Scholars who delve into the intellectual intricacies of political theory generally don’t make the roster of on-air pundits. For news producers booking talent, Jeffrey Barash, a professor at the University of Picardie in France, should be an exception. In looking at what makes radical ideologies tick, Barash has examined how Europe’s 20th-century fascists stripped ethics and values from what they said and did to build all-powerful states where politics became nothing more than a tool to manipulate. The result, Barash wrote, steadily blurred the boundaries between facts and fabrications until, as the falsehoods grew, reality disappeared.
When Fantasies Replace Facts: It’s Time for a Myth Buster on the News
