The Post-Truthist Lens: Forensic literacy, reality-decay, and political practice in mid-twentieth-century fiction

This article proposes a novel critical framework, the ‘Post-Truthist’ lens, to diagnose the systemic erosion of objective reality within dystopian narratives and its implications for contemporary political practice. While post-truth is often treated as a contemporary phenomenon, this research argues that its structural precursors are embedded in mid-twentieth-century fiction. By synthesizing post-positivist methodology with Neo-Marxist and New Historicist critiques, the study provides a comparative, data-driven analysis of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here (1935), George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962). Utilizing a quantitative frequency-density formula, the article identifies a transition from the ‘pre-industrial’ rhetorical manipulation of the 1930s to the industrialized lexical erasure of the later 20th century. This 'Truth-Decay Index' serves as a foundation for forensic literacy: a method of reading that treats the text as a site of political intervention. The findings suggest that reality decay is not merely a narrative device but an architectural strategy of power. Ultimately, the article translates these literary mechanics into actionable diagnostics, termed ‘Clarity Protocols,’ offering a practical toolkit for identifying and resisting post-truth structures in both literary and civic spheres. This intervention challenges established definitions of the political by centering the preservation of epistemological clarity as a fundamental act of resistance.