Fake News, Fake Science, and You

Media outlets and prominant intellectuals are rightfuly alarmed by the rising predominance of false and misleading news stories and social media posts. They are right to be alarmed, but they are wrong to suggest they were not complicite in the trend.

If cultural intellectuals, the people who make value statements about culture, can be described by one sweeping term, that term would be “relativism”.

For quite some time the cultural climate has been one of cultural relativism, the idea that all cultures are equal, and that has leaked into ideological relativism, the idea that all ideologies are equal, and that being certain of anything is the only true sign of ignorance.

There are reasons for such a stance, mostly based on all the failed ideologies of the past, but it is a failed stance, or a failure to stand for something. It lets the intellectual off the hook for the ideas they promote, and will not lead to better accountability for the ideas that are promoted.