It’s been a while since we did a tracking report on the fabricated quotation by Joseph Goebbels.
The last one, in fact, was on May 20, 2015. At that point there were 45,000 Google hits. On November 25, 2016 the total is 40,600. It would be encouraging to think citations were ebbing, but is a result of changes in Google’s algorithms rather than a decline in use. Microsoft’s Bing search engine provides 2,430,000 results.
Fortunately, our pages are at the top of most search engine results, so those who try to be accurate will find sufficient information as to discourage them from further spreading nonsense.
I just used the first line of this falsely attributed quote on a reply on Youtube. I always found kinda weird that Goebbels would be so sincere - and naive - about something to sensitive to his job, despite neither of this adjectives being fitting to him. Who knows, maybe he confessed that to someone close to him and that's where it comes from, I kept telling myself. Today I finally decided to look for the source of the quotation and, well, here I am, feeling like a fool. Well, at least the worst part of it is to have to actually come back to that Youtube discussion and spread the word, as a kinda of a moral obligation since the discussion was about how repeating something makes people more prone to believe in it. On the good side, this whole story is a very good proof of that.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks for taking your time to research into this subject.