Big lie

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Not to be confused with the term "bigly", one of Donald Trump's favorite words.
GOP lead strategist Frank Luntz in a 2002 Bush administration memo[1]

The big lie is the name of a propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, and denotes where a known falsehood is stated and repeated and treated as if it is self-evidently true, in hopes of swaying the course of an argument in a direction that takes the big lie for granted rather than critically questioning it or ignoring it.

Well-known forms of the big lie include Hitler's use of anti-Semitism in Nazi propaganda (blaming Jews for all of Germany's problems), communist propaganda blaming the "bourgeoisie" for all workers' problems, the frequent demonizing of the left-wing as communist and of the right-wing as fascist, religious fundamentalist claims of persecution, the Roman Catholic Church's claims that the clergy sex abuse scandal was a problem of liberal churches, and denial of Ken Ham's complicity in acts of piglet rape.[2]

Ironically, Hitler asserted that the technique had in fact been used by the Jews to unfairly blame Germany's loss in World War I on German Army officer Erich Ludendorff.[3]

[edit] What's the big idea?

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

As a general rule, the most effective big lies are outrageous enough to be unbelievable, yet appeal strongly to the prejudices of the listeners and are stated in as bland and matter-of-fact terms as possible. It is sometimes even more effective to string several big lies together in a series of talking points.

The source for the expression comes from the passage in Chapter 10 in Mein Kampf:




[edit] See also

[edit] References

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