Robert Malone is Fooled

Robert Malone, the notorious vaccine skeptic, has published a goofy article titled “Why Did so Many Fall for the Covid Narrative?” He manages two Goebbels misquotations. The first is the quotation this blog follows. He claims the world-wide COVID hoax is an example of Goebbels’s insights. He also cites Goebbels as saying something else, which again Goebbels did not say — it’s from the introduction to a book about Goebbels.

What does one say? I say it tells us something about Malone’s reliability, and it isn’t good.

Mark Twain on Fake Quotations

Mark Twain, who himself is regularly credited with things he did not say, could do it himself. The excellent Quote Investigator blog reports how he won an argument by inventing a quotation. As he said:

"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it"

 I haven't done an update on the quotation for a while.  The last time I checked on 20 August 2019, Google reported 44,000 hits. A Google search today (11 May 2021) finds 96,000 hits.  Bing, which apparently doesn’t omit anything from search results, finds 1,860,000 pages, down from 3,500,000 in August 2019. As always, the search phrase is “truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”

At least my blog page and article debunking the quotation show up on the first page of Google results, and also on Bing, so those who are suspicious enough to check may find enough to make them dubious about the quotation. 

Alpha History Gets an “F”

 Alpha History is an Australian site that claims to be curated by credentialed academics.  Shall we say that they do not provide much evidence to put confidence in their “scholars.” Their post on Nazi propaganda quotations includes the quotation we are following, along with other fabricated quotations.  As usual, they fail to provide sources.  

According to the site:

“Alpha History is written, curated and compiled by qualified teachers and historians. Content on Alpha History is written specifically for students at middle school, high school and undergraduate levels.”

The site has since removed the dubious quotations.

The site also included a lot of copyrighted material from my German Propaganda Archive without credit, but has remedied that.

Astonishing News from Russia

 If you need evidence that the Russian press has not improved since Soviet days, an astonishing article titled “The Great Dog and Pony Show of 2020”  in the 11 November 2020 issue of Pravda will provide it. Allegedly by one Jim Jones, it is a mishmash of deep state nonsense, historical error (did you know that John F. Kennedy was a Republican or that the U.S. had a president named “Ronal Regan”?), and sheer incoherence.  Not surprisingly, it uses the fake Goebbels quotation this blog follows to support a supposed deep state Democratic conspiracy to deceive the world.

It really is an incredible piece, worth reading for amusement if nothing else.

Thomas Sowell Fails to Do His Homework

Thomas Sowell, in a recent interview with Fox, misquotes Goebbels as saying “people will believe any lie if it is repeated long enough and loud enough.” He does qualify his statement by saying that “Goebbels is supposed to have said” it.

As I have observed often before, although Goebbels believed lying to be a necessary tool of the propagandist, in public he always maintained that his propaganda was truthful.  Indeed, he preferred to tell the truth, although often selectively. 

Sowell’s quotation is also more a revised version of Hitler’s notorious claim about the “big lie” technique, although Hitler, too, was not claiming it to be his policy, but rather accusing the Jews of Vienna of the tactic.

Sowell is normally a careful scholar, so it is disappointing to find him citing Goebbels inaccurately.

Still another fabricated Goebels Quotation

A visitor to the site asks me if this quotation, allegedly by Goebbels, is genuine:

Let me control the media and I will turn any nation into a herd of pigs.

A Google search on 25 April 2020 finds 5,500 results.

It is almost certainly fabricated, and for the usual reasons.

1. No one I checked provides a source. The sites that cite it are often dubious (e.g., RT [formerly Russia Today] is a familiar source of dubious information). The RT citation is from 2014, making it one of the earliest I can find.
2. No reliable scholar cites it.  I checked Google Scholar and Google Books. There are a few Google Books citations, but none from a book that inspires any confidence.
3. Although I have not read everything Goebbels wrote, I have read a lot.  I have never encountered this quotation.
4. As I have observed before, Goebbels is unlikely to have said something like this.  A good propagandist —and he was that— is unlikely to make such a statement. 
5. “Media” is not a word Goebbels would have used.  “Die Presse” was the contemporary term.

In short, one cannot prove a negative, but it is highly unlikely that this is something Goebbels said or wrote. As usual, if you find someone who cites this, is is excellent evidence that he or she does not check sources.