Article on Fake News Uses Fake Quotation

Peacock Panache, an site on the political left, has a post titled “Fake News and the Big Lie” on 1 November 2017.  It is less than enthused about Trump Administration statements and claims:

The study did find that Trump’s constant calling-out of specific media sources affected public perceptions of the accuracy of those sources. That shouldn’t surprise us. There is a famous Joseph Goebbels quote, describing the propaganda tactic known as “The Big Lie.”

It then cites the alleged quotation by Goebbels.
So we have an article assailing fake news that uses a fake quotation.  

The Fabricated Quotation and Donald Trump

Over the years that we have followed this fabricated quotation allegedly by Joseph Goebbels, we find it is regularly used by both those on the right and left to assail their opponents.  Let’s look at what has happened since the advent of Donald Trump.

A Google search on November 25, 2016 finds about 35,000 web pages with the quotation that mention Donald Trump.  Clinton supporters used it to denigrate Trump, and Trump supporters used it against Clinton.  Some examples:

An August 11, 2016 post on westernjournalism.com claims that Clinton is following Joseph Goebbels’s strategy in dealing with Donald Trump. It claims to be “a rapid, up-to-date political news service that is relevant to the Tea Party movement of Constitutional conservatives.”  It doesn’t believe in fact-checking, apparently.

Dr. Rich Swier, who advertises himself as a "conservative with a conscience,” does not apply his conscience in matters of accuracy. In a September 13, 2016 post titled

    “Hillary’s Goebbels Problem — ‘The Big Lie’”

he accuses the Clinton campaign of using Goebbels’s methods by “frantically seeking ways to hide the truth about Mrs. Clinton.”

Meanwhile, Sputnik News, a Russian site with a remarkable ability to convey untrue material, carried a piece in September 2016 titled  “Trump’s Immigration Speech and Godwin’s Law.” It cited the Goebbels quotation and claimed that Trump was using Goebbels’s methods.

Closer to home, the Piqua Daily Call, a newspaper in Florida, published a column by Maria Boone titled “Burning down the house.”  She says, among other things:

An infamous man from history once declared “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

The speaker worked for a man who has much in common with Donald Trump. This man found himself on the cusp of power in a country that was floundering in turmoil and dissatisfaction with its government. The bossman, like Trump, found he could garner support by proclaiming who people should be afraid of and who they should blame for all their problems. The speaker was Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minster in Nazi Germany. His boss was Adolf Hitler.

Trump has found his own Goebbels in Steve Bannon, an anti-Semite, xenophobe, misogynist, white nationalist. Bannon has been named chief strategist and senior counselor for the Trump administration. Bannon hosts a website that asks questions such as “Would you rather your daughter be a feminist or have cancer?”

There are more.  We’re actually surprised there aren’t more than 35,000, but they will surely come as the left begins focusing on Trump’s presidency and the right assails those who fail to recognize his virtues.

The Dubious Goebbels Quotation on Academic Sites

Although there are tens of thousands of citations of the dubious quotation on the web, there are far fewer on academic sites (.edu).  Still, there are some.

Professor Chris H. Lewis at the University of Colorado teaches a course titled “America, the Environment, & the Global Economy.”  Among other things it promotes critical thinking, for which he gives twelve characteristics, one of which is “use credible sources.”   He cites the fake Goebbels translation.  He provides a source for his previous quotation from Hitler. He doesn’t source the Goebbels quotation.  He likes Colbert’s concept of “truthiness.” In a way, his citation is an example of “truthiness.”  People’s “gut feeling” is that it is something that Goebbels would say, so obvious that examining its accuracy is unnecessary.

A second is in a 2004 article by Peter McLaren and Gregory Martin at UCLA titled “The Legend of the Bush Gang: Imperialism, War, and Propaganda.”  It has the Goebbels quotation at the beginning of the article, with no source provided.   The article begins by noting that “fascism and war” have become the United States’s preferred methods to starve off economic collapse and relieve “the agonizing tension of its underlying contradictions.” Since in their view the United States is following fascist policies, it only makes sense to cite a leading fascist to support their point.

Sighting Report #11

The MWC News is a site claiming all sorts of noble virtues, including:

“Our aim is to offer a clear-cut distinction between fact and opinion...”

This post, dated 9 August 2014, is on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.  It quotes the fabricated Goebbels quotation to support the claim that the media are complicit in supporting guilty Israel against innocent Hamas.

Their ability to separate fact from fabrication does not seem well-developed.  As is so often the case, they use the quotation without bothering to check its accuracy because it says what they want to say. Like most who use the quotation, they also select the evidence they think supports their case, ignoring what doesn’t agree with their positions.

Sighting Report #10

It’s bad enough having hundreds of thousands of web pages spreading the false Goebbels quotation, but people can even proclaim their gullibility by wearing a t-shirt with the phrase.

A t-shirt company offers Sarah Palin against a Nazi backdrop with the quotation “Truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”

And you can also get the quotation on a bumper sticker, courtesy of e-Bay.

Sighting Report #7

With the political season raging, people continue to use the fabricated quotation against their political foes.  Supporters of the Democratic Party are using it more than the Republicans at the moment.  For an example, see a post on the Washington Monthly site.

There are 190 new pages for the past week.

Sighting Report #1

Along with tracking reports on the number of citations, we will also post new Internet pages that use the fabricated quotation. 

A Google search on 12 April 2012 finds 171 new search results for the last week.  Here are two of them.

• Sago, a conservative blog that claims to be “handcrafted opinion served fresh daily” has a post dated 8 April 2012 that criticizes President Obama: “By his remarks, he is making it clear that objective reporting is neighter necessary nor desired.  This thinking is reminiscent of Joseph Goebbels when he said, ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it....’
• My Common Sense Politics  is a blog to the left of Barack Obama. It has a long list of quotations to the bottom left of its pages.  One of those quotations is the fabricated quotation by Joseph Goebbels.

We will post interesting sighting reports as we come across them.