Truth, the progressive California politician Hiram Johnson once said, is the first casualty of war. His oft-cited remark was supposedly made in 1918 in reference to the first world war, which had by then caused millions of human casualties.
More than a century later, truth is again caught in the crossfire, this time as a casualty of 21st-century culture wars.
If Donald Trump is the high priest of disinformation, then Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, is showing signs of being a willing disciple, if his behaviour in the UK this week is anything to go by.
Farage has proposed sending prisoners abroad – including to El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent hundreds of deportees and suggested sending US citizens. He also suggested an extensive police recruitment drive and prison-building programme all while cutting health and education spending.
The parroting of Trump’s policies by a UK populist has not gone unnoticed in the US. And for those who have studied the president’s modus operandi, there is one particular tactic the British public should be braced for: the blizzard of lies and false statements that frequently overwhelms his opponents.
The Trump experience, they say, contains sobering lessons for Farage’s critics.
US pro-democracy campaigners says Trump has become even harder to factcheck since his first term, thanks to a combination of factors including looser social media content moderation and a reluctance among some media owners to stand up to his intimidation.
The Washington Post, which tracked more than 30,000 lies or misleading statements from Trump during his presidency, lost subscribers and public trust after its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, reportedly vetoed an editorial endorsing the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president.
“It’s become more difficult because there’s less commitment from those who are in the best position to do the factchecking,” said Omar Noureldin, a senior vice-president for Common Cause, a non-partisan group. “Seeking the truth here comes with costs and risks.”
Complicating matters is the loss of trust in institutions, with many consumers relying on social media platforms for news.
“Even the best factchecking can be unpersuasive, because we’re not just facing an information crisis here, but also a trust crisis in the American information ecosystem,” Noureldin said.
Media watchers say the political environment has become so deeply polarised that factchecking can even have the counter-productive effect of further entrenching misplaced beliefs.
“From a lot of research, we’re reaching the conclusion that factchecking hasn’t been as effective as one would want,” said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters for America, a media watchdog.
“One reason is that information and disinformation spreads faster than you can check it. It takes a lot longer to factcheck something than it does for it go viral.
“But the other thing is factchecking can backfire. People so distrust institutions that factchecking can validate the misinformation in their minds and make them more inclined to believe the lie they believed in the first place.”
A 2022 report from Protect Democracy suggests this is the result of a deliberate strategy of authoritarian regimes.
“Disinformation is spread through coordinated networks, channels and ecosystems, including politically aligned or state-owned media,” the report said. “The goal is not always to sell a lie, but instead to undermine the notion that anything in particular is true.”
Further complicating the problem in the US has been Trump’s appointment of allies to key government agencies that have traditionally served as sources of accurate and reliable data for factcheckers.
A case in point is Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has engaged in anti-vaccine theories. As Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, he is in charge of the country’s vast health bureaucracy.
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“Factchecking wasn’t working very well in the first place, but now you can’t even get access to the facts that you need be able to factcheck as well as you used to,” said Millican.
The outlook seems bleak, but campaigners say that does not make the problems insurmountable.
One answer is to invest in independent, non-partisan research. A prime purpose would be to increase media literacy among young people, who primarily get news from platforms such as TikTok which can be subject to disinformation tools such as AI-manipulated videos. The aim is to teach consumers how to spot doctored footage.
“Media literacy is extremely important and something that should be invested in and taught at a young age,” said Millican.
Another solution is the development of “pre-buttal” strategies to inoculate the public against disinformation, in effect getting the truth out first.
Media Matters for America and Common Cause used this approach during last year’s presidential election, partly by producing videos designed to counter anticipated false narratives surrounding voting procedures in certain areas.
Also important, said Shalini Agarwal, special counsel at Protect Democracy, is calling out the demonisation of vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, as soon as it happens.
A crucial role is played by media, even as Trump intensifies his assault on journalists as “fake news” and tries to exclude certain established outlets from press briefings.
“It’s really important when there are opportunities for one-on-one briefings and there are multiple reporters,” Agarwal said. “Part of it is a sense of collective action. Often, whoever is speaking at the podium won’t give a straightforward answer or gives a false answer and then tries to move on – it’s incumbent when that happens for other reporters to jump in and say: ‘Wait. What about what the other reporter asked?’”
Millican has two pieces of advice for Britain and other European countries hoping to arm themselves against any coming authoritarian onslaught: fortify the media and preserve legislation designed to combat disinformation and illegal content online – represented by the online safety act in Britain and the digital safety act in the EU.
“The first thing that’s going to happen in these authoritarian takeovers is they’re going to try to silence and take over the media and information landscape,” she said. “Any efforts to rein in hate speech or misinformation on platforms will be seen as tantamount to suppression of conservative thought or free speech.
“I can’t stress enough trying to buffer the pollution of your information ecosystem as much as possible. One of the first things that they’re going to do is just take down any barriers they can.”
