Anthony Nadler

ALT This is not an argument for giving up on fact-checking. “The spread of individual falsities can be profoundly damaging,” they write, “as in the case of lies about a rigged election or when the spread of false rumors fuels ethnic violence.” But it is an argument for re-calibrating our sense of what fact-checking can do. In the United States, the Big Lie thrives not because of individual pieces of misinformation but because it rests on a foundational belief among conservatives that liberals shun them and are working to drive them from public life. This is what Nadler and Taussig call a “deep story.” And it’s notable that, while Facebook added 40 million fact-checking labels to posts in the first half of this year, there are very few efforts — from platforms, the media, or most of our politicians — to counter the deeper stories upon which those individual pieces of misinformation rest.