Arendt’s Modern Lie through Sartre’s Imaginary in advance
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the transformation of propaganda in the digital age through the conceptual frameworks of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. While Arendt’s notion of the “organized lie” exposes the systematic falsification of reality in totalitarian regimes, it does not fully explain how falsehoods become subjectively experienced as truth. By combining Sartre’s phenomenology of the imaginary with Arendt, this article illuminates how propaganda constructs “phantasms”—irreal pasts that appear real and shape lived experience. The phantasm is distinguished by five features: it falsifies the past, conceals its unreality, alters perception without changing reality, resists clear definition, and is disseminated openly. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, including Russia’s use of troll farms and AI-generated content, the article shows how digital media disseminates phantasms through scalable, individualized disinformation that mimics genuine public opinion. This simulation of consensus restructures the conditions under which truth appears and opinions are formed, effectively replacing reality with a phantasmatic substitute. By linking Arendt’s political theory with Sartre’s ontology of the image, the article offers a phenomenological account of digital imposture that clarifies the existential stakes of propaganda today—not merely the obscuration of facts, but the distortion of world-disclosure itself.
Source: Arendt studies
Author: Elad Magomedov
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4411221971