All those things are elements or implications of Goebbel's handbook of propaganda, but the essence of it was The Lie, not just Big but Long and Universal.

A fairly pure example of the struggle we're in is shown by the ease with which the propagandists on the Right destroyed the utility of "fake news" to counter their lies, by simply coopting it as a label to dismiss any disagreeable news.

I believe pretty strongly that part of the stand we must take is to call out lies as lies, without weakening equivocation. The term "lie" is going to be a harder nut for the propagandists to crack, I hope.

If they do crack the nut, and "lie" comes to mean "true", then they'll have achieved the Platonic ideal of Orwellian.

I plan to resist.