propaganda, generally campaigns run by authoritarian thugs who sought to undermine a society by generating an irrational fear of a scapegoat, an “other.” The playbook is the same, again and again. Lies, lies, and the willingness of a large part of a population to channel their fear into senseless hatred. While studying what was happening in other countries—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, and Rwanda, to name a few familiar in the annals of infamy—I was almost smug in my belief that this systematic dissolution of a country’s common sense may have been possible elsewhere but would never happen
...more
