A few thoughts:
When a nation's entire communications, informational and cultural infrastructure is dominated by the interests of a singular political authority, narrative will always trump fact.
In such an environment (such as ours, today) facts are reported only selectively and tendentiously, until their shape fills the outlines of whatever story is meant to be told.
There is no crime or corrupt act that cannot be made to vanish under the weight of a peoples' need to believe whatever might comfort and validate them.
As we have seen, all information to the contrary can be easily discarded and denied, and its proponents subject to mockery, shame, and sometimes, worse.
This is what becomes of peoples and nations that no longer value liberty above comfort, as when their sense of security comes not from within, but from without.
Free people are ultimately conquered not by invasion or threat of violence, but by fear. Putative conquerors, rulers and despots have always known this to be true.
The abandonment of freedom is also accompanied by an abandonment of responsibility, and also, of reason.
So, when people are willing to deny the evidence of their own senses in order to attain a desired outcome, they leave the door open to far worse developments.