Narrative Launderers From Melno Park to Theresienstadt

When Meta’s Facebook, based in Melno Park, California, announced on the 7th of January 2025 that it would end its third-party fact-checking program and move to a so-called “community-notes model” it went on to clarify that the company had no immediate plans to end fact-checking in the EU and would review its EU content moderation obligations before making changes.

This small footnote may turn out to be more significant than one might at first think. If the EU really does end up defending its commitment to protecting and promoting the importance of free speech built upon the foundation of verifiable facts, then this line in the sand may turn out to be significant for the health of our democracies.[ii]

Pedanteria – The Laundry

In the early Spring of 2023, I was taken for a walk around the centre of Bielsko-Biała, a city in southern Poland, by historian Kuba Krajewski. As we walked down a cobbled street, he told me, “for Bielsko-Biała, the process of information manipulation has a resonance and legacy of a very particular nature. Here, in the centre of the city, is a building complex and courtyard, Pedanteria”. We walked through an arch and into a typical urban 19th century Polish courtyard. “This was the laundry that used to clean the clothes of those enslaved at Oświęcim, at Auschwitz-Birkenau – which is only 38 kilometres from here”.

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