Tweet on propaganda

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes journalism.

~ Lisa @freedomspeech50, tweet, June 29, 2021

Carl Sagan on the Big Lie

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured us.  It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken.  Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. 

~ Carl Sagan

Jeffrey Tucker: "Fauci is a performance artist"

Fauci is a performance artist who wakes up in the morning and tries to more than anything else figure out his media gigs.  He doesn't look at the science...  He knows his talking points and he clearly believes in the noble lie, as he himself admitted on the mask [issue].  And he's flip flopped on every issue from schools to PCR testing to travel restrictions to business closures and so on.  This man will say anything.  He is impressed with himself as a performance artist; that's what he is...  His main concern is "what am I supposed to say today to achieve my political goals and please my benefactors?"...  This is the most untrustworthy intellectual in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "Fauci Slammed by Nobel Prize Winner with Jeffrey Tucker," OAN via YouTube, December 14, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on the false narrative of Western oppression of minorities

Here is another politically correct lie: In Western democracies minorities are oppressed. To every reasonable person the falsity of this is immediately evident. Rather than being oppressed, racial minorities in the United States and most western countries enjoy more protections and privileges than the majority. This is exactly the reason why minorities from non-western societies are so eager to come and live in western societies. So much so that we have to expand considerable efforts and resources to keep them out for fear of being overrun. Conversely, we do not see minorities living in Western democracies running away from their oppression to live in those wonderful non-Western cultures and societies of which multiculturalists are so fond. Why do you think this is? The reality of the situation and the behavior of people themselves completely disprove the official PC narrative. Any intimations of the obvious, however, immediately draws the ire of the politically correct organs and can result in prompt cancellation.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Aim of Social Justice Movement is Subversion of Core Western Values," LewRockwell.com, August 31, 2020

Bill Bonner on the crowd and the Big Lie

Crowds need lies, not truths; they are incapable of living with the infinite complexity, paradoxes, nuances, and gray areas of the truth.  Mobs belittle the truth to the point that it no longer resembles itself.

From the truth that stocks can rise for long periods of time came the lie that they will always do so.

From the truth that consumer spending can boost an economy became the lie that consumer spending is all an economy needs.

From the truth that consumer credit can boost consumer spending became the lie that credit can replace actual savings.

From the truth that the Fed can manipulate the economy in the short run became the truth that the Fed could control it over the long run.

From the truth that foreigners are generally willing to accept U.S. dollars in exchange for valuable goods and services came the lie that they must always do so.

And from the observation that the American economy - with its emphasis on debt, consumer spending, and stock market investing by the lumeninvestoriat - was a great success in the 1990s, came the fantasy that it represented the end of history.

Taken together, blended and simplified, these notions came to produce a sentiment that was completely at odds with the wisdom of previous generations and contrary to economic reality.

~ Bill Bonner, Financial Reckoning Day (2003), pp. 240-241

Joseph Goebbels on the Big Lie

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Joseph Goebbels

Bertrand Russell on confirmation bias

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious.  If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.  If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.  The origin of myths is explained in this way.

~ Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom

Kevin Duffy on Love Canal, a "Big Lie in plain sight"

Here is an example of official narrative: Love Canal. For the official version, go to the EPA's website: https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy.html. Notice that the lead-up to the crisis is short, while the crisis part is in horrific detail. 

Now go the the Wikipedia page, a relatively neutral site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal. If you read the section "Sale of the site," you'll notice some important details were left out by the EPA.

Curious to know what really happened from an investigative journalist? Check this out: https://reason.com/1981/02/01/love-canal.

The real story is almost 180 degrees from the EPA version. Yet this Big Lie in plain sight continues to be perpetuated by documentarians to this day.

~ Kevin Duffy

Kevin Duffy on the changing nature of fraud

As a society, we’ve replaced conscious deceit with self-deceit, targeted fraud with intellectual fraud, and little lies with the Big Lie.

~ Kevin Duffy, May 24, 2019

Adolph Hitler on the big lie

[I]n 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; since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.  It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.  Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

~ Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

Daniel Kahneman on the spreading falsehoods

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.  Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

~ Daniel Kahneman

Friedrich Hayek on the role of official myths in totalitarian systems

[I]n the disciplines dealing directly with human affairs and therefore most immediately affecting political views, such as history, law, or economics, the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed In a totalitarian system, and the vindication of the official views becomes the sole object...  These disciplines have, indeed, in all totalitarian countries become the most fertile factories of the official myths  which the rulers use to guide the minds and wills of their subjects.  It is not surprising that in these spheres even the pretense that they search for truth is abandoned...

~ "The Road to Serfdom," Chapter 11, “The End of Truth,” p. 161

Adolph Hitler on the Big Lie

The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

~ Adolph Hitler