Last year the Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as the International Word of the Year, noting that its use “increased by approximately 2,000% over its usage in 2015.” The term “post-truth” refers to “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” It suggests the concept of truth “has become unimportant or irrelevant.”

The Dictionaries announced their choice just one week after the surprise election of Donald Trump to be President of the United States. Politically, it does seem we are in a time when factual truth has become insignificant: a time when Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s counselor, can characterize obvious falsehoods as “alternative facts”; when Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, can become head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and when the President himself regularly tweets blatant lies, seemingly without serious repercussions. Truth in the standard Western sense of factual accuracy and correct assertions seems to have become politically passé. Anyone who knows what authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are like will find this trend worrisome. As both George Orwell and Hannah Arendt have shown, such regimes thrive on the dismissal of factual truth.