With the President’s attack on “fake news” resounding across America and around the world, it is important to recall the history of the charge. “Fake News” is a fair translation of the German “Lügenpresse” or “lying press”—a charge used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to discredit independent reporting. The point is not that the President is like Hitler; it is not at all the case that the President intends to invoke this history or even knows about it. But it is true that the use of the term “fake news” is having a corrosive effect on our public culture.