Friday on his show’s opening monologue, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson observed that much of what some the 2020 Democratic Party presidential hopefuls were saying didn’t necessarily comport with reality.

Carlson noted 2020 candidates Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke having to walk back past statements despite being true.

“How do you know if you’re living in a free society?” Carlson said. “Here’s a quick test: Are you allowed to say obviously true things in public, or are you forced to lie? As George Orwell put it in ‘1984’: ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’ But what if that freedom isn’t granted? What if you’re required to repeat things that you know aren’t true. What if everyone that hears you knows perfectly well that you’re lying but can’t say so out loud? What if everyone is required to nod along in mock sincerity as if it’s all completely real? That’s what a pep rally in a police state looks like.”

Later in the segment, Carlson summed up the left’s “authoritarian” grip on dialogue as “woke fascism” and likened the lies that grip forces to those lies of some authoritarian regimes.

“There’s nothing liberal about any of this, obviously,” Carlson said. “It is purely authoritarian – woke fascism, power over ideas – in place of thinking, obedience. In return for dissent, punishment, lying as an official policy. And not just conventional lying – the ordinary truth-shading of everyday life – but terrifying full-inversion lies, the exact opposite of the truth. The kind of lies that regimes that seek total control must tell in order to maintain their power.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor