Halbwahrheiten

Half-truths are among the most striking and powerful tools of the so-called post-factual political discourse – a discourse that oscillates between relativism and cynicism, where the transformation of facts into mere opinions is as typical as the pursuit of attention and the demonstration of authoritarian power. Whether it's fake news, conspiracy theories, or populist propaganda: all of them rely on half-truths and their manipulation of reality. In her book, Nicola Gess connects the concept of half-truth with ideology and formulates a theory of half-truth as a narrative microform that operates not on the binary code of true/false, but rather on credible/incredible. Using the examples of the fallen journalist Claas Relotius, conspiracy theorist Ken Jebsen, and writer Uwe Tellkamp, she examines how a rhetoric of half-truths works and why it can be better addressed with a fiction check rather than a fact check.