The Year of the Big Lie

[Harry Hope]

http://www.truth-out.org/the-year-big-lie-6-outrageous-falsehoods-that-took-flight-201066454

The Year of the Big Lie: Six Outrageous Falsehoods That Took Flight in 2010

Friday 31 December 2010

by: Adele M. Stan

In a political year dominated by tales of polarization, a flurry of themes emerged as I contemplated the year just past -- the year of the Tea Party, the year that psycho became the new normal (Glenn Beck), the year in which info leaks rocked the world (WikiLeaks), the year that saw accomplishments defying conventional wisdom (Obama). But at the root of all of these themes lies the Lie; all other themes speak to either its advancement or in its defiance.

In the politics of 2010, the Big Lie, in both its gigantic and more attenuated forms, was almost always deployed in the service of corporations. It may not be so obvious at the surface, especially when the Lie dubs the nation's first black president a racist, or labels a Jewish holocaust survivor an anti-Semite, but the ultimate aim of the Lie in these contexts is to discredit purveyors of ideas and policies that certain corporate leaders and shills find threatening to their quest for all the world's riches.

What follows is a mere sampling of some of the defining lies of 2010, not presented in any particular order of importance, for they're all of a piece.

The Big Lie

The Big Lie theory goes like this: A gigantic, audacious lie is more likely to be believed by the masses than a small one if it is repeated often enough. First articulated in the pages of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (who attributed the practice, of course, to Jews) and deployed as a tactic by Nazi master propagandist Joseph Goebbels, the Big Lie went mainstream in 2010, as its propagators on the Right were accepted by big media as respectable articulators of a legitimate point of view. These include Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and numerous other Republican officials and Tea Party leaders who, in our first Big Lie, refer to the 2010 passage of health-care reform legislation as "a government takeover of health care." The non-partisan PolitiFact.com named this assertion the lie of the year -- an award that will likely have no impact on the issue's framing, since media figures generally fail to challenge the assertion when it's made.

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"It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully."

Aristotle

[somone]

1. They were just getting us ready for the next Big Lie:

"We must reform Social Security to save it"
"Deficits are out of control - America can't afford New Deal programs"
etc. etc.

[bemildred]

2. Every year is the year of the big lie when you have a government of the big lie. nt