Post-truth tactics first matured in right-wing science denial campaigns

Evidence

In the past two decades’ explosion of science denial on topics like climate change, vaccines, and evolution, we see the birth of tactics that are now being used for post-truth. Our built-in cognitive biases, academic hair-splitting on questions about truth, and exploitation of the media have already had a prior life in the right wing’s attacks on science. It’s just that the battle field now encompasses all of factual reality. Before it was a dispute over a disfavored scientific theory; now it is over a photo from the US Park Service or a videotape from CNN. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 52

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the ‘manufacturing doubt’ playbook literature and the encroachment of denial tactics beyond science into general politics. — connects to: The Sokal hoax backfired by publicizing postmodernist ideas to right-wing readers — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 263; Science denial pioneered tactics now applied across all factual reality; The tobacco industry invented science denial as public-relations strategy — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 63 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: tracing the migration of denialist tactics from tobacco/climate to general political fact — a genealogy piece.

Broader Connections

• Science denial pioneered tactics now applied across all factual reality #expands (0.85)
• The tobacco industry invented science denial as public-relations strategy #qualifies (0.80) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 63
• Neoliberalism’s scientific framing made knowledge and truth political questions #complicates (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 54