War Is Peace, Truth Is Trump: The Ceasefire Circus and the Lies We’re Meant to Swallow
There’s a moment in Orwell’s 1984 when the Party switches enemies mid-sentence, and the crowd erupts in rehearsed rage against a new foe, forgetting yesterday’s truth entirely. Watching Donald Trump’s recent outpourings on Truth Social, you get the sense that Orwell may have undershot his dystopia.
In the space of twenty-four hours, Trump declared that Iran had been “obliterated,” claimed there were “no American casualties,” praised U.S. military hardware in a tone better suited to a Home Shopping Network, and then, with an almost hallucinatory fervour, declared peace. The war, we’re told, is over. Everyone is victorious. And we must now “SALUTE” a ceasefire as if it were a Nobel-worthy achievement. He even gave it a name with a marketing angle: The 12 Day War.
These are the livestream words of a man playing both arsonist and fireman, weaving contradictions into gospel truths with the cadence of a televangelist. “GOD BLESS ISRAEL. GOD BLESS IRAN. GOD BLESS THE WORLD,” he declares, just hours after describing the obliteration of Iranian nuclear facilities as “very effectively countered.”
This is Trumpism in its rawest form: hypernarrative, manic, and entirely unbound from fact. When truth is treated as a personal brand, and peace can be declared while the dust is still rising, what we’re witnessing is not leadership. It’s theatre. Dangerous, delusional theatre.
‘Truth’ in the Trumpian Sense
Truth Social is a misnomer. It is not a space for information. It is not even a conventional political platform. It is the unfiltered mouthpiece of a man who believes he is the message. For Donald Trump, Truth Social is less a communications tool than a confessional booth, a pulpit, and a ratings machine rolled into one. And like all reality television, it is most effective when detached from reality itself.
In the posts following the June 2025 Israel–Iran ceasefire, Trump offers not diplomacy, but spectacle. The timeline unfolds like a deranged script: one post proclaims, “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!” while another - posted just hours earlier - praises the “perfect ‘hit’” of a B-2 bomber strike that made the deal possible. There’s no acknowledgement of the moral contradiction in celebrating an illegal military attack as the foundation for peace. In Trump’s world, the mere fact that he says it is what makes it true.
He doesn’t need facts. He needs applause. The logic is performative: declare peace, perform victory, demand celebration. Language is emptied of meaning and filled with mood, a kind of syntactic nationalism, where caps lock replaces nuance and exclamation marks take the place of evidence.
In this new form of messaging, the medium is the message, and the message is always Trump. Each ‘Truth’ he posts becomes a pixel in the hyperreality of Trumpism, where timelines blur and accountability dissolves. He does not write to inform. He writes to declare. And declarations, in this system, are assumed to be self-fulfilling.
That’s why Truth Social feels less like a presidential archive and more like a chaotic stream of consciousness: grandiose, contradictory, theatrical, and saturated with the narcissism of someone who cannot distinguish personal vindication from political clarity.
Orwell’s ‘War Is Peace’ as Operating Logic
Orwell warned us. In 1984, the Party’s slogans were clear: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. These were not paradoxes to be solved but principles to be absorbed. A totalitarian logic where contradiction was a tool of control. What Orwell could not have foreseen was how enthusiastically Donald Trump would adopt this blueprint on an open feed, one post at a time.
In the space of a few Truth Social updates, Trump swings wildly between warmonger and peacemaker. First, he celebrates the “totally destroyed” Iranian nuclear sites - his tone that of a salesman congratulating the buyer on a perfect deal. He credits U.S. pilots for executing a “perfect hit,” before demanding praise for brokering a ceasefire. There is no recognition of escalation, no admission of risk. Just the unshakable claim that this was always about peace.
This is not diplomacy, and the script is lifted straight from Orwell: the erasure of contradiction through repetition. As Trump proclaims, “The 12 Day War will be saluted by the World,” he presents himself as the architect of restraint, despite being the author of its unraveling. As if war were not violence but spectacle. As if launching thirty Tomahawk missiles were a clarifying gesture: an act of salvation, not aggression.
This is the logic of the spectacle, as Guy Debord described it: not the world as it is, but the world as staged appearances (Debord, 1994). The strike becomes a trailer. The ceasefire becomes a poster. The entire conflict is rendered as consumable content in the production of Trump’s mythology.
Hannah Arendt precisely understood the danger here. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, she observed that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists” (Arendt, 1951). This is the arena in which Trump thrives - not by convincing the public of his truth, but by collapsing the possibility of truth altogether.
In this world, coherence is a weakness. Contradiction is power. And the only constant is that Trump must be at the centre, whether as destroyer or saviour, it doesn’t matter. Only that he be believed.
The Language of Madness: All-Caps, God-Bless, and the Ceasefire Gospel
It would be easy to laugh. To dismiss it all as deranged bluster: the caps lock hysteria, the wild punctuation, the spiritual cosplay of a man who sees himself as both general and pastor. But that would be a mistake. Trump’s language is not accidental. It is methodical in its chaos. It seeks not to persuade, but to overwhelm. Not to clarify, but to flood. And in that flood, truth drowns.
In one breath, he declares “THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” - a phrase that sounds less like diplomatic protocol and more like a church noticeboard threatened with arson. In the next, he launches into a sermon: “GOD BLESS ISRAEL, GOD BLESS IRAN, GOD BLESS THE WORLD.” It’s televangelism dressed as statesmanship. A narcissist’s hymn to his own supposed magnanimity.
The writing is visually aggressive. Syntax collapses under the weight of capital letters and exclamation marks. Sentences run on like ticker tape. There are no paragraphs, no pacing, no structure. Just the blunt-force trauma of dominance. These are incantations. Every post must assert, flatter, condemn, or proclaim. There is no room for doubt or deliberation, only performance.
In Mythologies, philosopher Roland Barthes wrote that myth is “a type of speech”, a way of stripping reality of history and politics, turning it into something that feels natural, eternal, and self-evident (Barthes, 2000). This is precisely what Trump’s language does. The absurd becomes inevitable. The vulgar becomes patriotic. The contradictory becomes ‘common sense.’ His posts aren’t logical arguments, but myths in the Barthesian sense: political narratives masquerading as divine or natural truth.
When Trump writes in all caps, ending peace announcements with spiritual blessings, he is creating a myth of divine authority. His role as peacemaker is never up for debate. It is simply proclaimed, sanctified, and repeated until it feels true. The godlike authority, the moral certitude, the ecstatic tone all helps to depoliticise the violence beneath. In Barthes’ terms, this is how the brutal becomes benign: through the “naturalisation of the cultural” (Barthes, 2000).
And like all demagogues, Trump understands that style can carry a lie further than substance ever could. His rhetoric is emotional, not rational. The tone mimics the cadences of pulpits and stadiums, where comprehension gives way to catharsis. He is not speaking to the people, but over them: louder, brasher, more insistent than the rest.
This is the language of a self-anointed prophet. Not the voice of reason, but the voice of delirium, sermonising from the ruins and demanding the world believe it has been saved.
The Narcissist as Diplomat: When Saying It Makes It So
For Donald Trump, speech is an incantation. When he says something, it becomes true - or at least, it must be treated as true. That’s the condition of being in his orbit: reality is whatever he says it is. There are no facts, only affirmations. No contradictions, only ‘fake news.’ And in this distorted moral geometry, to question the claim is to betray the claimant.
This logic was on full display in his declaration that both Israel and Iran came to him and said, simply, “PEACE!” No context. No nuance. Just the triumphal shorthand of a man who sees negotiations not as complex processes, but as moments in his storyline. “THE 12 DAY WAR,” he christened it, as if conflict were a product and he its originator, manager, and sole resolver.
It is pure fantasy, but in Trump’s political theology, fantasy doesn’t need to be true. It only needs to be stated. Repeated. Embellished. Amplified. Then restated again. The power lies not in accuracy, but in assertion. In this model, diplomacy is not something done, it’s something said, and the performance alone is expected to suffice.
Trump believes he is peace, simply by virtue of willing it. The very act of framing himself as the architect of calm after chaos - even chaos of his own making - is, to him, an act of greatness. “Everyone is thrilled,” he wrote. “No American casualties. Complete and total victory.” It’s not just untrue. It’s untethered.
This is the clearest symptom of the narcissistic statecraft Trump has pioneered: leadership through self-mythology. Reality is whatever reflects well on him. If a missile strike leads to a ceasefire, he claims credit for both the war and its resolution. If the world blinks, he declares victory. There is no position he cannot claim. No contradiction he cannot absorb. And no consequence he will ever acknowledge because to do so would be to break character.
What emerges is a model of diplomacy that is post-strategy and post-truth. One where credibility no longer matters, only volume. Where outcomes are irrelevant, and the only benchmark for success is whether the leader gets to stand at the centre of the stage and say, ‘I did this’. And if you don’t believe him? That’s your problem. Not his.
Propaganda in Real Time: Reality TV Presidency 2.0
Donald Trump broadcasts. His presidency - both then and now - is a continuous production of content, a real-time mythology where events are reduced to footage, facts to feelings, and diplomacy to catchphrases. Truth Social isn’t a platform - it’s a soundstage. And the war, like everything else in Trump’s orbit, is just another season of the show.
What we’re watching is something deeper, more dangerous. The philosopher Jean Baudrillard warned of this in his theory of ‘hyperreality’: a world in which ‘the real’ is replaced by simulations, where signs and images no longer refer to any actual reality, but only to each other (Baudrillard, 1994). Trump’s ceasefire posts are a textbook case: he obliterates a nuclear facility, announces a truce, brands the war, blesses both sides, and proclaims himself peacemaker, all within a 24-hour window. The posts don’t describe the world. They replace it.
In this hyperreal presidency, nothing has to make sense. There is no need for causality or coherence. A bombing can lead to peace. A ceasefire can be marketed like a hotel opening. The ‘12 Day War’ can begin and end in the same feed. Trump is constructing a symbolic order in which he is always central, always triumphant, always unchallenged. His ‘truths’ are self-contained worlds, sealed off from scrutiny.
And the audience is not just watching, but participating. Truth Social is a feedback loop, where affirmation matters more than accuracy. Each post invites allegiance, not inquiry. Do you believe? Do you applaud? Do you repost the performance? In this context, propaganda no longer needs the machinery of the state. It only needs an algorithm, a loyal user base, and a character who never breaks.
This is the reality TV presidency in its final form: a presidency not of policy but of posture, not of governance but of genre. Trump is not a president who does things. He is a president who is things. A war? He is the war. A truce? He is the truce. A victory? Of course, because he says so, and says it louder than anyone else.
As Baudrillard warned, hyperreality is seductive because it satisfies emotional needs while erasing critical distance. It creates a version of the world that feels more vivid, more urgent, and more morally clear than the messy complexity of real life. And that’s the real danger: a politics that doesn’t just lie about the world; it replaces it entirely with a cartoon version where Trump always wins because he is the one who sets reality.
Conclusion: The Danger Behind the Farce
The temptation is always to laugh. To screenshot the madness, mock the grammar, parody the all-caps exclamations and televangelist blessings. Yes, there’s absurdity in abundance. But the real danger lies in mistaking absurdity for impotence. Trump’s posts may read like deranged monologues, but they are declarations of intent, worldview, and power. And the world responds accordingly.
While the tone is cartoonish, the outcomes are not. Bombs were dropped. Facilities were destroyed. A region was pushed to the brink of catastrophe, and now the president of the United States - a man with the nuclear codes - is live-posting ceasefires like he’s calling bingo. This is not diplomacy. It’s destabilisation, broadcast in real time.
The erosion of truth, the collapse of language, the performance of violence as virtue; these are not quirks of the Trumpian brand. They are the tactics of authoritarian rule. What begins as parody becomes policy. What begins as contradiction becomes creed. And what begins as a social media rant becomes a framework through which millions understand - and increasingly, accept - the inversion of reality.
And the media? Often too dazed or cynical to push back effectively. When every post is a provocation, coverage becomes repetition. Commentary becomes amplification. Even the outrage becomes part of the script. In this way, the farce protects itself, because to call it what it is feels futile, even passé.
But we must keep calling it.
If Orwell gave us the language to understand this nightmare, and Barthes and Baudrillard showed us how it would be sold, then it falls to us to name its consequences. A world where destruction becomes diplomacy, where lies become gospel, and where political reality becomes something streamed, liked, and shared… this is not a glitch. It is the system.
The ceasefire isn’t real peace. The posts aren’t real truth. And Trump - for all his pomp, absurdity, and narrative gymnastics - is not a sideshow. He is the main act. And until we confront the machinery that allows delusion to govern and spectacle to substitute for policy, we will be stuck in this inverted world, where war is peace, truth is Trump, and lies are the only thing that seem to travel fast enough to survive.
The tragedy of this moment is not just that Donald Trump lies. It is that so many have stopped noticing. Truth has not simply been distorted; it has been drowned beneath a flood of spectacle, rebranded violence, and performance politics. In this new terrain, coherence is a threat, and contradiction is a tactic. The bombs fall, the camera rolls, the ‘peace’ is posted, and the world scrolls on. But we must not scroll past it. If language can be emptied this completely, if war can be rebranded as salvation, if fantasy can masquerade as governance, then democracy itself becomes a show, and the audience becomes complicit. The only way out is through confrontation: with the lies, the myths, the manufactured ‘truths.’ Not just to fact-check, but to reassert reality - before reality becomes something we only remember how to describe.
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References
Arendt, H. (1951.) The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books.
Barthes, R. (2000.) Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. London: Vintage Books.
Baudrillard, J. (1994.) Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by S.F. Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Debord, G. (1994.) The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books.
Orwell, G. (1949.) Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Secker & Warburg.