On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

That president was on friendlier terms with the internet, his source for erroneous information that he passed on to millions of people. In 1971, contemplating the lies told in the United States about the Vietnam War, the political theorist Hannah Arendt took comfort in the inherent power of facts to overcome falsehoods in a free society: “Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality.” The part about computers is no longer true. For many Americans, the two-dimensional world of the internet has become more important than the three-dimensional world of human contact. People going door-to-door encounter the surprised blinking of American citizens who realize that they have to talk about politics with a flesh-and-blood human being rather than having their views affirmed by their Facebook feeds. Within the two-dimensional internet world, new collectivities have arisen, invisible by the light of day—tribes with distinct worldviews, beholden to manipulations. (And yes, there is a conspiracy that you can find online: It is the one to keep you online, looking for conspiracies.)