Propaganda used to be something that just the enemy engaged in. It was another subject Americans used to be united on. Interest in the facts. Getting the facts. Respect for the facts. Now facts have vanished into a miasma of assertions. Information is no longer a truth, it is just a tactic. And it is not even enough to assert a falsehood; it needs to be coupled with a denunciation of the truth as the falsehood.

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This is an ongoing process, and it’s a multi-front effort. Fox News has long served primarily as a propaganda arm for the Republican Party and its agenda, and its false-flagging as a news operation has itself represented a substantial portion of the damage wrought. But Fox is not alone. Unfortunately, the willingness of the private sector to step up and run propaganda interference for the GOP and/or Trump is yet another reason why letting rich people control everything is a bad idea, and it is becoming a self-reinforcing pattern.

And an independently operated propaganda system would be bad enough, but it gets worse. We now have the beginnings of an official president-run propaganda system. This is neither a coincidence nor benign. Trump’s pathological need to have his every utterance confirmed as fact will not rest until he has the apparatus to enforce it. There are ever-more pieces being assembled in this apparatus, and the history of authoritarian regimes shows the final result.