When George W. Bush was running for governor of Texas against Ann Richards in the late 90s (before anyone but us was on the internet), Karl Rove distributed printed pamphlets, particularly in churches in East Texas among evangelicals, talking about her secret lesbian lover. She's not a lesbian.

And of course when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 she invented (or paid someone else to invent, more accurately) this ridiculous Russian conspiracy narrative that persists because press outlets affiliated with her party continue to amplify it.

In 2000, the aforementioned GW Bush's party had the chief justice of the SCOTUS (who incidentally got that job despite living in an AZ neighborhood back in the 60s deed restricted to whites only and organizing a sort of election day mob that would physically confront non-white voters standing in line to vote) stop counting ballots to ensure that Bush won.

Before Reagan appointed Rehnquist chief justice, when he was campaigning against Carter in 1979/80, he was giving speeches at notorious lynching sites around the former confederate states and talking about the "oppression of the IRS" (this was shortly after the IRS had stripped Bob Jones University of its non-profit status during Carter's tenure for refusing to admit black students).

Civility is anomaly, not the trend.

I'm all for criticizing Facebook for what Facebook does wrong but it's just a mirror, it doesn't have any original content on it. The same can be said of political candidates. If their message lacks resonance with what would-be voters believe already, no one will repeat it.