When the right refuses to believe in science, data, and evidence, it's derided as climate change denial.

When the left refuses to believe in science, data, and evidence, it's celebrated as tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism.

Do you see the difference? When the right believes something contrary to science, they're attacked for it. So why does the left get a free pass in denying biology and evolution?

No one "deserves" to be insulted just for believing differently as you. All you'll prove by resorting to insults is your own level of maturity.

The problem with that line of thought is that you end up further polarizing instead of bringing ppl together. Instead of demonstrating patience and tolerance to at least try to get ppl to the side of logic and facts. Polarization HELPS ppl like Trump.

Unfortunately it's already here.

Finally something like this from Rol. I am delighted.

I have never heard the term "post-factual", but I can say that it has bothered me for so long that many people don't seem to understand just that, that Europeans need to vote on far-right parties to shake up the establishment and cause some true change. And it doesn't matter if they use populist tactics or not.

I started that way myself. Being a mixed libertarian-conservative right-winger I started to vote on the far-right for tactical reasons a long time ago, because I got pissed off at the multiculturalist project already in the early 90's. But with time I have become even farther right than most far-right parties, and today I despise all of the mainstream so called right-wing parties of Europe (they're just corrupt pseudo-socialists all of them, Mutti Merkel's party being the worst of them all).

The issue I see is people view their opinions as facts. This means any challenge to them is not simply a difference of opinion, but an attack on their very reality. This year was terrible in terms of flat out lies being told and then people performing all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend a little despite contrary evidence being offered.

I would say once media and authority places were deligitimized then every voice was seen as equal regardless of the merit of the idea or verocity of the claim.

I think the issue is that many of experts and even the media have gone from Fact based news to Biased news.

Therefore even though VOX is very accurate because its so biased politically, most people wont read it.

The days are gone where a reporter said something and people believed it.

Also I think many people just do not trust Government statistics such as the Unemployment rate..

Superb analysis, Rol. As much as I dislike the actual political program of the german AfD for example, I can easily understand why people are voting for it, even if they may not even agree with them - namely for punishing the established parties instead.
Because, ultimately, what better way is there to make politicians of the established parties listen to the average voter, and demonstrate that one is not okay with their political actions? As it turned out, "teaching them a lesson" by voting such parties works surprisingly well, at least better than the alternatives:

- stage a demonstration on the streets? That has proven to be pointless in almost all cases. Even if you manage to gather hundredthousands of people, like it was the case at some Anti-TTIP-demonstrations, there's a good chance only a few local newspapers will even report on it, and that's about it. There's a lot of truth to the saying "If demonstrations would change anything, they'd be forbidden".

- Submit a petition? Completely pointless, at least in Germany. Just look at the success rates of the system of "E-Petitions" that the german government has introduced about a decade ago: About 70000 have been submitted. 95% of them were filtered out immediately, they weren't even published and thus could not be voted for. Just a few ever got the required number of votes necessary to even get listened to. And only a single one ever led to an actual change in law, makeing additional front-bumper on cars illegal. Yet this completely pointless system costs german taxpayers millions per year.

- Don't go voting? Pointless, as no politician cares, because it won't change the result of the voting even a bit.

- Go voting, but make your vote invalid to demonstrate your discomfort? Pointless, as no politician cares, because these votes ultimately count just the same as not having voted at all.

- Vote some political party which has a good political agenda, but is tiny? I don't know about other countries, but at least in Germany, that's pointless as well, because of the undemocratic "5%-Hürde". While your vote will be included in some number you see when the results of the voting get published, the vote will simply be ignored when it comes to the calculations of the actual number of seats each party gets, which is ultimately the only thing that counts.

So ultimately, anything that doesn't change the actual number of seats each party gets will simply be ignored by the politicians, because it has no negative effect for themselves. It's only when parties are afraid to lose seats that they are willing to change their behaviour, as the politicians on the party's "hintere Listenplätze" will become nervous, because they would become jobless and lose their income.

And as you pointed out, one can vote for the AfD even if one does not like their political agenda and thus would not want them to be in power. Because there's no way the AfD would reach the absolute majority, and since the other parties always completely rule out that they would form a coalition with the AfD, there's no danger anyway. So ultimately, when voting for the AfD, one is more or less just reducing the number the number of seats for the other political party. So, voting the AfD is basically watching the politicians of the other parties playing a game of "musical chairs" ("Reise nach Jerusalem") in panic mode.

Yeeeah, that's great, right? For the very first time in history, one can now make claims without providing proof. As everyone knows, this is an absolute novelty in 2016, it never happened before, as something like that was plain impossible in the last 13 billion years. Aus... Gründen, I guess.

Post-fact world.
Phrase coined by the evil MSM to try and smear the right.

Just another manipulation by the liberal left to keep you in the Matrix.

I haven't met an intelligent person who thinks it's anything other than that.

Completely transparent.

As usual, Nintendo fans have once again unwittingly spearheaded a trend. Take a look at the average NX/Switch rumor thread to see how.
The trend went sour, however. Instead of facts being replaced by rumors, they were replaced by flat-out misdirection.