As expert opinions are so heavily influenced by the media and the state, it becomes impossible for the individual to tell which information has been falsified.
The final three features of an integrated society, Debord argues, come about as a result of the merger between state and economy.
Generalised secrecy
Secrecy is “the most vital operation” of the spectacle (Debord, 1988, [2020]). Debord points out that a certain degree of secrecy is accepted, but that people are typically unaware of how pervasive this secrecy is. According to Debord, the public (or spectators, as he calls them) remains ignorant of the fact that their entire reality is based upon falsehoods.
Unanswerable lies
In the integrated spectacle, the false is so pervasive that the truth ceases to exist in almost all facets of life. As the spectacular society has emerged, historical knowledge and objective facts have been altered to such a degree that there is no stable frame of reference. As such, it becomes difficult for the spectator to even check lies, or suspected lies, of advertisers, the media, or politicians. Truth, as Debord sees it, “has been reduced to the status of pure hypothesis” (1988, [2020]).
Debord’s arguments become more evident as some writers argue that we are currently living in a post-truth society, evidenced by discussions surrounding “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and the Donald Trump presidency (2017–2021). For more on this, see Johan Farkas and Jannick Schou’s Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy (2019).
An eternal present
The continuous circulation of information and trends keeps the spectator in the constant present. The spectator is kept occupied by trivial things to distract from what is genuinely important. Debord writes,