In recent years, rapid innovations in generative AI and social media technologies have enabled fake news to explode across our social media accounts and TV screens. Post truth political content now routinely manipulates our realities, microtargeting us, exploiting our desires and turning our fears against us. It is an age where politics run on emotion, not cognition, and where the democratisation of disinformation has spawned a whole new global industry of disinformation entrepreneurs. It has amplified polarisation, using hate, anger and fear as its oxygen.
Fake news continues to bolster levels of right-wing populism not seen since the 1930's. If left unchallenged, it will continue to place its jackboot ever harder against the upturned face of democracy. Post-Truth Politics: A Brave New World? empowers voters to fight back. It provides, for the first time, a complete view of the global disinformation ecosystem: who is targeting us, how we are microtargeted, and which evolutionary, technological, marketing, neurological and military approaches are being used to manipulate us. This non-partisan book will resonate with all supporters of democracy (conservative, liberal, centrist), alongside academics in fields as diverse as media studies, sociology, politics, marketing, military studies and creative writing.
Preface 1. Introduction 2. From Fact, to Post-Truth, to Fiction 3. From Marketing to Maskirovka 4. Pulling Back the Curtain 5. The Populist Playbook 6. Strengthening the Democratic Voice 7. Interview Series
Biography
Elesa Zehndorfer, PhD is a multi-award-winning writer and author of Leadership: Performance Beyond Expectations (2022), political thriller Upload (Blackheath Publishing 2022), Evolution, Politics & Charisma: Why Do Populists Win (Routledge, 2019), Emotional & Irrational Investing: Causes & Solutions (Routledge, 2017), Charismatic Leadership: The Role of Charisma in the Global Financial Crisis (2016) and Leadership: A Critical Introduction (2014). Zehndorfer is also a founding partner of consulting firm Lakeside Partners GmbH, eMBA lecturer, member of the board of advisors to The Paddy Ashdown Policy Research Forum and manager of the Psychology today blog ‘Political Animals and Animal Spirits’.
In recent years, post truth politics has played a major role in escalating populism to levels not seen since the late 1930's. Zehndorfer's Post Truth Politics: A Brave New World? offers a timely, crucial and complex explanatory analysis on this rapidly growing threat. It combines, for the first time, a big picture analysis of the disinformation industry, the role of populism, generative AI and information warfare in microtargeting and manipulating our realities.
By adopting a systems thinking approach, this book provides a much-needed deep, multidisciplinary analysis on the intersection of fields as diverse as biology, evolution, neuromarketing, the world of fiction and Soviet Maskirovka. A must read for any supporter of democracy who wishes to fight back against this most powerful of modern threats.
- Christopher Gleadle, CEO of the Paddy Ashdown Forum
