Trumpspeak treats belief and usefulness as substitutes for factual truth

Evidence

In Trumpspeak, belief is a signal of truth. If his supporters believe him, then what Trump is saying must be true. Conversely, if his detractors disbelieve him, this too is evidence that what he is saying must be true. … Finally, Trumpspeak is transactional. It places no independent value on truth. The value of speech is to be measured exclusively in terms of its effects. If a statement gets me closer to my goal, then it is valuable; if it does not, it is worthless. Valuable statements, then, are true by virtue of the fact that they advance my interests. Statements that fail to do so are worthless and thus false. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 342

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ideologues pair extreme doubt toward disfavored facts with total credulity toward favored ones — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 48; Nihilism is value-unmooring, not value-absence, dissolving truth and fake news distinctions — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 657; Prediction-style claims immunize propaganda from present-tense refutation. (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Discourse exceeds ideology by refusing the true-false distinction about facts #expands (0.85)
• Nihilism is value-unmooring, not value-absence, dissolving truth and fake news distinctions #expands (0.82) — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 657
• Founding myths substitute fabricated narrative for genuine history to serve ruling classes #exemplifies (0.78)
• Reputation substitutes for truth in scientific and cognitive contexts #exemplifies (0.77)
• Prediction-style claims immunize propaganda from present-tense refutation. #exemplifies (0.75)
• Propagandists need not fake results, only manipulate how results are shared #complicates (0.75) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 60
• The phrase fake news is ascribed to whichever outlet is politically opposed #expands (0.72) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 723
• Ideology converts abstract theories into comprehensive factual lies believed as sacred truths #exemplifies (0.72)
• Journalism’s truth-falsehood distinction directly opposes platforms’ radical indifference to content #responds-to (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1610