Stop Me If I Say Something Crazy: Disinformation and Dissent in the Post-Truth World

What do you do with disinformation when it’s an emergency, but you live in a democracy that supposedly values debate and dissent? More to the point, without dissent and debate, how do you know what’s disinformation and what isn’ t? Complex issues that should invite thoughtful, vigorous debate are instead instantly triaged into required and forbidden views. Dissenting voices get deplatformed, demonetized, and decertified. Even Senate hearings have been taken off YouTube. Goodbye hypotheses, data, forensic techniques, and peer review. Hello ＂ On Narrative＂ (with us, intelligent, good, sane) and ＂ Off Narrative＂ (against us, evil, stupid, mad). What is going on here? Do we have a disinformation crisis, or a censorship crisis? Stop Me If I Say Something Crazy: Disinformation and Dissent in the Post-Truth World playfully analyzes a few controversial issues featuring an official narrative so tightly woven into the common-sense fabric of society that dissent is branded as only for morons and lunatics. But is that really the case? What makes these issues analyzable is that they are based on science. We don’t need to be subject experts to know that science values things like transparency,

John Schoneboom is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and writer of nonfiction. He holds a PhD and an MA in Creative Writing, an MA in Science, Technology, and Public Policy, and a BA in Political Science. His artistic and research focus is on the interplay of dreamlife, delusion, propaganda, and reality. Schoneboom won the Artists’ Fellowship Award for playwriting from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Northern Writers’ Award for fiction. He is the author of the novels Fontoon (Dedalus Books) and The Day Aunt Gina Came to Town (Roundfire Books), and the nonfiction work Surrealpolitik: Surreality and the National Security State (Zer0 Books).