Thursday, October 27, 2022

“Propaganda in Focus” is Fooled

"Propaganda in Focus" is the project of a variety of scholars who are good at practicing what they claim to study, but its writers can be as gullible as anyone else. A recent post by Greg Simons titled “Nordstream Pipeline Sabotage: The Propaganda of Interpretation and (Mis)Representation” concludes using rather dubious reasoning that the United States was probably responsible. In the process of building the argument, Simons paraphrases the Goebbels quotation this blog follows:
“According to the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, if one tells a big lie enough and keeps repeating it, gradually it becomes accepted by more and more as the truth. In this context, the truth is the enemy of the state and its intentions. In the contemporary context, the truth is the enemy of US geopolitical aims and ambitions.”
Although it is a paraphrase, the “enemy of the state” comes from the fabricated quotation this blog follows, indicating that Simons thinks it is genuine, even though the source he quotes from notes that Goebbels didn't actually say it. He also is a fan of Tucker Carlson.