Moreover, truth weakens under fire. As propaganda saturates the air, nuance becomes suspect, and the public square empties of shared facts. Thucydides’ bleak line returns—when "words change their ordinary meaning," cruelty masquerades as necessity, and prudence as cowardice (3.82). Hannah Arendt later argued that sustained lying in politics does not merely mislead; it unthreads the common world that makes judgment possible ("Truth and Politics," 1967).
Consequently, war does not finish when the peace is signed; it lingers as contested narratives, each killing the other’s dead by denying how and why they fell. Memory trials and truth commissions exist because truth itself must be rehabilitated. [...]
