Some confusions around authoritarianism today

There are several sources of confusion in and around authoritarianism today. One is the tendency of authoritarian leadership to confabulate and lie, increasingly to the point where truth criteria cease to be of any relevance. A second is the counter-intuitive convergence between authoritarian and libertarian tendencies, which confuses political debate. And a third is the common conflation of authoritarianism with nationalism, which fails to recognise benign nationalism and adds to the polarisation on which authoritarian leaders thrive.