Feelings defeat Facts

This piece was initially drafted in late 2018 as a vision statement for what later developed into De Facto Latam , a Southern Pulse product focused on mis- and disinformation in Latin America. It has been updated and presented as part two of Three Challenges and Two Opportunities. Part one is The mechanism and the Wire.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama published in 1989 a seminal essay about the victory of Liberalism over Communism. His essay, The End of History, argued that the liberal institutions of a free market, representative government, and consumerist culture would together drive the world order forward, beyond a history that had chronicled the struggle, and indeed wars, fought over ideas. This history was over, Fukuyama argued, because Liberalism had won.

In the late 1980s, the same man could not have foreseen the impact Social Media would have on Liberalism. Consumerist culture, a free market, and liberal institutions dovetailed with the psychology of addiction, attention as a commodity, and the user as the product in a way no one could have predicted. Influential leaders in the Liberally-dominated West have by now exploited the opportunity to push society and culture beyond fact. How one feels or what one believes is today more important than what is actually true.

In early 2017, some 28 years after his essay on the end of history, Fukuyama published an essay on the end of facts. In, The Emergence of a Post-Fact World, he argued that a “post-fact” world had emerged in 2016, “in which virtually all authoritative information sources are challenged by contrary facts of dubious quality and provenance.”?

“In a world without gatekeepers,” Fukuyama argued, “there is no reason to think that good information would win over bad.”

After nearly 20 years of engagements in Latin America designed to help clients determine fact from fiction; after decades of living and working in—and loving— the region; and, after countless hours of study and thousands of interviews with Latin Americans, I have seen time and time again where bad information has won over the good, today and yesterday. I expect to see it tomorrow.

While traveling in Latin America, I often hear that there is no truth, only versions of it. Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the lauded Colombian novelist, made Latin America’s Magical Realism genre of literature famous with his novel Love in a Time of Cholera. His Chilean contemporary, Isabel Allende, echoed the same style of writing that would layer magical or supernatural occurrences over what was otherwise a rather normal existence.?

There is a reason why this sort of literature is distinctly Latino — feeling and belief or the suspension thereof are oftentimes more attractive than facts in a region where impunity and poverty are daily bread. The same is so often true across the globe where the desire to escape from reality eclipses the need to improve it.

Similar tactics of manipulating belief and feeling were used to divide society. Radio, newspapers, and television signaled what was true across the region in the mid- to late-20th century as various countries in Latin America fell under one form of military leadership after the other. The book, El Masacre en el Mozote, painted a picture of the desensitized military strongman in El Salvador. Detached, the caudillo oversaw from atop his bridled stallion the burning and destruction of yet another village, damned by a “fact” that the whole town was part of the insurgency. Had bad information won out over good?

What about Nunca Mais, the exposé on the use of torture to extract information from suspected Communist spies in Brazil? This feeling against torture – “never again” as the book title states – was a regional reaction to the reality that so many shared, either directly or indirectly. Torture in Latin America in the 1980s was an expression of the Cold War that funneled into a moment of a wretched man or woman strapped to a chair under a lone dangling light bulb. Sitting in that chair was a source of “facts”, but was it a source of truth, or just feeling, for the torturer? Unfortunately, these acute moments of extreme violence were only a precursor to what followed.

Liberalism took root in Latin America in the 1990s with a fury and force of economic reform, free trade, and aggressive U.S. foreign policy. A new truth fueled by millions of dollars spent on a War on Drugs, neo-liberal economic modeling, and austere fiscal policy that forced many millions back into that metaphorical chair. Yet despite Washington’s often tone deaf approach, Liberalism — in fits and starts — found traction and spread in a distinctly Latino way. A new form of conservative fiscalism merged with a populist, near-socialist agenda — made famous and then infamous by one of Brazil’s most celebrated leaders, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. He had so much right, but corruption twisted so much into wrong. But it felt good for so long. Lula was recently reelected, so it may feel good again. We’ll see.

Not even Lula, who many in Brazil still revere as a demi-god, could have predicted how a little known, former military captain would emerge from the rank and file of forgotten federal representatives to become president. Many elements formed the perfect storm that brought Jair Bolsonaro into power in Brazil, but most outside observers, and many in his own government, cannot ignore the role feeling played over fact. A public stabbing led to his victory. Since then, Brazil has experienced a misinformation renaissance.

The same may be considered true for the sitting presidents and societies of several countries across Latin America.

If the men and women who hold the most power in the two hands holding a smartphone are willing and able to apply Magical Realism to their style of governance, one Tweet at a time, logic follows that many of their followers, supporters, voters, associates, and others will buy in and contribute to the same alternative reality. Again, feeling and belief outweigh what is true. Where does it end?

Considered the definitive biography of Hugo Chávez, Sin Uniforme, Una Historia Personal, this intrepid book looked beyond the public image of Venezuela’s magnanimous leader. Looking back on this tremendous reporting effort through the lens of how today’s youth often “flex” a different reality through their Social Media accounts, we can see the distinction and the difference between the leader who wore first a military uniform then a business suit, and the curious, ravenously extroverted Venezuelan military idealist-turned-politician who most sought after the establishment, and then broke what had been established with his own cult of personality.?

This is where Chávez and Bolsonaro are alike. This is where Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele and former US president Donald Trump are alike.

Latin America has slipped over the precipice where the region’s politics have superseded feeling over fact, padding the difference with an alternative reality. Her leaders and thousands of other influencers, politicians, journalists and socialites have all pushed far beyond fake news, or casual misinformation. Their world is often coordinated. Tactics, strategy, and vision form how, where, and why feeling and belief tie together with half truths and lies. These efforts promulgate an outcome that is entirely in line with what the broadest cut of Latin America’s sons and daughters have been consuming for generations. Today this consumption is not? just in the minds of men and women who read Marquez or Allende. It is in voice and action on the streets and at the voting booths.

Looking ahead into 2023, we see where Liberalism has pooled into shallow puddles of governance that look more like bureaucratic inertia than the desire of elected leaders or populace to do better. The entire region has embarked on a new path, one where Social Media, writ-large, shapes in part the outcome of the civil social contract; where the truth is truly that there are versions of it. So pick the one that feels the best. Like a hall of mirrors, one is real. The rest are not, but distortion is difficult to detect.

Fidel Castro famously said, “I began a revolution with 82. If I had to do it again, I would do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.” If he had to do it all over again in 2023, Castro would not need faith or the men. He would need only one smartphone.