“We keep hearing that this is a post-truth era, that feelings beat facts, people no longer care what’s true, and we’re heading for ruin. Opponents of Brexit and Donald Trump not only found those victories intolerable, but many refused to believe them to be legitimate, instead supposing that lies had swayed a docile population. This idea of a gullible, pliable populace is, of course, nothing new. Voltaire said, ‘those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities’. But no, says Mercier, Voltaire had it backwards: ‘It is wanting to commit atrocities that makes you believe absurdities’.” – Times Literary Supplement