Truth dictatorships

The offence named is completeness rather than falsity. What a truth dictatorship does is present one view of reality as the whole of it, and the term applies whether or not that view is accurate, since the dictatorship consists in the closing off of other views rather than in the content of the one presented. That distinguishes it from propaganda and from misinformation, both of which are defined by their relation to the facts. Marsh's framework supplies the reason this matters. Endoreality is a reality holding only inside a group, and the authoritative endogroup is the one with institutional power to enforce its version, so a truth dictatorship is what an authoritative endoreality looks like from outside. Anyone opposing authoritative endoreality is declared criminal or insane, since authority defines reality, which is the enforcement mechanism. Her application to science is the sharpest instance, since what she calls scientific superstition is endoreality masquerading as science, where facts are found to meet and support the laws of a pre-ordained worldview, and the resulting refusal produces gaping holes in what is known rather than merely biased conclusions. The remedy the framework proposes is structural rather than corrective. Concentric circles are transparent and permeable so any claim can be audited from any position, knowledge bridges allow discussion at every level of expertise and idea based systems promote ideas rather than the sources carrying them.

Epistemic authority and the sociology of expertise study how some sources come to be treated as definitive, and Foucault's regimes of truth describe the mechanisms by which a society determines what counts as true. Media concentration research documents the narrowing of sources. The contemporary debate about misinformation and fact-checking assumes a determinate truth against which claims are measured, which is precisely the assumption Marsh's term interrogates. Her position is not relativist, since universal reality remains real in her framework, and the objection is to any single source claiming to deliver it completely rather than to the existence of facts.