Nietzsche, Trump, and the Social Practices of Valuing Truth

Abstract

tHe slogans of soCial movements are often put forward as simple truths, so that advocacy has consisted in changing social conditions such that these new truth claims are accepted as true: that women’s rights are human rights, that black lives matter. Social movements critical of the political ascendance of Donald Trump, however, have been concerned not merely with this or that truth claim, but with the status—epistemological, social, and political—of truth itself. Those examining this post-truth moment have often turned to Friedrich Nietzsche, who for many is synonymous with the kind of postmodern conception of truth at the center of post-truth politics. However, while it is true that Nietzsche offers valuable resources for thinking about Trump and post-truth, this is not because Nietzsche gives up on truth but because he is prescient in realizing what is at stake in our esteem for it. Nietzsche’s investigation of our pursuit of truth shows neither that there is no truth, nor that truth is not valuable, but that the unconditional character of the value we attribute to truth raises the specter of nihilism. Trump is a harbinger of this nihilism because he so brazenly flaunts our shared social practices of valuing truth. Since Nietzsche was so vexed by the issues concerning truth, which are now presented by Trump, Nietzsche’s responses to these issues are a vital starting point in thinking through the challenges of the present political moment. While Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020, the election results hardly represented a damning indictment of Trumpism, and Trump, his children, or an acolyte may run in future elections. Trump-ism and the issues it raises about truth are here to stay. The argument of this paper proceeds in four parts. In Part 1, after defin-ing post-truth, I question the claims underpinning common connections between Nietzsche and post-truth, namely, that postmodernism brought about post-truth and that Nietzsche himself was postmodern. Although I