Big lie
gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth
The big lie is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth, used especially as a propaganda technique. According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Scholars say that constant repetition in many different media is necessary for the success of the big lie technique, as is a psychological motivation for the audience to believe the extreme assertions.
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Quotes Edit
- It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique...Just sound like you know what you’re talking about — as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies... and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame — those with big but weak egos — will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.
- David Brin, The Postman, Chapter 13, (1985)
- 60 Minutes has blown the lid on the administration’s WMD bamboozlement. There can no longer be any doubt: The march to war was a deliberate sham. The CBS report connects the dots: We knew that the CIA had flipped a member of Saddam’s inner circle, and that he told the agency that the Iraqi dictator had no active WMD programs. What we didn’t know was that, in the fall of 2002 — at least 4 months before the invasion —Bush, Cheney, Condi & Co. were personally briefed. They were told that their casus belli didn’t hold water, but they willfully chose to disregard this highest-level intelligence. In the end, regime change was the policy. The WMD argument was just so much window dressing.
The fact that the White House had in fact been briefed about the CIA’s top turncoat was not a given. Far too much solid intel —including the testimonials of 30 expat Iraqi moles who were sent to infiltrate their former homeland and report back on their discoveries (their reporting was unanimous: No WMD) —stayed bottled up inside the agency.- Tim Dickinson, The Big Lie, Rolling Stone, April 24, 2006
- As Lenin, Goebbels and other masters of lies knew, it is sufficient to repeat a big lie often enough, to make it pass as truth.
- Koenraad Elst, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
- One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. the English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
- Joseph Goebbels, "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik" ("Churchill's Lie Factory"), 12 January 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1941), pp. 364-369
- All effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands.
- Joseph Goebbels quoted by Zachary Jonathan Jacobson in Many are worried about the return of the 'Big Lie.' They're worried about the wrong thing. The Washington Post, 21 May 2018
- As the first anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster arrives, the cover-up involving nuclear power is more extensive than ever. The Big Lie was integral to the nuclear push from its start. Promoters of nuclear power discounted the seriousness of nuclear plant accidents, although government documents acknowledged the vast scale of catastrophe. As the Atomic Energy Commission’s “WASH-740 update,” done at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1960s, repeatedly states about a major nuclear plant accident: “The possible size of the area of such a disaster might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania.”
They pushed the “peaceful atom” — although knowing that any nation with a nuclear plant would have the materiel from it (the plutonium produced as a byproduct) and trained personnel to make atomic weapons. They downplayed the effects of radioactivity claiming it needed to reach a “threshold” to cause harm — even as it became clear that any amount of radioactivity can injure and kill.
And nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter,” they insisted. And on and on… The realities of nuclear power have become ever more evident—acutely so because of the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. But the Nuclear Big Lie continues bigger than ever.- Nuclear Power and the Big Lie, Karl Grossman, CounterPunch, March 5, 2012
- Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.
- Chris Hedges, Israel, the Big Lie Scheerpost, May 14, 2021
- ..this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - 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... 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.
- Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf (1925)
- Mike Lindell: "'The Big Lie' is the big lie."
Steve Bannon: [Laughter] Is that like a Zen koan? Like "the sound of one hand clapping in the forest"?!- War Room Pandemic, ep. 747 Feb. 22 2021 at 18min. Regarding news of Dominion's lawsuit vs. Lindell which accused him of pushing "the Big Lie" Feb. 22 2021
- The American Psychological Society (APS) defines a "big lie" as “a propaganda device in which a false statement of extreme magnitude is constantly repeated to persuade the public. The assumption is that a Big Lie is less likely to be challenged than a lesser one because people will assume that evidence exists to support a statement of such magnitude.”
- Fossil fuel corporations deceived as many people as they could for as long as they could. Their own scientists told them decades ago that their product was cooking the earth. Did that lead them to change course? No, it did not. It led them to suppressing the science, lying about it and seeding that monstrosity called climate denial. So now half the rulers of the U.S., one of the most powerful, violent, extensive and carbon polluting empires in human history, parrot idiotic talking points about burning oil, gas and coal supposedly NOT warming the earth.
- Big Corporations promised that they would hire workers after getting a massive tax cut. But so far it looks like they’re pocketing all the money. ...Remember... the talking points, Republicans, oh, this is going to be great. Tax cuts, we’re going to hire more people. We’re going to pay them more. Now, you look... just the opposite has happened... We all knew it was a big lie. We all knew...
- The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to "End Poverty in California" I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.
- Mao Zedong and the Communist Party took over China in 1949 using a giant lie — that China in the past was a completely oppressive and feudalistic, and that the only way forward for China was to allow the "great", "glorious" Communist Party to take over. Therefore no matter how many landlords or Counter revolutionaries you’d have to kill, it's ok. It’s for the sake of equality. Equality never panned out, not because it's hard to achieve, but because they never intended to to begin with.
