Perhaps I'm misinterpreting this, but I wonder if the author is suggesting ("dog whistling") that in our (US) current two party system, that only one side is guilty of it? (I guess my question is actually: I wonder how paragraphs like this are unpacked in the minds of readers, depending on their particular worldviews. Written English is so brutally flawed as a communication medium).

Or maybe this is the nuance but I'm not picking it up:

> It’s alert to the ways in which demagogic leaders or movements can use propaganda, an older term that can be synonymous with disinformation.

Trump (primarily, but certainly not solely).

> A crude authoritarian censors free speech.

"Crude authoritarian" typically unpacks to Trump in most people's minds, but it's mostly "the left" doing the censorship these days.

> A clever one invokes it to play a trick, twisting facts to turn a mob on a subordinated group and, in the end, silence as well as endanger its members.

I interpret this as "the left" again, but I wonder if that's what was intended?

> Looking back at the rise of fascism and the Holocaust in her 1951 book “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” the political philosopher Hannah Arendt focused on the use of propaganda to “make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism.”

This feels like it is pointed at Trump ("the rise of fascism", "the most fantastic statements"), and fair enough, but what many people don't realize is that both sides do this, regularly. What most people don't realize though, is that "if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood" doesn't happen with mainstream falsehoods, because the disproofs aren't published in the mainstream. Why would they be? To find disproofs of many mainstream facts, one must read "alternative media" - but, due to a decade of skilful propaganda, these sources now intuitively evaluate in most people's minds as False by Definition.

Or perhaps the author is saying this only with respect to history, and I'm getting all worked up about nothing.

The biggest issue right now (other than the widespread lack of appreciation for the importance of truly free speech, and how biased and simplistic mainstream speech is) in my opinion is the lack of realization of the degree to which the ability to restrict free speech now lies in the hands of a very small set of elite companies, who are arguably not entirely politically unbiased. The number of people on HN who seem unable to distinguish between the broad general principle of free speech versus the first amendment is very concerning.

EDIT: Wow, the silent majority is fast on the gun today! But alas, the reasons shall forever remain a mystery...