To your points, I agree, but that's why I phrased it as "societally-wide accepted definition of facts". There has always been propaganda and hard pressure against those who went against the status quo.
What I think is different this time is the process on coming to a "generally accepted conclusion". Take the Iraq WMD issue. At the time, the status quo was that Iraq had WMDs, even if there were plenty of people arguing against that - those people may have been "marginalized" as you put it (though not sure I agree - I was one of those people, and while I clearly the tide was against my viewpoint, I still felt we were having a debate over facts), but they were still arguing that there was little evidence for WMDs. But when the facts were cleared up, there was broad agreement "OK, the evidence is now clear, this is what happened".
My point is now that even when the clear picture does finally emerge, you have plenty of people still just willing to repeat the falsehood in the belief that "if you repeat it enough, it becomes 'true' enough to enough people." That's what feels different to me, at least in my lifetime.
> My point is now that even when the clear picture does finally emerge, you have plenty of people still just willing to repeat the falsehood in the belief that "if you repeat it enough, it becomes 'true' enough to enough people." That's what feels different to me, at least in my lifetime.
I understand the structure of your argument but I am not sure I can relate it to things that are happening. Can you give concrete examples?
Yes: people consistently repeat that inmigrants are (criminals ((almost) exclusively)) despite never showing any statistics. I have seen people keep a printed list of inmigrant crimes (one of them, an Uber driver).
This happens in two countries, that I know. One of them is the US, the other is Costa Rica. I expect it to happen in all countries with important xenophobic populations.
Well, I know this is going down the political rabbit hole, but look at the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the US. The evidence that Biden won and Trump lost is undeniable, at least if you use the definition of "the outcome is undeniable considering the standards of any previous presidential election in the US".
But still you have large swaths of the American populace (including, notably, the president elect) saying that no, Trump won the 2020 election. At this point, though, I don't even really see them putting forth any argument based on actual evidence that Trump won in 2020. It's just repeating the same platitudes of "it was stolen, the politicians are corrupt, ..." etc. etc. But it's like many people just accept now that this is an acceptable way to argue things, "if you repeat it enough, you get to have your 'alternative' facts" - like, they don't even really care that much that they don't have actual evidence to back up their position. That is the part that feels relatively new to me.
What I think is different this time is the process on coming to a "generally accepted conclusion". Take the Iraq WMD issue. At the time, the status quo was that Iraq had WMDs, even if there were plenty of people arguing against that - those people may have been "marginalized" as you put it (though not sure I agree - I was one of those people, and while I clearly the tide was against my viewpoint, I still felt we were having a debate over facts), but they were still arguing that there was little evidence for WMDs. But when the facts were cleared up, there was broad agreement "OK, the evidence is now clear, this is what happened".
My point is now that even when the clear picture does finally emerge, you have plenty of people still just willing to repeat the falsehood in the belief that "if you repeat it enough, it becomes 'true' enough to enough people." That's what feels different to me, at least in my lifetime.