“ Alternative Facts ” and “ Fake News ” : Cultural Studies ’ Illegitimate Brainchildren †

Looking at the state of the Humanities today, a number of the demands by Cultural Studies theorists, from Birmingham to Chapel Hill have been met. In the western world, people—even outside academia—tend to accept that truth is not absolute, that culture is a construct and many have become aware that there is a continuous struggle for hegemony in discourse. Add to that that Stuart Hall’s vision of a world in which the media finally is a free for all who want to make themselves heard has come true. The internet has made it much harder to exclude marginalized communities. This finding is not altogether wrong, as the internet was central to mobilizing protest in e.g., the Arab Spring revolt. Yet discourse has not become more rational. What we also see is a triumphant return of rightwing movements, which—to reference Rainer Zimmermann—engage in “savage thought” on and through the net. And while I concur with him that their dominant discourse is irrational and abandons facticity, I am arguing that all this is directly related to the situation of the Humanities. The arguments of the latest wave of right-wing intellectuals show an embarrassing kinship with those of the left-wing Cultural Studies Project. White supremacy ideologue Richard Spencer (a former student under Marcuse disciple Paul Gottfried), e.g., reconciles, with ease, liberal ideas of identity politics with racism. But what may be more instructive will be a discussion of two phenomena that the right loves to exploit in their struggle for hegemony: “alternative facts” and “fake news”. Although lies and canards are as old as journalism itself, it will become apparent that they have evolved into new breeds in the digital age. They also are cultural studies’ illegitimate brainchildren. The dynamics of the internet in combination with the belief in constructivism is proving to be toxic. My presentation will look at the “alternative facts” and “fake news” of the alt-right in the USA and show how their creators make use of postulates and practices more commonly associated with cultural studies (and postmodernist thought).


Introduction
Among the oddities of Donald Trump's first weeks in office, the inauguration stands out. The spectator turnout was respectable, but the event attracted less of a crowd than it did in 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in. Not only media critical of Trump delivered the images; but the photos highlighted the lack of Trump's popularity. The U.S. National Park Service replicated the 2009 perspective when they took a picture of the inauguration literally from a bird's eye's (that is an aereal) view. Newspapers then juxtaposed it with the visual testimony from 2017 1 . Anyone less than supportive of Trump would be able to gloat over the stark contrast 2 . The two photos side by side went viral on the net.
The Trump administration reacted promptly. Trump himself declared that from his point of view, the size of the crowd looked like "a million, million and a half people", the "biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches" 3 . Which it may have -and so his impression is, due to his naturally restricted point of view, fair enough. Yet Trump did not let the issue 1 Here are the photos that show Obama's inauguration crowd was bigger than Trump's. Washington Post. 7 March, 2017. Available online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/ 2017/03/06/here-are-thephotos-that-show-obamas-inauguration-crowd-was-bigger-than-trumps/?utm_term =.2e2e5c4a28e7. Photos: National Park Service; Betsy Klein. Comparing Donald Trump and Barack Obama's inaugural crowd sizes, in: CNN, 21 January, 2017 (https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/donald-trumpbarack-obamainaugurationcrowd-size/index.html) (accessed 26.2.2018).
2 Apart from the comments sections below articles in the printing press, the inauguration's crowd size became a staple feature of comedians, from Stephen Colbert to the cast of Saturday Night Live in late January, 2017. The term "alternative facts" was born (which, incidentally, was awarded un-word of the year 2017 in Germany).
Lying politicians, and lying administrators, as well as lying journalists are not new phenomena. Citizens around the world have also had to put up with a wide range of excuses and prevarications by public officials in the media when the latter are confronted with their own lies. What continues to startle the public with this administration, however, is the shamelessness of Trump and his staff, as well as the self-righteous indignation when challenged by the press, even when challenged with factual evidence. I am arguing that alternative facts (as well as fake news) are a new trend for which two developments mostly are responsible: The digital age, of course, but maybe even more so an academia where the most radical postmodernist dogmas, embedded in cultural studies, have made it into the mainstream outside the academy. And this goes particularly for the USA.

Discussion
My first claim -that ideas like alternative facts and fake news come into being and thrive in the age of the internet -may be more immediately apparent. With social media, discourse in the Foucauldian sense has become both over-regulated and completely unregulated -overregulated, because, as any member of a special interest Facebook group knows, administrators will ban those who do not subscribe to the cause of the group, even in non-political groups. Pro-eating disorder and pro-suicide communities shall serve as an example here: Made up of members who celebrate their illness and encourage each other to stay that way, the groups do not allow doubts about this self-destructive mission 6 . Members or visitors who break the taboo and write "what is prohibited" (again in the Foucauldian sense) 7 are excluded from the discourse. "What is prohibited" is then very narrowly proscribed.
On the other hand, the fact that such groups legally exist, and we are not even talking about sites on the Dark Net, shows that the traditional order of discourse is no longer in place. Here (mental) illness, traditionally not in a position of discourse hegemony 8 , finds open channels to assert its power of "expertise" and "truth" (i.e. that staying ill or ending one's life is a sign of strength), and thus to rule over its own definition of normalcy. Group members are able to avoid critical questioning and live in what scholars call an echo-chamber. The algorithms of social media corporations take care of the rest: Based on the browsing history and the Likes awarded, the machine will steer the user to click on like-minded sites -this has come to be known as a filter bubble. The erosion of the three exclusions that used to participate in the regulation of the discourse also holds for forums of the political, religious, or sexual fringes. This is one reason why sites like the right-wing extremist Breitbart News, the masculinist Return of the Kings, and the anti-science Vaccine Resistance Movement thrive.
One could argue that neither Trump's comments, nor Spicer's statement, nor Conway's defense were online activities. However, it looks like the unlimited opportunity to publish, find thousands of followers, and make critics invisible so that any narrative stays unchallenged are increasingly being taken for granted. This may also explain the irritation of new-media savvy Trump, as well as his staff when journalists question them. There is indignation at not being to control the discourse. On the web by the way, the echo-chamber still worked as usual. Parts of the internet community were willing to believe that Conway was a victim of manipulative and "fake journalists" and brave enough to tackle this "fake" journalism that is critical of Donald Trump 9 .
One cannot entirely blame them. There is no news story without bias, as countless studies have demonstrated. Journalists have at times been less than ethical 10 . And in the digital age, even amateurs can photoshop images and 'rip' interviews.
But what might have surprised the public is that Spicer and Conway did not dismiss the aerial photograph as fake. It was apparent for everyone that the image depicted fewer people at Trump's inauguration. Moreover, fact checking has become routine. Yet, Conway defends Spicer's press statement which claimed Trump's crowd had been bigger, and then coins the term "alternative facts." She does not seem to be perturbed by the journalists' reactions. Chuck Todd, on NBC starts reasoning with her, and loses the argument; CNN's anchor-man Anderson Cooper bursts out laughing with Conway patiently waiting and declaring that she is "bigger than that" 11 .
Here Trump's staff are not safely inside their echo chamber. But they appear to have the dogmas of critical theory and cultural studies on their side. After all, Jean Francois Lyotard called for "incredulity towards metanarratives" 12 , such as "truth" and "objectivity". What scholars in the Humanities are starting to realise is that within the past decades Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham stated that meaning "does not inhere in things. It is constructed, produced" 14 , he meant that scholars should look at discourse and power relations in culture. Hall demanded that the signifying practices of, for instance, minorities be no longer ignored; that the marginalised be taken seriously in the assertion of their identities etc. Therefore, their narratives should be declared as equally valid as those dominating the discourse. In the USA, culture was likewise seen as containing "a number of perpetually competing stories, whose effectiveness depends not so much on an appeal to an independent standard of judgement, as upon their appeal to the communities in which they circulate" 15 .
I am not saying that Conway and Spicer are on intimate footing with the theories of cultural studies, although Steve Bannon (who also was in Trump's team) probably is. But nowhere else but in the US do the mediafrom the commentators of the New York Times to Hollywood to comedians on National TV -juggle so competently with terms like 'narrative', 'myth', 'framing', 'to negotiate meaning', and the ideas behind them. It also appears to have become commonplace to start debate from constructivism, often radical constructivism. Cultural Studies has long left the academy and settled comfortably in popular culture, a point to which I will return shortly. In order to understand why facts can have alternatives, one needs to look to the academic scene again.
There, critical theory became even more radical. In 1991, the renowned journal Critical Inquiry dedicated an entire volume to the topic of constructivism in letters and science and began to question the absoluteness and universality of such ideas as "fact", "evidence", and "proof" 16 . Ian McEw-an satirized the deplorable development in his novel Solar. In one chapter a feminist professor of Science Studies argues that genes are "no objective entities" but "entirely manufactured by (the scientists') hypotheses, their creativity, and by their instrumentation... Outside those networks [the gene] did not exist". Genetics itself is dismissed as "crude objectivism by which [men] seek to maintain and advance the social dominance of the white male elite" 17 . Of course, Solar is fiction, and the parts read like satire on the excesses in academia. What is somewhat disconcerting, however, is that McEwan did not exaggerate. From Shay Akil McLean, blogger and PhD candidates in postcolonial studies to postmodern philosophers like Laurie Calhoun, research is trying to deconstruct exact science and expose it as oppressive ideology. McLean is sure that:

"[T]o think there are universal truths," […], "perpetuates a particular kind of able bodied white cisgender male logic, a world where everything is measured in comparison to them as the ideal type of human that everyone else aberrates from" 18 .
Calhoun goes a step further. She redefines the building blocks of scientific methodology as a contemporary form of magical thinking. A colleague recalls a discussion: When I had occasion to ask her whether or not it was a fact that giraffes are taller than ants, she replied that it was not a fact, but rather an article of religious faith in our culture 19 .
Politically, the two scholars quoted above are firmly located on the liberal left. Laurie Calhoun, for instance, is known for her research in Peace Studies where she challenges the idea of a "just war" 20 . It is not hard to see, however, why authoritarians and right wing populists are usurping the toolkit of such postmodernist thought. Constructivism becomes a weapon, served on a silver platter by the liberal left. The New Right, or alt-Right in the US -large parts of which are backing Trump -is discovering Cultural Studies and calling it 'Metapolitics from the Right'. Quoting Marx, Gramsci and Foucault, they are finding that the war for domination is "about affecting and shaping people's thoughts, worldviews, and the very concepts which they use to make sense of and define the world around them" 21 . What comes in especially handy is the erosion of rational discourse. If reality becomes so arbitrary that facts, evidence and logic should be discarded because they are merely political and ideological, then it follows that there are "alternative facts". Sensory perception has lost any value in argument. It, too, has become an article of ideology. Seeing a larger crowd at Trump's inauguration and negating one's cognitive dissonance, when faced with visual evidence, turns into a sign of loyalty to Trump. Arguing on the basis of alternative facts and following the (right) fake news will naturally lead to very different "concepts which people use to make sense of the world around them" (to quote Friberg again), inside and outside the digital echochambers.
What distinguishes today's and yesterday's use of lies and fake news, however, is less apparent. We know dictatorships that have successfully brainwashed their populations. Hitler's and Stalin's propaganda ministries stand out. History was rewritten, un-persons retouched out of photographs.
Orwell satirized even the idea of reality as a construction of the Party in his novel 1984; so that idea must have been around in the mid-20 th century: Oceania's 1984 and the world of 2017 with its "alternative facts" both share epistemological idealism in the broadest sense. However, America in 2017 is actually more absurd than Orwell's world, or the world of 20 th century totalitarian regimes. With the internet available to all, and users themselves playing Big Brother, the dissemination of information is not controlled by any Inner Party. Users turn into pseudo-experts in all areas, doubting real expertise -ultimately this serves to delegitimize authorities and the realities they have created. As recent studies have found, people with strong opinions tend not to be swayed by facts and evidence, but instead cling to their misconceptions (the anti-vaccination movement is a case in point here) and embrace alternative facts all the more willingly 23 . Critical theory which has seeped into popular culture in a vulgarized version again serves as ammunition.
Excesses in the cultural studies have indeed undermined the power of rational argument as such. If there is nothing but conflicting narratives that battle for discourse hegemony, if the irrational is as valid as the rational, if there is nothing more important than identity and the politics of identity, then each group can make use of this moral as well as epistemological relativity. In that respect, alternative news and fake news are brainchildren of cultural studies. But ultimately, I will still call alternative facts and fake news illegitimate brainchildren. It would be naïve to go back to universalism, monoperspectives and closed systems of thought in the Humanities. Cultural Studies has brought about valuable findings: the realisation that Enlightenment values have a dark side to them; that seemingly objective discourses are biased and disenfranchising communities, and that downplaying difference will hinder progress. Postcolonial cultures and women have profited immensely -with very material consequences. Feminist critique, for in-23 Sandra Gorman, Jack Gorman, Denying to the Grave. Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us, Oxford 2016. stance, gave rise to a new way of looking at medicine, both from a doctor's and from a researcher's perspectives, with more appropriate drugs and treatment for female patients. Postcolonial thought effected a positive change in development cooperation. And as Cultural Studies is part and parcel of neighbouring disciplines, such as Media Studies, its postulates, rhetorics, and theories have successfully spread to the general public through pop-culture again. There is a certain cross-fertilisation between cultural studies and popular culture.

Conclusion
I do not doubt that cultural studies will continue to yield valuable results. But it is at a crossroads. Its benefit lies in its eclecticism -the fact that it was rooted firmly in the Humanities where it refused to submit to any one ideology. The danger with the more radical protagonists of Cultural Studies is their tendency to leave the Humanities and to create ideology with orthodoxies governing. Often, the idea of radical constructivism was distorted in the first place. Whereas constructivists concede that constructs of reality cannot be arbitrary, because they are rooted in experience of the physical world and therefore based on viability 24 , scholars on the fringe of critical theory made a mockery of themselves by composing or passing papers for publication that questioned the laws of nature 25 . The meaningful study of cultures also accepted certain tried and tested methods of hermeneutics. When logic or the act of reasoning are questioned, Cultural Studies has subverted itself, because it will become faith-based. It will cater to esoterics (political or religious) and provide them with the justification for alternative facts and fake news.