A term first used by Serbian-American playwright Steve Teisch in The Nation magazine in 1992. He was referring to the Iran Contra scandal and other events in which the public was misled, saying that, "We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."[^1] In 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries declared it to be its word of the year. It defined "post-truth" as meaning a state of affairs in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief. # Examples 1. In 2007, an email went out saying that a UK school removed the Holocaust from its curriculum because it offended Muslims. This was cited as an example of the fear that was gripping the world, and that Holocaust denial had won a victory in the UK. It urged readers to pass it on, to reach its aim of 40 million viewers. It was later found out that the story was false. Only a single school among tens of thousands had removed the Holocaust from its curriculum, and it was for a different reason. The Holocaust Denial Trust of Britain issued a corrective statement, but it did not spread as virally as the first email. [^1]: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/post-truth-and-its-consequences-what-a-25-year-old-essay-tells-us-about-the-current-moment/ --- Source: [[Morality]]