!!!!The big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross
distortion or misrepresentation of the truth, used especially as a propaganda
technique.
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."!!!!
déjà vu
Donald Trump’s grandfather came from Nazi Germany!
Donald Trump just accidentally told the truth about
his disinformation strategy
If you listen to him long enough --
no easy chore -- Donald Trump will tell you all his secrets.
Witness this
line from his July 3 speech in Sarasota,
Florida:
“If you say it enough and keep saying
it, they’ll start to believe you.”
Trump was talking about alleged disinformation directed at him and other
Republicans. But WOW does that quote explain everything you need to know about
his approach to the presidency and life.
(Sidebar: One can only hope that
Trump was unaware that his quote was a near-replication of this
infamous line from Nazi Joseph Goebbels:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it.")
Trump has spent a lifetime -- in
business and politics -- repeating exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies
to make himself look good.
The books he wrote prior to politics
are littered with quotes extolling the virtues of making up a reality and then
repeating it until people start to believe it.
“I play to people’s fantasies," he
wrote in "The Art of the Deal." "People
want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most
spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.”
"If you admit defeat, then you
will be defeated,” Trump wrote in "Think
Big."
Once he came into the presidency,
Trump, unsurprisingly, kept it up.
"Don’t believe the crap you see
from these people, the fake news," Trump
told a VFW group in 2018. "What you’re
seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Unfortunately, Trump's blueprint
works.
Take the 2020 election. Despite zero
evidence of any sort of widespread election fraud, a majority (53%) of
Republicans said in a Reuters/Ipsos
national poll in late May that President Joe
Biden's victory was "the result of illegal voting or election
rigging." More than 6 in 10 Republicans (61%) agreed with the
statement that the election "was stolen from Donald Trump."
Siloed in news bubbles and social groups that sync
up entirely with their own views and "facts," a large chunk of
Republican voters have been convinced that the election was somehow stolen --
largely because, well, Trump told them it was.
To take advantage of trust people put in you -- as
well as their narrow news diet -- is, of course, deeply irresponsible. And the
opposite of what it means to be a leader.
But for Trump, "winning" is the only goal
-- and the single measure by which he wants to be judged. Truth (and its
consequences) be damned.
The Point: Trump's willingness to mislead people
solely for his own purposes may well be the most dangerous attribute of a man
with lots and lots of them.
Chris July 5, 2021
by Chris Cillizza and Lauren Dezenski
