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The “Big Lie” was the lie itself — it could not be publicly disproven under the Nazi propaganda machine, and therefore provides a cover story. Nobody really bel
by wayoutthere 7y ago
The “Big Lie” was the lie itself — it could not be publicly disproven under the Nazi propaganda machine, and therefore provides a cover story. Nobody really believed the cover story, but they were also too afraid to find out the truth because they knew it would get buried (along with them and probably their family). Such is the power of the “big lie”.
- the_af 7y agoYes, that's what I was trying to say. The "Big Lie" is not a cognitive bias, it's itself a lie. It's a myth Hitler either invented or popularized. So I don't follow how it relates to the topic under discussion.
- wayoutthere 7y agoI think it’s because Goebbels said something along the lines of “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth” in reference to the Big Lie.
- krapp 7y agoThe cognitive bias is the effect of the big lie. Anti-semitism was already prevalent throughout Western culture at that time, and so the lie was easier to believe because of pre-existing cultural prejudice, and later because the propaganda was simply inescapable.
- the_af 7y agoI'm truly not trying to be dense, but the "Big Lie" (according to Hitler) is something allegedly perpetrated by the Jews against Germany's military, by "blaming" it for the downfall of the nation. "The lie" to what you seem to be referring to doesn't seem to be the the "Big Lie" itself but simply antisemitism ("the Jews are to blame"). These are separate things. It requires antisemitism to believe the Big Lie exists and is perpetrated by "the Jews". From Wikipedia: > "Hitler believed the technique [i.e. the Big Lie] was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic." Maybe we're in violent agreement and I simply misunderstood what you're saying :) edit: to clarify what I'm saying, there are two uses of "Big Lie" at play: 1- The narrative of "The Big Lie", the alleged lie "denounced" by Hitler. This was of course not a real thing, and Hitler made it up while looking for scapegoats and using antisemitism to blame the Jews. 2- The creation of the "Big Lie" itself by Hitler. This is a real thing, but we have a simple word for it: an antisemitic lie.
- krapp 7y agoJudging from your other comments here, we may simply be using the same term in different ways - yours being the historically correct one, mine the colloquial one.
- wayoutthere 7y agoI don't think this confusion is unintentional. It's a classic fascist tactic to muddy the definition of words, phrases and symbols used by their opponents in order to force the conversation into emotional arguments. You can't have a rational argument when nobody agrees on the definition of the thing you're arguing about.