“Hannah Arendt, who studied totalitarian regimes, said as much in an interview in 1974: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”6 But a population that no longer believes anything is robbed of its ability to think and to judge, and ultimately of its capacity to act. As Arendt says, “with such a people, you can then do what you please.” These are the ideal subjects – or the ideal opponents.”
