This paper takes the view that Baudrillard's work on the West's fascination with reality is as insightful as ever. The paper traces the rise of this fascination across four areas of his work: the critique of the commodity form, the rise of objective reality, hyperreality, and integral reality. I then argue that Baudrillard provides us with a means for adequately understanding and engaging with the current post-truth scandal. My claim is that the essence of' 'Trumpism' is not to be found in a lack of reality, the notion that there is not enough truth in play; it is to be found in the overproduction of a surplus reality that veers out of control into hitherto unknown forms of absurdity, or, in Baudrillard's terms, into integral reality.Brett Nicholls works at the University of Otago, New Zealand, in the Department of Media, Film and Communication. He publishes work on technology, media and politics, as well as postcoloniality. He is currently working on Jean Baudrillard's relationship to science. He can be contacted at brett.nicholls@otago.ac.nz. Vol. 16, No. 2 2016 7 post-truth world' (Hollo 2017). Along with the Twitter storm, such headlines suggest that a high stakes battle between the objectively real and the illusory and fake is well underway. This paper will trace the stakes of this battle by looking at Baudrillard's work. In the recent post-truth context, his long-term engagement with Western culture's fascination with the real is particularly prescient. I will focus specifically upon this fascination and the rise of the general imperative of being in synch with reality across four areas of Baudrillard: the critique of the commodity form, the rise of objective reality, hyperreality, and integral reality. I will argue that Baudrillard provides us with a means for adequately understanding and engaging with the current post-truth scandal. I will offer a Baudrillardian take upon post-truth and Trumpism, as it has been constructed in media. This take focuses upon the conditions for the rise of Trumpism and post-truth. My claim is that the essence of the present media scandal is not to be found in a lack of reality, the notion that there is not enough reality in play; it is to be found in the overproduction of a surplus reality that veers out of control into hitherto unknown forms of absurdity, or, in Baudrillard's terms, into integral reality. 'The real does not', Baudrillard tells us, 'efface itself in favour of the imaginary; it effaces itself in favour of the more real than real: the hyperreal' (Baudrillard 1990b, 11), and, ultimately, integral reality. In a reversal of what might be considered to be common sense logic, the problem of Trumpism and post-truth is not that reality is diminishing, it is that there is too much. MEDIANZ

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The latest form of neo--liberal capitalism may prove ironically similar to the final forms of state socialism: incapable of reform (Tronti, 139). Neoclassical economics uses basically the same analysis in the bedroom as in the boardroom, in labor markets as in grain markets, and in the twenty--first century as in the seventeenth century. It is the behavior of an emperor with a limited wardrobe (Cohn, 36). The aim of this paper is not to present some kind of special biographical insight into John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand and leader of the National Party. The making of the man narrative is by now well worn, and we readily admit that we do not know what psychological processes motivate John Key. Unlike much of the news media, we do not hold the view that the character and interior world of the private individual directly explains the very public space of political statements and activity. This is not to say, of course, that there is no such thing as personal style, or a predisposition to particular ways of doing things, or a set of beliefs that might engender specific commitments. It is to say that the interior worlds of politicians, which are no doubt interesting in some cases, ultimately don't tell us very much about the assemblages in which politicians and contemporary government operate. The meaning of John Key thus does not stray into that mythic terrain that celebrates / denigrates the possessive individualism of a political figure. John Key is a specific politician, but he is a figure expressed in and through the highly mediated world that he inhabits. Ultimately, the main question, for us, is how Key as a figure has been grafted onto and made to mean in a political context that is characterized as post--ideological. His political party affiliation is of little consequence in this discussion. If Key were a member of the Labour party, he would, perhaps, be a different kind of politician. But the central question of how his persona connects to and is expressed by a post--ideological political context would remain the same. The Meaning of John Key is thus not about John Key per se. It is, more precisely, about Brand Key, of which the individual John Philip Key is the manifestation, neoliberal capitalism, and media coverage. The purpose of this article is to unpack and make sense of the rationality upon which Brand Key is foregrounded. So, what do we mean by Brand Key? For us, it captures a complex assemblage of connections and intersections that articulate a cognitive map that can be summarily expressed as such:

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