133: Truth as Negotiated Meaning: Wittgenstein and Trumpian Fascism
Language is a Virus
It starts with a feeling—a creeping sense that words don’t mean what they used to. Conversations that once felt anchored now slip like sand through fingers. People are speaking the same language but not understanding one another. This is not just the chaos of the digital age; it is the intentional fracturing of meaning itself.
In the era of Trumpian fascism, language is not merely a tool of communication—it is a battleground. Meaning is no longer a shared social contract but a field of competing interests. Truth is negotiated, twisted, and ultimately privatized. The state itself is being hollowed out, its authority replaced by a leader-centric cult where language bends to serve power. This is not just misinformation; it is an induced evolution of meaning designed to create cognitive dissonance and cultural divergence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher of language games, helps us see what is happening. Meaning, he argued, is not inherent but derived from use within a community. Today, that use is being hijacked, reshaped, and weaponized. The question before us is urgent: How do we fight back? If language is a virus, what is the anti-virus to authoritarianism?
Trumpian Fascism and the Evolution of Meaning
The assault on meaning does not announce itself with sirens or decrees. It spreads through contradiction, exhaustion, and confusion. One moment, an election is fair; the next, it’s stolen. A pandemic is deadly, until it isn’t. The ground shifts, and soon, people stop looking for solid footing.
Authoritarian movements have long understood that power is not just about controlling resources—it’s about controlling reality itself. In the Trumpian strain of fascism, this takes the form of:
Weaponized Language Games: Wittgenstein argued that meaning is determined by how words are used within a community. Trumpism exploits this by creating insular linguistic realities—alternative "language games" detached from external verification. The same word—"democracy," "justice," "freedom"—now carries entirely different meanings depending on who is speaking. This isn’t a breakdown of communication; it is an engineered fragmentation of reality.
Cognitive Dissonance as a Political Tool: When people are forced to hold conflicting beliefs, they experience mental strain. Authoritarianism thrives by maximizing this strain—exhausting people with contradictions until they disengage or surrender. This is part of the logic behind “flooding the zone”.
Cultural Divergence as a Feature, Not a Bug: The fact that different ideological factions now live in separate realities isn’t just an unfortunate consequence of polarization; it is a deliberate strategy. If people cannot even agree on what is real, how can they organize to resist?
Social Media and Algorithmic Authority: The internet rewards what is most engaging, not what is most true. Algorithms amplify outrage, conflict, and disinformation, reinforcing whatever language games already dominate a given space. The result? Truth is no longer what is verified; it is what is viral.
The Privatization of Public Discourse: The very spaces where meaning is negotiated—social media platforms, search engines, news feeds—are privately owned. This means that truth itself is, in effect, a commercial product, subject to the whims of billionaires.
The Rise of Leader-Centric Truth: In an era of Trumpian fascism, truth is no longer a matter of evidence but of allegiance. If the leader declares reality to be one way, that declaration alone carries more weight than facts ever could. This is not mere dishonesty; it is a systematic reordering of how meaning functions.
The Anti-Virus: Countering the Virus of Authoritarianism
If authoritarianism is a virus, then we need an anti-virus that is strategic, relentless, and collective. The task ahead is not just about resisting lies—it is about reclaiming the process by which meaning itself is shaped. Here’s what that might look like:
Reclaiming the Commons
Language must remain a collective enterprise. This means actively engaging in discourse that reinforces shared, verifiable truths.
Decentralized, non-corporate media spaces must be supported to counter the privatization of discourse.
Redefining Authority as Collective, Not Performative
Authority must be re-established not as an individual trait (charisma, loudness, virality) but as a collective, democratic process.
Epistemic communities—networks of diverse individuals who represent various domains of knowledge—should take precedence over personality-driven authority.
Literacy as an Act of Resistance
Teaching people to recognize linguistic manipulation is as essential as fact-checking. Wittgenstein’s insight that words mean what they do rather than what they are should be common knowledge.
People must be trained to identify when language is being used as a tool of division and control.
Reasserting Meaning Through Praxis
Meaning is not restored through debate alone, but through action. If "democracy" has lost its meaning, it must be redefined through participatory practices. If "truth" is in crisis, it must be reasserted through transparency and inclusive engagement.
Resistance movements must recognize that linguistic clarity is a strategic necessity. It is not enough to oppose lies; the conditions that allow lies to spread must be dismantled. Change the frame and offer better stories based on inclusion and empowerment rather than xenophobia and fear.
Wittgenstein showed us that language is not a neutral vessel for truth but a dynamic system shaped by social use. In our era, this means that authority is no longer about who has the facts, but who controls the framework within which facts are understood. The rise of Trumpian fascism is not just a political crisis; it is a crisis of meaning itself.
The task ahead is clear: we must rebuild the commons, restore meaning as a shared endeavor, and reject the privatization of truth. Authority, if it is to survive in any democratic form, must be decentralized, participatory, and anchored in collective meaning and sense making.
The virus of authoritarianism is spreading. The anti-virus is us.