In his posthumous book “Apology of History, or the Office of the Historian”, published in 1949, Marc Bloch drew the attention of historians to the care they should have with sources, even more so in view of the recurrence of lies in the construction of interpretations about reality. In this aspect, the lie can be a conspiracy theory spread by the masses or a creation of the State to adjust History to the designs of the dominant elite. According to Marc Bloch, “In place of brutal counter-truth, there is grim manipulation: interpolations in authentic documents; in the narration, additions to a silly true background, invented details. [It is interpolated, generally, out of interest. It is often added for decoration. The ravages that a fallacious aesthetic wrought on ancient or medieval historiography were frequently denounced. Its share is perhaps not much smaller in our press.”

Another historian, Eric Hobsbawm, edited a book entitled “The Invention of Traditions”, in which he claims attention to the process of reconstructing the past in order to give coherence to the perceptions of the State and society about their historical construction and differentiation regarding other peoples and societies. This can be seen in the idealization of the 1950s in the United States as the “Golden Years”, marked by peace and prosperity, as a contrast to the troubled 1960s, marked by the counterculture — a new protagonism of youth and resistance to the War of Vietnam. However, unlike idealizations, the 1950s were quite troubled, as shown by beatnik literature, McCarthyism and the racial tensions that exploded with the fight against racial segregation. Even so, the Trumpist extreme right seeks to rescue this supposedly glorious past to mobilize a portion of the white population that is nostalgic to those “golden” years. In contrast, ethnic minority groups today draw attention to the structural negative aspects of US society and seek to influence culture with a view to reaffirming the historical perspective of marginalized segments.

We draw attention to the role of lies in history to reflect on the current process of spreading “fake news”. As we have seen, lying and manipulation are ancient phenomena. In the 20th century, they gained greater dimension with the mass press, when the major newspapers and news agencies enhanced the political and social narratives that were convenient for the political establishment. Two movies portray this phenomenon well: “Ace of Hole”, from 1951, directed by Billy Wilde and starring Kirk Douglas, and the Italian “Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina”, from 1972, directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Gian Maria Volonte. The first movie shows the manipulation of the press in the context of an accident in an abandoned mine, while the second deals with the manipulation of a far-right newspaper in order to influence the general elections in the country. Nowadays, the problem of lies with a political purpose has gained a new dimension due to the expansion of social media and the segmentation of users and content through Artificial Intelligence. The power of these new tools was seen in the BREXIT referendum, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and the election of Bolsonaro in 2018.

In light of the ancient and influential root of fake news, an Ohio State University study concluded that fake news played a significant role in reducing support for Hillary Clinton on Election Day. The analysis argues that about 4% of supporters of President Barack Obama in 2012 were dissuaded from voting for Clinton in 2016 because they believed in fake news. Regarding the election of Trump, the director of Media and Migration laboratory at the University of Central Florida, Chrysalis Wright, stated that before the 2016 elections, the 20 most accessed fake news had more engagement than their true versions. Wright explains that the basis of fake news is the choice of controversial topics that divide society and are the subject of intense debates in society, such as gun ownership, race relations, immigration issues, with the aim of dividing the population. Later, in 2021, the force of fake news was such that it put American democracy in check with the invasion of the Capitol, on January 6, instigated by Donald Trump on social media.

In Latin territory, the concern with fake news in Brazil in 2018 and its context of presidential elections, in which Jair Bolsonaro was running, was alarming. The Brazilian politician reproduced and commented on a good part of Trump's speeches, including the contradictory hostility to categorizing news as false. At the time, the main opposition party, PT, sent an accusation to the Superior Electoral Court against false information that was being disseminated about the candidate Fernando Haddad - according to studies by the organization Avaaz, 89.77% of Bolsonaro's voters believed that the news was true. In this, the links between the extreme right groups in Brazil with the trumpet strategist, Steve Bannon, and with consultancy agencies for the manipulation of algorithms, such as Cambridge Analytica, became evident.

Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that Brazil is not the only country in America affected by the wave of disinformation: Latin America as a whole is facing this problem, whose matrix is the fair-right of the United States. An example was Chile, in 2022, in the context of the defeat of the new constitutional text, attributed to the massive disinformation campaign on social media.

There is a specific aspect to be considered in the United States, which is the manipulation of Latino/Hispanic voters through fake news in Spanish. According to The Washington Post, videos and news in Spanish that called Joe Biden a communist circulated frequently before the 2020 US presidential election. A recent report by the data company Catalist revealed that the number of Latinos whose votes were in the Republican party increased by 31% from 2016 to 2020, representing a tenth of the electorate. After the election, part of the media in Spanish strongly disseminated the lie that Biden stole the election — the type of fake news that, after the 2022 elections and the victory of candidate Lula, also circulates in Brazil —, in addition to sharing, on the height of the pandemic, lies saying coronavirus vaccines were dangerous.

Let’s compare some fake news that circulated in the United States with those seen in Latin America.

Elections and Democracy

After the 2020 election defeat, Donald Trump made allegations of vote counting fraud. However, numerous recounts, reviews, and audits have asserted that the results of the 2020 presidential election are legitimate.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, Bolsonaro voters alleged fraud in the 2022 elections after the candidate's defeat, but both the Superior Electoral Court and the Ministry of Defense denied any contradiction. A 63-page document released by the Defense proved the data from the ballot papers printed at the end of the voting match the data released by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

Vaccination and COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, various false information about vaccination have been seen. In the United States, anti-vaccine organizations were spreading a misleading military study in which it was claimed that flu vaccines increase the risk of contracting COVID-19. The study does not say so, and the Military Health System advised people to get vaccinated against flu. In Brazil, the same false news was disseminated using an article from 2017, prior to the Coronavirus, whose purpose was not even to talk about complications from the Influenza vaccine.

Moreover, panic was stimulated by associating causes of death with the Coronavirus. As an example, posts alleged that one American singer died from the COVID-19 vaccine, when, in fact, he received the second dose more than a year before his death and his agent stated that this "was not related in any way" to the vaccine. In Latin territory, denialists linked the death of six Canadian doctors to the application of the vaccine, however, three of them died of cancer and, despite what happened to the other three not having been disclosed, families denied this erroneous relation of things.

Communist threat

As mentioned earlier, one technique for weakening the opposition that has proven effective is the spread of fake news. Among these are conservative rumors of “communist threats” in the US. However, researchers have dismissed a conservative commentator's assertion that “foreign communists have controlled major institutions of American life for decades”; meanwhile in Brazil, it has been proven that speeches by candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were taken out of context to spread rumors that he wants to establish a communist regime in Brazil.

Climate changes

In recent years, several publications have linked the agenda of climate change to communism, as if it was “a way for communist organizations to profit or promote themselves”. However, several scientific studies show that associating the political agenda is spreading false information, since global warming is not even recent: NASA has proved Earth's temperature has increased by 1.18°C since 1800 and the cause is human intervention — especially the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is also possible to understand the increases and the agents by the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the last report shows changes since 1980.

Trying to stem the wave of fake news

The growth of the fake news network is still worrisome in the US, continuing to be mapped, nonetheless an analysis by the Pew Research Center showed that Latinos use of social media, apps and other digital platforms has increased more than that of the general US population, with Colombia being the second largest social media audience, Brazil being the third largest and Mexico and Argentina standing among the top 10. Such data reveal why studies on this phenomenon in Latin America have become more urgent and the measures against fake news have intensified.

The United States has platforms like FactCheck to help the population, including the large Latino portion of the country, since most of its pages are translated into Spanish. And, since much news in English is translated and spread to other countries (and vice versa), Facebook and Google joined forces to create and maintain Comprova.

As Facebook was identified as the platform where false news spreads faster, it began to use third-party fact-checking organizations to combat misinformation at a faster pace, in addition to facilitating the reporting of false news by users — which are signposted to the public as false after verification. Instagram, when identifying a publication as false, removes it from the main page and hides the hashtags used, as well as signals from the public and the author, offering information on where to verify the facts.

On the contrary, it is worth highlighting the positions of the new owner of the Twitter network, Elon Musk, who has already declared that he is in favor of suppressing any measures that may control the flow of information on the platform, including – or mainly – fake news.

Several other platforms have also taken measures against fake news, but researchers argue that promoting critical thinking and digital literacy is the only plausible long-term solution to this disinformation dilemma in Latin America and the world. In order to help fight this phenomenon of disinformation, and contribute to society’s digital literacy, each individual can play their role in this fight by denouncing fake news and sharing the true sources, encouraging the critical analysis of each piece of information received.