Nazi Propaganda .We all have only one will.. .Win at any price
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"...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" Even though the facts which prove [the lie] to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think 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
"Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented." - Wikipedia
Before the 20th Century, the terms propaganda and persuasion were nearly synonymous. Propaganda had no negative connotation. That changed in the 1900s. "Propaganda" has a negative meaning today and is often associated with authoritarian governments. But in practice, the persuasive arts and propaganda employ many of the same techniques and it can be difficult to discern one from the other.
Propaganda now also applies equally to powerful private corporations as well as government agencies. The bright line between these concepts, to the extent they can be found, is in the intent of the speakers or authors who broadcast the messages. At the heart of persuasion is a belief in the underlying facts and good public intentions. At the heart of propaganda is intentional deception motivated by self-interest and a desire for wealth or social power. At the root of propaganda, there is always a pernicious lie.
As Hitler called it in the above quote, the art of lying has evolved since his day into a sophisticated field of science today. Mass media, especially electronic communication, is the medium to which the science of lying is being applied. This powerful new science has spawned whole new commercial perception management and "disinformational" enterprises.
Discerning what is factual, accurately perceiving the unvarnished truth, is increasingly more difficult. The veracity and integrity of traditional sources of information are under attack by powerful, unscrupulous special interest groups. At the same time, a steady media stream of maliciously fake information is divergent sets of facts in segments of the population, making normal persuasion methods nearly impossible. It may soon become impossible to distinguish truth from fiction at all. For example, there is rapid progress in the development of deep-fake technologies, powered by artificial intelligence, to create synthetic video content indistinguishable from photographically generated video.
Separating fact from intentional deception has always been a major social challenge, but the recent scale and scope of this difficulty are on a whole new level. Our normal critical thinking skills are no longer up to the task. We must improve our minds' ability to expect and recognize propaganda directed at us. We must fortify ourselves from the mental manipulations constantly assaulting our senses. We need better detection skills and trustworthy methods to quickly identify falsehoods and the liars behind them. But, we also need to develop greater awareness of how human vulnerabilities lead to mental manipulation by others.
On this latter point, the post-election uprising of January 6, 2021, presents a teaching moment in how we can be subconsciously misled by intentional deception. A well-coordinated and emotionally charged campaign to promote the big lie, that the election was stolen, spawned insurrection at the Capitol. For the first time in recent memory, our national media found the temerity to call out the "Big Lie." This is remarkable because members of the media, like all of us, have shown much susceptibility to the impacts of big, audacious lies.
While there are new and high-tech ways to propagate and amplify big lies, the phenomenon itself is not new. History is replete with examples. Big lies are often successful because really brash and forceful lies trigger a vulnerability in how our brains respond to information even when we reject the lie on a cognitive level. Lies create emotional gaps in our thinking that leave room for doubt that didn't previously exist. Even small lies can create unreasonable doubts.
The theme and wording of big public lies are always chosen to evoke strong emotional reactions within an intended audience. Natural social fault lines or existing controversies are often the subjects of the lie. The vocabulary that is chosen always contains emotive, high-inference wording that generates interpretations or reactions well beyond the literal meaning of the words. It is this feature of the big lie that best identifies it early on.
A famous example of evocative word choice occurred during the Bush administration in the lead-up to the Gulf war. There was a media blitz by the White House to drum up support for the war. The relentless blitz alone should have aroused skepticism and careful listening for verifiable facts, but it did not. In a television interview, Dr. Condoleezza Rice said:
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam Hussain] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
The word choice is clearly designed to evoke fear. And it did. The comment was picked up by the media and echoed everywhere for weeks. But fear can be easily evoked by facts as well. Why was the administration using loaded word choices rather than documents, photographs, or testimonial evidence to convince us that "weapons of mass destruction" existed?[i]
A counterexample of this would be the presentation of facts, with aerial reconnaissance photos, at the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That presentation surely evoked a well-informed fear in this country with none of the over-heated rhetoric that accompanies the big lie. In fact, the rhetoric was toned down to minimize the panic and reassure us that the planned military interventions would work. And they did work by the thinnest margin.
The theme of the big lie is a window into what is behind it. In the case of former President Donald Trump, the "stolen election" lie was an obvious attempt to stay in power. The word choices in the messaging were designed to rally supporters and evoke in them hostility and rage. This example, however, is still too fresh to be a useful example.
There are many other examples of the big lie in recent history from the falsely claimed Tonkin Gulf incident of April 4, 1964, which lead to further involvement in the Vietnam war, to the false WMD claims that lead to the Iraq war.
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