Hannah arendt biography onfray twitter

Nearly every day someone or other on my social media feeds will share the same quote by Hannah Arendt. It reads:

This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies.

With such a people, you can do whatever you want.

It’s a damning quote about autocracies by the late German-Jewish political theorist, whose book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” has also found a new audience in a political climate where lies and misinformation are flowing down from high office, where Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on a common set of facts, and where Mark Zuckerberg said his company will no longer moderate hate speec