Can reality still prevail in an age of falsehoods? | Borneo Bulletin Online
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Book World: Can reality still prevail in an age of falsehoods?
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April 19, 2021
THE WASHINGTON POST – By eerie coincidence, I began reading William J Bernstein’s
The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups in early January and was deep into it on January 6. I kept reading in the days that followed the unprecedented insurrection at the Capitol, putting the book aside occasionally to look at the scores of videos taken by participants before and during the rioting. ProPublica, the investigative news site, acquired more than 500 of these videos and assembled them into a compelling new kind
of documentary.
The people in these clips fit with what Bernstein describes as victims of delusions. In this instance they were victims of our deluder in chief, who concocted false tales of election fraud that he repeated again and again to convince his followers that Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election. At a rally on January 6, President Donald Trump urged the crowd to march on the Capitol, “show strength” and “stop the steal”. At his b