Adorno: "Lies have long legs, they are ahead of their time. The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power not only suppresses truth...but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false..."

The widespread use of the politically neutral term "Fake News" has been utterly self-defeating. Fake/real is a misleading binary. What we are dealing with is political propaganda. Nativist propaganda. Racist propaganda. Islamophobic propaganda.

The problem with labelling political disinformation as being part of the “Fake News” cycle is that it diminishes its impact and insidiousness. Not “fake news” but disinformation (*knowingly false or deceptive*) which has a political purpose = political propaganda. Name it.

Authoritarians lie about such things because they wants to blur the line between truth and fiction. They are explicit about their contempt of objectivity. Nothing is "true" unless it serves power.

If truth has no value, or is deemed impossible to ascertain, then politically anything is possible.

That Adorno quote is from 1951 and he was talking about the aim and impact of Fascist propaganda and how modern Europe was in denial about the truth of the Nazis almost as soon as the war ended. “It’s surely exaggerated” complacency leaves the door open for a future resurgence.

Hitler: “[Our aim] is not to seek out objective truth in so far as it may be favourable to others, but to uninterruptedly serve one’s own truth.”

This is why those “white slaves” or “Irish slaves” memes are not about “truth” or “history” at all.

They are The Bell Curve in shorthand. They promote social darwinism, anti-egalitarianism & ethno-nationalism. They demonise the welfare state.

That’s their purpose.

I'm emphasising this because a site like InfoWars is mainly challenged w/ regard to the veracity of their claims rather than the purpose of their propaganda. How many articles detailing/analyzing InfoWars’ hate literature have been published by the mainstream media since 2015?

“Nothing is true, everything is permitted to the strong.”