Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused

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The freedom to express a thought, a doubt, a joke, even a mistake is vanishing under the pressure of ideological purism. That, too, is a form of soft authoritarianism: not imposed from above, but enforced through fear of social exclusion. When even freedom’s champions become its censors, we are entering dangerous terrain.

Choose-your-own-reality governance is a threat to the most basic principles of liberal democracy. If economic statistics can be distorted, and climate data can be canceled, and vaccine analysis can be politicized, where exactly is the line? Transparency, trust, and public truths are essential to the functioning of liberal democracy. We’re all... See more