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Fake news according to Donald Trump and others, post-truth, and “alternative facts” all contribute to a confusion that is not exactly the same thing as lying. A photographic image can be seen in many ways, and some historians have trouble distinguishing fiction from veracity in the context of the dominance of relativist discourses. In this new sophist rhetoric, the paranoid-perverse invariants at work in Nazi discourse play an important role. Freudian concepts of denial, psychosis, and mass phenomena apply not only to the years from 1930 to 1945, but also to contemporary conspiracism, with one difference: totalitarian logic is now diluted in a democratic crisis of authority. From a secular perspective, truths are partial and open to improvement, while religions have both a dogmatic side and a side open to comment. From this we deduce the need to renew a balanced rationalism.