When the False Becomes the Norm

In times of digital information overflow, a silent yet profound danger has spread: the normalization of falsehood. Lies, half-truths, false claims are repeated, disseminated, and shared so often that for many, they become reality. Not because they are justified. But because they exist. Because they persist. Because they are visible and frequent.

Legal philosophy recognizes this phenomenon: the normative power of the factual. This refers to a psychological mechanism described, among others, by Georg Jellinek in his General Theory of the State. What people experience over a long time, what prevails and appears as “given,” gains normative validity in their eyes. The factual is perceived as the “right” – not through argument, but through habituation.

What was initially connected to state-building, customary law, or social order has today taken a disastrous turn: In digital spaces, this psychological inertia is being exploited. Propaganda and fake news utilize precisely this mechanism. Repetition creates impact. Visibility creates apparent truth. And what is claimed often enough appears to many as “completely normal.”

This is not merely an epistemic crisis. It is an ethical one. For where the false becomes the norm, truth loses its social orientation power. Lies no longer even need to be believed – they suffice as a habit.

This project recognizes a deep danger in this: Truth is not a loud power but a silent obligation. It cannot be enforced but neither can it be replaced. It lives where people pause, examine, doubt, ask: What do I really know? Whom do I serve with my judgment? What brings me closer to reality?

The factual must not automatically become normative. Especially in an age where algorithms favor visibility, we need people who are not guided by noise but by authenticity.

The normative power of the factual is a reality. But it must not become the justification for falsehood. It is a call for vigilance. For only those who are aware of the silent power of repetition can escape it. And those who escape it open the space for something else: for sincerity, for differentiation, for trust.

Not everything that is said often deserves to be believed. But everything that is believed deserves to be examined. That is the beginning of an ethics of truth – in the digital age.

And perhaps it is also the beginning of a new, more human form of political thinking.