![]() "People assume there is an evidence base when the lie is big (it's like a blind spot)." ![]() "Hear something enough it becomes truth," Durvasula explained. If I can buy a novelty hat about it, can it really be so serious? It's a genius mindf**k." "The banners and hats crucially add an air of silliness to everything. "The Big Lie then becomes its own evidence base - if it is repeated enough, people believe it, and the very repetition almost tautologically becomes the support for the Lie."ĭurvasula added that this is amplified by the numerous media platforms which exist in the modern era, as they trick people into thinking a certain falsehood has been reinforced even if all of their media platforms have the same political leanings. Ramani Durvasula, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor of psychology who is noted as an expert on narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic abuse, told Salon by email. "Repetition is important, because the Big Lie works through indoctrination," Dr. RELATED: The Revolution of 2020: How Trump's Big Lie reshaped history after 220 years The counterintuitive nature of the Big Lie tactic is perhaps what is most peculiar: wouldn't a small lie be easier to pass off than a large one? Indeed, it is an intriguing question as to why this works politically, and why so many millions are so quick to believe Big Lies - be it about voting fraud or Jewish conspiracies. 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.īeyond Langer, psychologists and sociologists throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century have been intrigued by the success of the Big Lie strategy - meaning a story pushed by a political leader that is clearly bald-faced, yet so grandiose as to make it hard to believe that someone would fabricate it. The term "Big Lie" is believed to have been first popularized in the Anglophone world by Walter Langer, a psychoanalyst who prepared a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler for the U.S. Recently, the term has been recycled to refer to the falsity that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" in some indeterminate way, a lie that is repeated ad infinitum by Trump and a slew of his supporters at all levels from yard-sign wielding footsoldier all the way up to his closest legal counsel. This tactic, of a leader hypnotizing vast swathes of the public through the perpetuation of a grandiose falsehood, is a phenomenon that extends well beyond World War II and Adolf Hitler. Germany felt humiliated after its loss in World War I, and the nationalistic pride which had fueled that conflict still burned in the hearts of millions. The story of World War II is, in many ways, a tale of a Big Lie run amok. Indeed, like many abusers before him, Hitler rationalized his own depraved behavior by falsely accusing his victims of doing the same thing. "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." "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," Hitler explained. He observed that most people are only comfortable telling small lies, and imagined others would be as uncomfortable as themselves perpetuating big ones. ![]() "In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility," Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf," his 1925 autobiographical manifesto. In a darkly ironic case of psychological projection, he came up with the expression to defame the Jewish community. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels coined the term " Big Lie." According to the supposed quote, Goebbels said that if you tell "a lie big enough" and regularly repeat it, "people will eventually come to believe it." That said, Adolf Hitler actually did use the phrase "big lie" - but not to describe his own propaganda strategy.
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