False narratives

'So, was Trump's entire campaign based on a false narrative'', asks author

Adolf Hitler was a great believer in the usefulness of the “big lie” — a lie so colossal that few would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. Does the fact that Donald Trump’s most iconic campaign pledge was not to reopen the coal mines, but to have a wall built to prevent Mexicans from entering the United States, suggest that he, too, believes in the “big lie”? Did he ride to power on false claims about Mexican immigration?

To be sure, following the liberalisation of US immigration policy in the 1960s, the number