The civic consens could only be undermined because people lack the contextual knowledge and (self) critical reasoning to not be vulnerable.

Germany tried to solve that problem by creating an extra-governmental body tasked with public broadcasting, with budget autonomy (collects its own pseudo tax) and supposed political independence.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Öffentlich-rechtlicher_Rundf...

But this falls short too. There are many positions occupied by people with political party affiliation and cases of corruption/embezzlement.

And the cherry on top are the austerity hawks chipping away at the school system for many decades now. The german school system is slowly collapsing, with state represantatives even boykotting a federal conference because their problems had been ignored for so long.

https://taz.de/Laender-boykottieren-den-Bildungsgipfel/!5918...

Limiting freedom of speech can be helpful in delicate, small scale cases but becomes unenforcable when the dipshit echo chambers grow and the overton window moves.

Germany has the same route ahead as the USA. I am certain :(