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The End of Information
Donald Trump doesn't need statistics because there is only one truth
Peter Shamshiri
August 11, 2025
The relationship between fascists and the truth lies somewhere between tenuous and non-existent. In The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton described it like this:
[T]he rightness of fascism does not depend on the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name. Fascism is “true" insofar as it helps fulfill the destiny of a chosen race or people or blood, locked with other peoples in a Darwinian struggle, and not in the light of some abstract and universal reason.
…
The truth was whatever permitted the new fascist man (and woman) to dominate others, and whatever made the chosen people triumph.
The only truth that matters to fascists is that they are the proper inheritors of power. Every piece of information that countervails that truth must give way; every piece of information that supports it is tolerated only as long as it remains useful.
And so last week Donald Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer because the agency’s latest employment reports made him look bad. The reports, Trump said, were “rigged,” which is obviously untrue and which you would have to be extremely stupid to believe. But the numbers had to be rigged, or else some blame could potentially be laid at the feet of Donald Trump and his claim to power undermined.
It was also last week that the administration initiated plans to end the missions of the only two government satellites designed to monitor global greenhouse gas emissions. The administration didn’t announce its reasoning, but considering that Project 2025 includes extensive plans to cut projects related to climate change, it’s safe to say that they simply have no interest in data that might indicate the planet is warming. The move mirrors one from just a few months ago, when the administration attacked the government’s ability to monitor the climate by gutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This isn’t the first time Trump has found himself at war with data. In 2020 he tried to explain away the country’s high Covid case numbers by claiming it was the result of too much testing. The problem, per Trump, was an excess of information.
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