Big lie

A big lie (German: große Lüge; often the big lie) is a propaganda technique used for political purpose, defined as, "a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body".[1] The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler believed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic. Historian Jeffrey Herf says the idea of the original big lie was instrumental in turning sentiment against Jews and bringing about the Holocaust.

For other uses, see Big Lie (disambiguation).
See also: Jewish war conspiracy theory
Adolf Hitler claimed that the "big lie" spread by the Jews was the idea that General Ludendorff (pictured) was responsible for Germany's loss in WWI.

Jeffrey Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis used the big lie to turn long-standing anti-semitism into mass murder.[2] Herf argues that the big lie was a narrative of an innocent, besieged Germany striking back at an "international Jewry", which it said started World War I. The propaganda repeated over and over the claim that a conspiracy of Jews was the real power in Britain, Russia and the United States. It went on to state that the Jews had begun a "war of extermination" against Germany, and so Germany had a duty and a right to "exterminate" and "annihilate" the Jews in self-defense.[3]

The opposing claim that Germany was not defeated in war in 1918 (and rather was betrayed by internal groups) was itself called a big lie.[4] This stab-in-the-back myth was spread by right-wing groups, including the Nazi Party.[5]

In the 21st century, the term was applied to Donald Trump's effort to discredit the results of the 2020 United States presidential election, which he lost; "the big lie" was the claim that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud.[5][6][7][8]

Hitler's description

The source of the big lie technique is this passage, taken from Chapter 10 of James Murphy's translation of Mein Kampf (the quote is one paragraph in Murphy's translation and in the German original):

But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within 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, 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.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[9]

Goebbels's description

Though the following supposed quotation of Joseph Goebbels has been repeated in numerous books and articles and on thousands of web pages, none of them has cited a primary source. According to the research and reasoning of Randall Bytwerk, it is an unlikely thing for Goebbels to have said.[10]

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

It is verified that Goebbels did put forth a theory which has come to be more commonly associated with the expression "big lie". Goebbels wrote the following paragraph in an article dated 12 January 1941, 16 years after Hitler's first use of the phrase. The article, titled Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik (English: "From Churchill's Lie Factory") was published in Die Zeit ohne Beispiel.

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, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.[11]

U.S. psychological profile of Hitler

The phrase was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile:[12]

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. (CIA)[13]

The above quote appears in the report, A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend, by Walter C. Langer,[13][14] which is available from the US National Archives. [15] A somewhat similar quote appears in Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behaviour and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender, by Henry A. Murray, October 1943:[16]

Never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.

Donald Trump's claim of a stolen election
The infographic "How to spot fake news", published by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
See also: Trumpism and Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

As part of attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had really won the election.[5][6] U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz subsequently contested the election results in the Senate.[17] Their effort was characterized as "the big lie" by President-elect Joe Biden, Republican senators Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey, fascism scholars Timothy Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Russian affairs expert Fiona Hill and others.[18][19][20]

Dominion Voting Systems, who provided the voting machines in the 2020 election, is seeking $1.3 billion in damages from Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, alleging in the lawsuit that “he and his allies manufactured and disseminated the "Big Lie", which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election.”[21]

In January and February 2021, The New York Times published detailed overviews of how Trump had groomed the lie for years, how it was promoted for political purposes to subvert the 2020 election, and how that resulted in the violent storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.[7][8]

See also

Notes
  1. "The Big Lie | Definition of The Big Lie by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of The Big Lie". Lexico Dictionaries | English. Retrieved 2021-01-17.
  2. Jeffrey Herf (2006). The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II And the Holocaust. Harvard University Press. p. 211. ISBN 9780674038592.
  3. Jeffrey Herf, "The 'Jewish War': Goebbels and the Antisemitic Campaigns of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, (Spring 2005) 19#1 pp. 51–80,
  4. James, Edwin L. (11 April 1943). "Hitler's Biggest Lie; The Fuehrer's lies are legion and colossal; his biggest is that Germany was not beaten in 1918. Hitler may be planning to use that lie again. Whatever Hitler's purpose in taking up the lie of an undefeated Germany, the record of the collapse is clear. Hitler's Biggest Lie". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
  5. Bittner, Jochen (November 30, 2020). "1918 Germany Has a Warning for America - Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" campaign recalls one of the most disastrous political lies of the 20th century". The New York Times. Retrieved February 3, 2021.
  6. Higgins, Andrew (January 10, 2021). "The Art of the Lie? The Bigger the Better - Lying as a political tool is hardly new. But a readiness, even enthusiasm, to be deceived has become a driving force in politics around the world, most recently in the United States". The New York Times. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
  7. Rosenberg, Matthew; Rutenberg, Jim (February 1, 2021). "Key Takeaways From Trump's Effort to Overturn the Election - A Times examination of the 77 days between election and inauguration shows how a lie the former president had been grooming for years overwhelmed the Republican Party and stoked the assault on the Capitol". The New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  8. Rutenberg, Jim; Becker, Jo; Lipton, Eric; Haberman, Maggie; Martin, Jonathan; Rosenberg, Matthew; Schmidt, Michael S. (January 31, 2021). "77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election - Hours after the United States voted, the president declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power". The New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  9. "Project Gutenberg of Australia - Mein Kampf tr. James Murphy". Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
  10. Bytwerk, Randall. "False Nazi Quotations", German Propaganda Archive, 2008.
  11. Joseph Goebbels, 12 January 1941. Die Zeit ohne Beispiel. Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP. 1941, pp. 364-369 [original German: Das ist natürlich für die Betroffenen mehr als peinlich. Man soll im allgemeinen seine Führungsgeheimnisse nicht verraten, zumal man nicht weiß, ob und wann man sie noch einmal gut gebrauchen kann. Das haupt-sächlichste englische Führungsgeheimnis ist nun nicht so sehr in einer besonders hervorstechenden Intelligenz als vielmehr in einer manchmal geradezu penetrant wirkenden dummdreisten Dickfelligkeit zu finden. Die Engländer gehen nach dem Prinzip vor, wenn du lügst, dann lüge gründlich, und vor allem bleibe bei dem, was du gelogen hast! Sie bleiben also bei ihren Schwindeleien, selbst auf die Gefahr hin, sich damit lächerlich zu machen.]
  12. A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend Archived 2005-08-28 at the Wayback Machine by Walter C. Langer. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Washington, D.C. With the collaboration of Prof. Henry A. Murr, Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris, New School for Social Research, Dr. Bertram D. Lawin, New York Psychoanalytic Institute. p. 219 (Nizkor)
  13. "OSS Psychological Profile of Hitler, page 46" (PDF). cia.gov. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  14. "A Psychological Profile of Adolf Hitler" (PDF). Ia801304.us.archive.org. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  15. Langer, Walter (2011-03-24). A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend. All-about-psychology.com. p. 57.
  16. "Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler" (PDF). Ia601305.us.archive.org. p. 219. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  17. "Election gambit blows up on Hawley and Cruz". POLITICO.
  18. "Can The Forces Unleashed By Trump's Big Election Lie Be Undone?". NPR.org.
  19. Business, Brian Stelter, CNN. "Experts warn that Trump's 'big lie' will outlast his presidency". CNN.
  20. Castronuovo, Celine. "Biden says Cruz, other Republicans responsible for 'big lie' that fueled Capitol mob". The Hill. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  21. Wolfe, Jan; Heavey, Susan (January 25, 2021). "Trump lawyer Giuliani faces $1.3 billion lawsuit over 'big lie' election fraud claims". Reuters. Retrieved 1 February 2021.

References
  • Baker White, John (1955). The Big Lie. Evans Brothers. OCLC 1614230.
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