Not long ago, a friend sent me a video he found compelling. It featured Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch political commentator known for her far-right rhetoric, speaking at a public event in Hungary. In the video—now widely shared across nationalist circles—she offered a grim diagnosis: Europe, she claimed, is unraveling under the weight of mass immigration. As proof, she cited three recent incidents: a stabbing of three elderly women in Västerås, Sweden; an arson attack on a church in “Brigolo,” France; and a 42-hour stretch in London in which four people were stabbed. The implication was unmistakable: these tragedies were not isolated events, but symptoms of a civilizational collapse caused by migrants.

Curious and concerned, I did what I always try to do: I checked the facts.

What I found was sobering—not because her warnings were true, but because they were so clearly false, and yet so powerfully persuasive to many.

The Västerås attacker was a Swedish-born man with a criminal record and a history of mental illness, not a recent migrant. The church fire in Bringolo, a small village in Brittany, was accidental—caused by an electrical fault in the bell system, according to the fire investigators. The London stabbings were individual incidents, and while one attacker had dual nationality (Spanish-Brazilian), there was no coherent “wave” of migrant violence, and certainly no organized pattern behind the attacks.

I laid all this out for my friend. I shared sources, timelines, investigative findings. The facts, I thought, were undeniable.

And yet—he remained unmoved.

It’s an experience many of us have faced in recent years: the disorienting moment when evidence meets a wall. Not indifference—something stronger. A kind of defiant belief, as if facts were insults to identity. This isn’t a purely personal story, nor is it unique to obscure online echo chambers. In May 2025, it reached the highest levels of global visibility when Donald J. Trump, the twice-impeached and twice-elected president of the United States, welcomed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House—and used the occasion to spread a falsehood with deadly implications.

Standing alongside Ramaphosa, Trump once again invoked the specter of a “white genocide” in South Africa. To illustrate his claim, his team circulated disturbing images—showing mutilated bodies, burning villages, and frightened children. Only one problem: the footage wasn’t from South Africa. It depicted atrocities committed by the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The supposed “proof” of a Boer genocide was, in fact, documentation of violence against Black civilians.

The irony is grotesque. The lie is calculated. The intent is clear.

And still—millions believe it.

The Fabrication Machine

Since January 2025, Trump’s second term has confirmed what many feared: not just the return of authoritarian style, but the formalization of disinformation as a governing tool. From fake crime statistics to doctored footage, from invented economic indicators to the reactivation of conspiracy theories, the Trump administration no longer pretends to acknowledge a common reality. Instead, it manufactures a parallel one—one where facts are negotiable, and loyalty is measured by submission to illusion.

Consider just a few of the falsehoods sustained by the administration in the past five months:

• The claim that violent crime has risen sharply under Democratic mayors, while federal data shows continued decline in major cities like New York and Chicago.
• The assertion that the 2020 election was stolen, now enshrined in multiple federal departments’ communications despite dozens of court rulings to the contrary.
• The claim that the US economy is the “strongest in history” under Trump 2025, despite independent forecasts showing slowed growth, reduced foreign investment, and spikes in public debt following tax policy changes.
• The assertion that immigrants are causing a “public health crisis”, despite CDC data showing no such correlation.

When confronted with contrary evidence, the administration’s strategy is not to deny the contradiction—but to flood the zone. To create so many competing narratives, so much noise, that the very idea of verification is drowned. This is not mere misinformation. It is anti-information: a deliberate campaign to exhaust the public’s ability to discern.

And it’s working.

Why the Facts Don’t Land

To someone raised on the ideals of liberal democracy—reasoned debate, evidence-based policy, the marketplace of ideas—the fact that facts alone are no longer persuasive is profoundly disorienting. But it’s not unprecedented.

History teaches us that in moments of crisis or identity loss, people often seek meaning more than truth. In Weimar Germany, in post-communist Russia, in pre-Civil War America, belief systems hardened not because facts disappeared—but because truth became a battleground for belonging. If acknowledging a fact means abandoning your tribe, your grievance, your place in the world—you may reject the fact, no matter how overwhelming the evidence.

Trumpism is not built on trust in data. It is built on resentment, fear, and a promise of restored dominance. It offers not explanations but scapegoats, not accuracy but allegiance. And for those who feel disoriented by modernity—by immigration, globalism, pluralism, climate anxiety, AI—it offers a clean answer: It’s their fault.

This is why confronting lies with facts often feels like pouring water on oil. We imagine the fire will go out. It doesn’t.

A Duty Beyond Conviction

So what then? Do we surrender to the post-truth tide? Do we retreat into silence or cynicism, assuming that no one ever changes their mind?

No. Because even if the believers are unreachable, the watchers are not.

Every lie, every doctored video, every slogan shouted at a rally lands in a public square—not just for the faithful, but for the hesitant, the curious, the undecided. And they are watching how we respond. They notice when we answer calmly, when we cite our sources, when we admit complexity. They notice when we care enough to check the claim, even when it would be easier to mock it.

The point of truth-telling is not always to convert the one who spreads the lie. It is to protect the ecosystem of reality itself, to preserve space for reason in a time of reflex.

I did not change my friend’s mind that day. But someone else will read our exchange. Someone who hadn’t yet decided. Someone who, perhaps, realized that the story they were being sold didn’t quite add up.

Truth doesn’t always win arguments. But it leaves footprints.

A Humble Defense of Reality

The work ahead is not glamorous. It is not quick. It rarely goes viral. It looks like this: checking a claim. Reading the full article. Asking where the footage comes from. Sharing a quiet correction. Refusing to amplify the falsehood, even when it feels tempting to parody it.

The work is thankless—until it isn’t.

Because in the long run, democracy depends not on perfect agreement, but on shared reference points. We cannot solve immigration, climate, or inequality if we don’t agree on what’s happening. We cannot vote meaningfully if our choices are built on fiction.

And we cannot rebuild trust in institutions if we allow reality itself to fracture.

So we verify. We explain. We resist the urge to shout. We speak not only to the trolls, but to the quiet reader who wonders. We remain human in our responses—not to excuse the lie, but to protect the possibility of truth.

Because truth, in the end, is not a weapon. It’s a shelter. And in a storm of manipulation, someone is always looking for a place to stand.

Welcome to the conversation.