The Bulwark – A review of Lee McIntyre’s new book, On Disinformation, out today from MIT Press. “…The slim volume, small enough to fit into a back pocket, is an engaging disquisition of our present predicament, in which large numbers of our fellow citizens believe things that are demonstrably untrue. “Denialism is not a mistake—it’s a lie,” declares McIntyre, a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and the author of several previous books including Post-Truth (2018) and How to Talk to a Science Denier (2022). “The truth isn’t dying—it’s being killed.” McIntyre believes the use of disinformation, which he distinguishes from misinformation as being more deliberate, is part of “a coordinated campaign being run by nameable individuals and organizations whose goal is to spread disinformation out to the masses—in order to foment doubt, division, and distrust—and create an army of deniers.” He sounds kind of paranoid, but for good reason. What has happened in recent years, McIntyre writes, is that “the truth killers” have taken on a new target: reality itself. Consider, for instance, that two-thirds of Republicans still believe Trump won the 2020 election. How crazy does it get? You could put it in Ripley’s museum, but nobody would believe it….McIntyre, in his book, frames the battle against disinformation in militaristic terms. “The disinformation crisis that is enabling the truth killers to do such violence to our society is not a mistake or even a crime,” he avows. “It is an act of war. And it is time we got on a war footing to fight it.”