Summary: Part one of this series discussed some dark origins of the New America, and why most discussions of America should touch on NAZI Germany. Today we examine a specific example of this: the big lie as the most effective tool of political persuasion on Americans.
All this was inspired by the principle … that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
— From Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (1925).
A major theme of the FM website concerns a discovery made by our leaders during WW2: they can successfully lie to us. Such insights change the course of nations. Sixty years later big lies have become a major tool of political action — for the best of all reasons: they work.
Our leaders lie without consequences, even when they’re caught, because their supporters uncritically believe almost any lie — so long as it supports their politics. These lies create the child-like black-white world we prefer to reality, mirroring the comics-based films that rule in our theaters.
Consider this list, some of the big lies that have had such great effects since WW2:
- During the Cold War we lived in the shadow of the powerful Soviet Union: the bomber gap, the missile gap, the Team B project.
- Eisenhower looked into our eyes in May 1960 and lied about the downing of the U-2.
- We fought the Vietnam War following the attack on US destroyers at Tonkin Gulf in August 1964.
- We invaded Afghanistan because it was the staging ground for 9-11 (no, it wasn’t).
- We fought the Iraq War to prevent Saddam from using his WMDs.
- Obama is a foreigner, a Moslem, an anarchist, a radical Leftist.
- ObamaCare will create death panels (here’s the origin of the lie).
- The “science is settled” about climate change (not according to the IPCC, which describes a small area of confidence surrounded by uncertainty).
- Anthropogenic warming has been the dominate factor for a century or longer (only since WW2).
- The Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm, at an accelerating rate (not since roughly 2000).
The widespread use of lies is not partisan issue; everybody does it. Our leaders are not NAZIs because they use big lies, any more than driving on our Interstate Autobahn system in a VW bug means I’m a NAZI. In dynamic societies effectiveness trumps almost all other considerations.
They lie to us because we are gullible.
“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”
— From Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (1925)
No matter how pleasing we find these lies, we cannot reform America while lies dominate our political debate. A strong, proud people would not tolerate leaders who treated them with such contempt. Or allow themselves to act so weakly. We were once a strong people, and can become so again.
Each team can reform only its own people; each team must police its own members. Conservatives must protest lies on Fox News and Liberals protest those on MSNBC. Everybody should call out big lies as they see them. Truth can be one point around which we can all rally. But that means putting other values ahead of loyalty to our tribes — our political teams.
Change starts with individuals. Like you and me. Speak out! Each of us is potentially a force for change. Don’t accept lies from leaders of organizations that you support.
To understand the words of our political activists
As the New America emerges, Newspeak becomes the essential toolkit to describe our politics. From George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:
- “The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
- “Doublethink means … {t}o tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed …”
Newspeak provides new words to describe the New Americans we have become. We have often had deep political fissures across America, but usually over differences in values, or loyalties (religion, race, region). But today we’re divided by facts, as factions tightly grasping big lies that differentiate their group from the others — lies they hope will persuade others to adopt their favored policies.
We see this in the comments sections of the FM website and a thousand others. And so our political gears no longer mesh, and our politics polarize into factions unable to compromise because they no longer share a common world.
This problem probably will work itself out, somehow sometime. I do not see how. Probably painfully.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See the links at the pages About the quiet coup in America and Reforming America: steps to new politics. Also see the other posts in this series…
- Describing the problem: Politics in modern America: A users’ guide for journalists and reformers.
- The secret, simple tool that persuades Americans. That molds our opinions.
- We cannot agree on simple facts and so cannot reform America.
- American politics is a fun parade of lies, for which we pay dearly.
- Our minds are addled, the result of skillful and expensive propaganda.
- Important advice: Learning skepticism, an essential skill for citizenship in 21st century America. About “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”.