, and their sources often have hidden agendas. Even if they do, there is a chance that falsehood can slip through the holes in the filters they apply to incoming information.
Science is based on a well-established method that seeks to continuously improve and expand on existing knowledge. It doesn’t claim to offer truth, but can credibly claim to search for and approximate a version of reality that likely resembles the true state of affairs.
Yet science is also unreliable. It is tainted by careerist interests such as publication frequency, number of citations, or even outright fraud. It is tainted by funding, whether that funding is from the state or from private institutions. It is tainted by the ideological beliefs of scientists, their supervisors, or journal editors.
Justified belief
Justifying beliefs requires evaluating a wide diversity of evidence, research, news and opinions. It is a process, not a destination.
This process is strengthened by trust relations. It is strengthened when the originators of information are open to criticism. It is strengthened by transparency about sources and methods, and adherence to established protocols designed to minimise bias and error.
It is strengthened by repeated confirmation and independent corroboration. It is strengthened by making claims that are supported by evidence and can be falsified by counter-evidence.
It is weakened by appeals to authority. It is weakened by exaggeration. It is weakened by repeating received wisdom or scripted talking points. It is weakened by secrecy. It is weakened by denying access to independent reporters. It is weakened by demonising those who disagree.
Truth by assertion
Margaret Thatcher once quipped: “Power is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
Truth is much the same. If you have to tell people you’re being truthful, you probably aren’t.
Truth is not established by self-acclamation. Truth is not established merely by assertion. Nobody – and least of all a government – can claim with certainty to know the truth.
A claim to truth is, at best, hubristic. At worst, it masks propaganda, disinformation and political manipulation of public opinion.
That is why a publication that calls itself Pravda is inherently untrustworthy. An organisation that claims to speak, report, or defend “truth” must rank low in the estimation of anyone who values credible, evidence-based knowledge to support justified belief.
Claiming to speak “truth” is not a mark of honesty. It is a mark of dishonesty. And that’s the truth.
*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker who loves debunking myths and misconceptions, and addresses topics from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets.
This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission.