By Brigitte L. Nacos
Drawing on his experience as Hitler’s propagandist-in-chief Joseph Goebbels revealed, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” What once was the centerpiece of Nazi propaganda has become commonplace in contemporary America. The virus of alternative facts—in common language: lies propagated as truth--has spread from Donald Trump’s campaign and White House to his supporting cast in the administration, in Congress, and throughout the onetime Great Old Party.
Whether in his tweets, staged press encounters, or mass rallies the president himself tells and repeats again and again the same alternative facts. Just as important for these lies to spread is that
(1) the right-wing media report Trump’s whopper lies with excitement and breaking news prominence as true revelations; and
(2) the mainstream media, although day-in and day-out attacked by Trump, cover the President’s tweet output constantly and thereby, unwittingly, magnify them.
Today, the wide gap between alternative fact and actual fact, between truth and lie, has increased the ideological and partisan polarization. Roughly half of the American public believes whatever alternative facts the President and his enablers in politics, FOX News, and others in his media propaganda arm say or write, while the other half of the nation form their views based on demonstrable facts.
Take this example: After the President met yesterday with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office (ironically, the same day congressional Democrats publicized the text of the two impeachment articles!), U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that President Trump had “warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections.” Lavrov, however, told the press during a news conference in the Russian Embassy that he and Trump did not discuss elections at all.
Sad but true, the Russian’s version is credible, Pompeo’s is not. After all, President Trump has all along denied any Russian interference in the 2016 election—why, then, would he warn of any interference by Moscow in next year’s presidential race?
The virus of alternative facts has not merely dire consequences at home but also abroad. Trump’s constant attacks on ”fake news” and “fake media”—a reprise of the term “Luegenpresse” (lying press) used by Nazi leaders in their assaults on not yet completely controlled news organizations—have become part of the propaganda schemes of leaders around the world, including those in Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, and Israel.
Most disconcertingly, even when followers recognize fully that their leader is a chronic liar they may not withdraw their support. Indeed, the other day, a voter in the United Kingdom revealed “she was voting for Mr. [Boris] Johnson precisely because he is a proven liar. It shows, she said, that he is ‘human’.”
Preferring serial liars as leaders! That’s the very sad state of affairs here, in the UK, and elsewhere.
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