When I enlisted in the U.S. Navy after 9/11, my parents sent me off with faith â not only faith in God, but faith in people. They trusted neighbors and fellow citizens to do their part. That quiet, everyday trust is what keeps a community together.
But over the past decade, something has been fraying in our country. A torrent of misinformation floods social media. False accusations are hurled at neighbors and local business owners. Elected officials are harassed at home and online. Libraries and schools are targeted as ideological battlegrounds. Immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, Jews, and Christians have faced intimidation and hate. These are not isolated incidents. They are signs of a deeper erosion â of truth, decency, and the shared norms that once protected us all.
When Truth Frays, Trust Follows
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Europe, devoted her life to understanding how ordinary people and modern societies could descend into totalitarianism and moral collapse. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, she warned that totalitarianism doesnât begin with tyranny; it starts with loneliness and the collapse of truth.
When propaganda becomes constant background noise and every institution is smeared as corrupt, people retreat into private resentment. That isolation makes them vulnerable to whoever promises certainty.
Weâve seen this dynamic play out in our own time: Lies circulate faster than the truth. Conspiracy theories replace civic engagement. Teachers, librarians, and town employees become targets of anger that has little to do with their work. Public servants face threats for simply doing their jobs. Once local trust collapses, democracy begins to collapse.
The Cost of Eroding Norms
Arendt observed that âWhat prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experienceâŚâ
Loneliness today doesnât always look like solitude; sometimes itâs scrolling social media endlessly, locked inside an echo chamber. Propaganda doesnât just change minds â it floods the nervous system, turning fear into obedience and anxiety into control. The more disconnected we become, the easier it is for resentment to masquerade as righteousness and for genuine local concerns to be hijacked.
Misinformation and the deliberate manipulation of anxiety work like a slow assault on the nervous system â keeping people in a constant state of fear and alertness, hijacking the brainâs fight-or-flight response so they become more reactive, less reflective, and ultimately more malleable to totalitarian thinking.
Attacks on Muslims, antisemitic vandalism, harassment of immigrants, and hostility toward LGBTQ+ neighbors are not separate crises; they are symptoms of the same illness. When we normalize cruelty against one group, we weaken the moral immune system that protects everyone. Faith traditions should all understand this: harm to one wounds the whole.
âMy humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.â
â Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Faith in One Another
Wake Forest was founded in the Baptist tradition but has grown into a home for many: Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and those with no religious affiliation. That diversity is not a threat to our identity â it is the core of our strength. It proves that coexistence is possible, even in a time of loud division.
Faith in one another is the antidote to despair. It doesnât erase disagreement; it puts it in a human context. It means defending the library even if you donât read the books inside, respecting the mosque, synagogue, church, or temple even if you donât share its rituals, and standing up for a neighborâs dignity even when you donât share their politics.
To keep freedom, we must keep faith â faith in facts, and faith in each other.
