02/15/10

The Big Lie

Well, I found something interesting when I was looking up information about The Big Lie. I have always thought that the concept originated with Reich Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, but I found that the expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 Mein Kampf.

The phrase was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile:


His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Does that technique sound familiar?