‘Nothing is true, everyone lies’

How it works

Old-fashioned propaganda wanted you to believe a story. A lot of modern propaganda wants something cheaper: it wants you to believe nothing. If all media lie, then the evidence against a powerful liar is “just another narrative”, a fact-check is “just the other side’s propaganda”, and the sensible response to any news is a shrug. The shrug is the product. A population that has stopped checking does not get in the way.

The mechanism is contradiction at volume. When flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, Russian state media offered a Ukrainian fighter jet, a Ukrainian missile, a CIA plot and a plane full of corpses loaded in Amsterdam, within weeks, and with no attempt to reconcile them. You were not meant to pick one. You were meant to conclude that the truth is unknowable, even as investigators were establishing it. RAND’s researchers named the model in 2016: the firehose of falsehood: many channels, high volume, fast, repetitive, and with no commitment to consistency. Peter Pomerantsev, who worked inside Russian television in the 2000s, described the culture behind it in his 2014 book Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: a media system built not to convince but to disorient. Hannah Arendt had seen the same thing seventy years earlier. The ideal subject of a dictatorship, she wrote, is not the true believer but the person for whom the difference between true and false no longer exists.

Here is why “all media lie” always benefits the biggest liar. If nothing can be checked, the loudest voice wins, and the loudest voice is whoever owns the most channels. The slogan sounds like rebellion against power. It is the opposite: it takes away the one tool the powerless have, which is checking. It also targets a particular person: not the fanatic, but the tired one. After a few real scandals, “I don’t trust anyone any more” feels earned. That mood is what the narrative is waiting for.

Example

@truth_is_dead, 3h Every paper lies, every channel lies, the fact-checkers are paid by the same people. I believe nothing any more, and honestly I’m smarter for it.

@anna_sorts, 2h If everyone lies equally, nothing can ever be found out, which is handy for whoever lies most. One of those papers printed a correction last week with its own name on it. The channel you watch has never printed one. Not all lies are the same size.

Notice the last phrase of the first post: I’m smarter for it. Cynicism arrives dressed as intelligence. Notice also that the post proposes nothing: no source to check, no claim to test. Its only recommendation is to stop.

Why it works on you

• It feels like wisdom. Trusting nothing looks like having been fooled by nothing. But “both sides are the same” is a judgement too, and usually a wrong one (see false balance).
• It is restful. Checking takes effort; “everyone lies” is a permission slip to stop. On a bad day the permission is very welcome (see information overload).
• It has a true core. Newspapers do get things wrong and governments do spin. Every real scandal is a hook for the story that there is nothing but scandal. See whataboutism for the “and what about your media?” reflex.

What to do

When someone does it to you: separate the sceptic from the cynic. A sceptic asks for evidence and changes their mind when it arrives; a cynic refuses evidence in advance. Ask for one specific lie, and then compare how different sources handled it. Did anyone print a correction with their name on it? That is how you measure a source, not by its category.

When you catch yourself doing it: when you say “they all lie”, ask who that helps. If the answer is “whoever has the biggest megaphone”, you have been recruited without a salary.

In a comment section: do not defend “the media”. It is not one thing, and nobody believes the defence. Defend the method instead: sources, corrections, lateral reading. The method is what the narrative is trying to take away.

Don’t confuse it with

• Healthy scepticism: distrusting a specific claim until you see evidence, and then accepting it. The second half is the part cynicism drops.
• Media criticism: a specific outlet got a specific thing wrong. That is legitimate, useful, and the opposite of “everyone lies”.