the culture wars—as the vociferous debates over race, religion, gender, and school curricula were called during the 1980s and 1990s—have

Gass created self-conscious, postmodernist fictions that put more emphasis on form and language than on conventional storytelling.

Putin’s power lies in being able to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is president of his country and king of reality.”

All narratives are contingent, Surkov suggests, and all politicians are liars; therefore, the alternative facts put out by the Kremlin (and by Donald Trump) are just as valid as anyone else’s.

the Rashomon effect—the point of view that everything depends on your point of view—has

the internet not only had democratized information beyond people’s wildest imaginings but also was replacing genuine knowledge with “the wisdom of the crowd,”

any symmetrical system whatsoever which gave the appearance of order—dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism—was enough to fascinate men.

Lenin specialized in promises he

ironic fascism can become a kind of gateway drug, leading to the unironic version: