The Truth Sellers: Truth-Telling and Denialist Seduction in the Public Scene as a Problem for Journalism and History (2010-2020)

Abstract

This article analyzes the emergence of the new wave of negationism in the 2010s, starting from a reflection on models of veridiction in the contemporary public scene. It argues that we live in a crisis of these traditional models that were established as a technology of truth, called by Michel de Foucault “knowledge truth” or demonstrative truth. To this end, it explains what the modes of veridiction presented by the author are and how they produce regimes of truth. It seeks to present journalism and history in their modes of truth-telling, and how they have been impacted by the effects of negation. In the end, it takes as an example of a symptom of this process the denial of the Brazilian military dictatorship.