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By contrast, the polarizing political movements of 21st-century Europe demand much less of their adherents. They don’t require belief in a full-blown ideology,
by nkurz 8y ago
By contrast, the polarizing political movements of 21st-century Europe demand much less of their adherents. They don’t require belief in a full-blown ideology, and thus they don’t require violence or terror police. They don’t force people to believe that black is white, war is peace, and state farms have achieved 1,000 percent of their planned production. Most of them don’t deploy propaganda that conflicts with everyday reality. And yet all of them depend, if not on a Big Lie, then on what the historian Timothy Snyder once told me should be called the Medium-Size Lie, or perhaps a clutch of Medium-Size Lies.
This is an interesting theory. The author says that for Poland, the "medium size lie" is that "a nefarious plot brought down the president’s plane in April 2010". And for Hungary, "It is the belief, shared by the Russian government and the American alt-right, in the superhuman powers of George Soros, the Hungarian Jewish billionaire who is supposedly plotting to bring down the nation through the deliberate importation of migrants, even though no such migrants exist in Hungary."
What is the equivalent "medium size lie" for other countries? As an American, I'm particularly interested in what people think the lie currently is for America. Are there just two main lies, that each major political party believes about the other? Or are there combinatorially many, what each subfaction believes about each other subfaction? Can opposite answers to the same question be the same lie? I'm not interested in debating whether any particular lie is actually true, and more interesting to hear what people believe, and to try to understand why they believe it.
- TomMckenny 8y agoCandidates for the lies in the US would be: That Obama was secretly a foreign born Muslim. That Hilary Clinton ran a child abuse ring out of a pizza joint. That school massacres aren't real but are staged by actors and the "lying" media. That Hillary Clinton murdered Seth Rich. That a deep state, also run by Clinton, is lying about Russian interference and fabricating evidence against Manafort, Cohen et al. That the Puerto Rican death toll is just a fabrication to make the administration look bad That Climate change is a Chinese plot to destroy American business.
- gwbas1c 8y agoBoth sides on the gun debate lie.
- adamzochowski 8y ago) ) That school massacres aren't real ) ) but are staged by actors and the "lying" media. ) Both sides on the gun debate lie. How can both sides lie at the quoted example? Either there were people killed or not? How can both sides lie at the same time about it? Can a person be half killed? Even if there was a Schrödinger person, wouldn't fact checking collapse the state to either one?
- gwbas1c 8y agoBecause one side perpetuates the good guy with the guy myth, and the other side drastically inflates the numbers of school shootings. Hense, both sides lie. The mistruths end up being the biggest obstacle to proper gun reform. We can't compromise when both sides aren't truthful or realistic. If you think your side is "right" then I suggest educating yourself about guns from someone without a political agenda.
- adamzochowski 8y agoI am curious about inflating school shooting numbers. Do you have links for that? Are you saying that there were fake deaths and there are crisis paid actors?
- gwbas1c 8y agohttps://www.npr.org/2018/03/15/593831564/the-disconnect-between-perceived-danger-in-u-s-schools-and-reality https://www.npr.org/2018/03/15/593831564/the-disconnect-betw... That's NPR! Seriously, gun control reform is very important. We just need the activists on both sides to start acting like reasonable adults. (Begin rant) On the right, there's the "good guy with the gun" myth; and the belief that responsible homeowners need to have a gun "for safety." Both are absurd. On the left, there's this belief that bad guns can be banned, and good guns allowed. That's also absurd, because all guns are designed to kill! A hunter sitting in a tree waiting for a deer uses the same equipment as a man looking through a window waiting for his victim. That's what I mean by acting like adults. The right and left are so unrealistic that they're going to get nowhere with real reform.
- cmroanirgo 8y ago> What is the equivalent "medium size lie" for other countries? As an American, I'm particularly interested in what people think the lie currently is for America In both cases, I'd recommend watching this video "Everything's a rich man's trick": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM (3 hrs) A 'teaser trailer' exists which jumps to the heart of the message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgsaXooC6AE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgsaXooC6AE (9 mins) It's an interesting & confronting watch.
- menotyou 8y agoThe US-American lie is that the world is a dangerous place. A lot of the problem is related the fearmongering media, and how the American public buys into it too much. Americans are afraid of each other and even more about others, are paranoid about so many things. Now it is a disease. There's a culture of fear.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoFor the US: Economically, the lie for the right is that everything would be fine if we could just get the government out of peoples' way so they could be free to efficiently engage in economic activity. The lie for the left is that everything will be fine if we can get the government to stop regular people from being exploited by the powerful. Socially and/or morally, the lie for the left is that people are basically good in terms of crime - that crime needs to be treated rather than fought. But people are bad in terms of social interaction - that racism and sexism are everywhere and need to be confronted as evil. The lie of the right is that people are evil in terms of crime, that crime needs to be fought, but that racism and sexism are perhaps behavioral problems, but not really moral problems.