“Stop the steal!”, “Plandemic!”, “Climate hoax” – these three examples are representative of an ominous shift in contemporary politics that has seen misinformation emerge as a key resource for political mobilization. Verifiably false information, held by a group to be valid, has become a linchpin of political debate. Whatever the issue at hand, the strategy is always the same: reliable knowledge is called into question and relativized by the deployment of competing and contrasting narratives. Challenges to the validity of these are subsequently branded as attacks on the freedom of opinion and proof of a “dictatorship of opinion”. Combining social media activism with street protests, this strategy has gained considerable momentum in the last years and an adequate response is yet to be developed.
