Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)

Think of this as the first thesis of postmodernism: there is no such thing as objective truth.

Here we arrive at the second thesis of postmodernism: that any profession of truth is nothing more than a reflection of the political ideology of the person who is making it.

Snyder warned that “post-truth is pre-fascism.”

In an era of post-truth, we must challenge each and every attempt to obfuscate a factual matter and challenge falsehoods before they are allowed to fester.

The “other side” of the post-truth debate does not consist of people who defend it—or think that post-truth is a good thing—but those who deny that a problem even exists.

When we open our ideas up to group scrutiny, this affords us the best chance of finding the right answer. And when we are looking for the truth, critical thinking, skepticism, and subjecting our ideas to the scrutiny of others works better than anything else.

If the Spanish-American War was started by fake news, is it so outrageous to think that another war could be too? Where might this stop? Fake news is everywhere. If you don’t believe me go to Google and type in “did the Holocaust happen?”

Arendt once 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 exist.”

The point of challenging a lie is not to convince the liar, who is likely too far gone in his or her dark purpose to be rehabilitated. But because every lie has an audience, there may still be time to do some good for others.