The phrase alternative facts went viral last Sunday, 22 January, when the campaign manager and special adviser to President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway (yes, the woman who wore the revolutionary red, white, and blue colour-blocked wool coat, that eventually appeared to be from a British-themed collection, but yeah, those are again alternative facts) in a conversation with NBC’s host Chuck Todd discussed the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration.
While experts reported the size of the crowds far smaller than those attending the last inauguration of Barak Obama in 2009, the White House press secretary commented it as: “the largest audience ever”.
Conway’s reply to the conflicting data came as: “You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.”
Media immediately reacted to Conway’s use of the phrase ‘alternative facts’, calling it a ‘George Orwell phrase’, comparing it to the ‘Newspeak’ language that inverted meanings of actual facts in order the government to control its residents in Orwell’s 1984, along with his ‘doublespeak’ idea of using carefully selected facts designed to mislead; and the corresponding reply of the ‘doublethink’ concept, describing the ability to believe in two conflicting facts at the same time.
And when Trump said that the size of his inauguration audience: “looked like a million, million and a half people,” spectators turned back to Orwells’ comment on the concept of facts in his Looking Back on the Spanish War: “If the Leader says …. that two and two are five – well two and two are five”.
In the light of the above-mentioned true or false facts, the sales of Orwell’s 1984 increased by more than 10,000 percent since the inauguration day; and alternative facts topped the trending terms’ charts.
And while the White House press secretary admitted the inaccuracy of his statement, been misled by statistics given to him, he stood by his claim that Trump’s inauguration was the most-viewed ever, however, stating that he counted the audience, including in-person, television and online viewership.
That might sound like an alternative fact, but is, nevertheless, a fact. So what are alternative facts after all? Are they lies, exaggerated truths, or simply another point of view?
The adjective alternative, originates from the Medieval Latin alternativus (do one thing and then another, do by turns), to enter the English language, circa 1550s, with the general meaning of ‘offering one or the other of two, where the acceptance of one implies the rejection of the other’.
And the noun fact comes from the Latin factum (deed, action, event), and in post-classical Latin also: ‘a thing that has really occurred or is actually the case, something known to be true’. The term entered the English language circa 1420s, through French, and earlier spellings of fait and feat – to denote ‘deeds and actions.’
When a fact stands for a true event or an actually existing deed, then accepting the existence of an alternative fact should literally mean that we reject the truth.
And after the Oxford English Dictionary named ‘post-truth’ its 2016 International Word of the Year, are we now entering the year of the alternative facts?
