Democracy depends on informed voters, and this includes the ability to distinguish between facts and opinions. The ideal citizen, as Hannah Arendt analyzed, is one who does not care whether the ruler is lying or telling the truth.
If this becomes the prevailing position, criticism will be of no use. People will lose their minds. Ruprecht Bollens's new book analyzes how social media algorithms amplify attacks on the truth. The book offers suggestions on how to strengthen the truth-seeking system, and tips to protect us from losing our minds.Robert Pullins, the best-selling author of Spiegel magazine, is one of the most influential political figures in Germany. For many years, he has stood up to fake news spread by right-wing trolls on social media, facing hostility and insults, and courageously defending truth and democracy.In his new book, he uses numerous examples from his life as an influential figure to show how right-wing populists and right-wing extremists are systematically creating a loss of rationality among our citizens. They interfere with academic freedom and undermine trust in the mainstream media (“fake journalism”).This breaks the dam against the flood of their lies. Criticism and censorship become impossible. Democracy appears to have been destroyed. But Pullins stands firm: his book is a call to use reason, to hone it, and to defend the conditions that make it possible.
