Confronting the Fascist Assault on Reality
Destroying the idea of an independent objective reality is central to fascism. It has to be, because fascism is objectively nonsensical.
By Ryan McGreal.
872 words. Approximately a 2 to 5 minute read.
Posted January 26, 2026 in Blog.
It’s not your imagination: the word “lying” feels inadequate to describe the Trump administration’s communications because it is inadequate. They’re not merely telling lies: they are waging war on the public’s capacity to know what’s real and therefore to operate and make sensible decisions together in a shared reality.
It’s why they’ve eviscerated science funding: the scientific method is pretty good, historically speaking, at identifying and reducing errors of perception and interpretation, so it has to go.
It’s why they’ve been threatening and bullying universities, which operate at arms’ length from government and have a lot of their own funding to conduct research and promote evidence-based public policy.
It’s why they’ve been relentlessly assailing news media organizations with defamatory accusations, spurious lawsuits and regulatory meddling, and getting their billionaire friends to buy up legacy and new media companies alike and corrupt them into regime propaganda.
It’s why they leaped out of the gate bullying and threatening prestige law firms that might otherwise bring suits against the government and force a fair consideration of the evidence in a court of law. For that matter, it’s why they’ve been railing against judges who dare to rule against them, inciting violent threats against the judges’ lives.
It’s why they’ve been aggressively purging federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies and the senior military ranks of anyone who exhibits professional integrity, replacing them with shameless, unprincipled hacks and sycophants who will carry out the regime’s bidding.
Destroying the idea of an independent objective reality is central to fascism. It has to be, because fascism is objectively nonsensical - an incoherent mishmash of chauvinism, bigotry, grievance, mythology, cult of personality and unquestioned obedience to a political narrative that is forever contradicting itself.
And that’s not all: another driving force is that the people who joined Trump’s government to execute his agenda have by now committed so many egregious crimes and atrocities that any acknowledgement of reality would open them up to serious legal jeopardy.
Unlike Trump’s first-term cabinet members, who for the most part saw their role as trying to rein in his excesses and who frequently resigned or were fired when he tried to make them cross a personal redline, his second-term cabinet members were chosen for their shamelessness and enthusiasm to carry out his will.
Even if some member of his administration were to spontaneously develop a sense of ethics, by now they’ve already blown through so many redlines that to quit in protest would be to expose themselves to the full wrath of the Justice Department - an agency already acting as an instrument of Trump’s vindictiveness.
And even if he didn’t have dirt on them, which he most certainly does, he has shown that he’s willing to subject anyone who displeases him to the meat grinder of a legal apparatus that picks its enemies first and then looks for some reason to hang them.
So they’re trapped in a web they helped build: they are under enormous pressure to continue their assault on the truth. (And to be fair, we must assume that most of them are happy enough to keep doing it. After all, it was nigh impossible to sign up to join Trump’s second administration and not know what you were getting into.)
This is hardly a new observation, but when reality itself is under attack, the act of asserting reality becomes an act of resistance.
In the starkest examples yet of what I’m talking about:
Renee Good and Alexi Pretti were not “domestic terrorists” or “assassins” and they did not threaten anyone’s safety. They were executed by a paramilitary force acting far outside any legitimate legal jurisdiction.
No matter how belligerently Trump and his political appointees insist otherwise, these actions are illegal and unjustified.
And for what it’s worth, polling clearly shows most Americans don’t believe what he says about it.
You may ask how anyone could continue to agree with Trump’s policy of terrorizing Democratic-leaning cities with his violent paramilitary forces, but the people who still support him comprise a small and shrinking minority.
Which is to say, fascists drunk on their own hyperbole may convince themselves that they can overwhelm the public with their propaganda and shape reality according to their will.
But reality cannot be denied for long.
And for all the quirks and dysfunctions of the American media environment, Americans really don’t like being told what to believe or what to do. The anti-establishment hostility that helped usher Trump into power is now turning against him, since he has become the establishment and his assertion of government power is now the thing under scrutiny.
The future is unwritten. That doesn’t mean a fascist can impose a given future through sheer force of will. It means there is space for a sufficiently engaged citizenry to come together in a broad, organized democratic coalition that holds firmly, nonviolently and relentlessly to their inalienable human rights and to the truth, and who keep growing and persevering in solidarity and pulling creatively on every lever of influence and disruption until the fascists are forced once again to withdraw in defeat.
This has happened before, many times, and it will happen again. History is not over. The future is not a boot stamping on a human face forever.
We can still choose to live in the truth.