One of soon-to-be ex-president Donald Trump’s favorite comparisons for himself is to Abraham Lincoln. No one has done more for African Americans than Trump, he claims, except for perhaps Lincoln. In a May 2, 2020, Fox News interview conducted at the Lincoln Memorial, Trump also complained about “a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there [referring to the Lincoln statue under which he was sitting]. They always said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
One of Lincoln’s most famous Trump-relevant sayings, which Trump and Fox News haven’t mentioned, was that “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Trump has been able to quantify the all-of-the-time group: about 40 % of the electorate has continued, since Trump began his campaign five years ago, to believe almost any lie he tweets. In the national election, he actually won 48 % of the vote.
Although people are averse to calling it out, what Trump practices, is Adolph Hitler’s “big lie” technique. Actually in a September 26 interview on MSNBC, presidential candidate Joe Biden did compare Trump to Joseph Goebbels. “He’s sort of like Goebbels,” Biden said. “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge.”
The executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition immediately shot back with his own small big lie accusing Biden of “egregious” naming calling and demanding an immediate apology. “Instead of engaging in a debate on policy, Joe Biden has descended to name-calling and Holocaust references. There is no place in political discourse for Holocaust imagery or comparing candidates to Nazis. It’s offensive and it demeans the memory of the Holocaust, the suffering of the victims, and the lessons we must learn from that terribly dark chapter of history.” Self-righteousness combined with victimhood seems to be a foundation for big lies, which begin with accusing someone else of being a big lier, which is itself a big lie. In this game, the one who goes first wins.
Hitler knew this well. As the deft Wikipedia entry on the topic quotes him, in Mein Kampf (vol. I, ch. 10, James Murphy English translation) he first accuses Jews and Marxists of practicing big lie telling about Germany and then analyzes its effectiveness.
“All this was inspired by the principle — which is quite true within itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. ” Hitler, Adolf: Mein Kampf. vol. I, ch. 10. (James Murphy, English translation)
Trump does not appear nearly so self-conscious about his big lie tactics, although who knows. He appears more like a bully who has learned through kicking a winning that the big lie works, especially when you go first, accusing journalists of writing and media broadcasting “fake news” — which is, of course, the real fake news. When he accuses the FBI and Congress of a “Russia hoax,” this is the real hoax. Trump’s presidency is the true hoax, Trump is himself a fake president.
Now he is telling a big lie that the election of Biden was a big fraud. The fraud that Trump is selling is that the election was a fraud.
The “Big Lie” Wikipedia article also references a psychological profile of Hitler prepared during the war by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (which morphed into the CIA). Hitler’s “primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” Langer, Walter C.: A psychological analysis of Adolph Hitler. OSS Archives. Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001 [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001-5.pdf].
To point out that this is very close to the profile of Trump provided by Mary Trump in her memoir Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man is not to accuse Trump of being Hitler. Trump is a racist demagogue but not as nihilistically evil as Hitler. Still, it is another big lie of omission not to admit the psychological and tactical similarities that are obvious. Political correctness and cancel culture are weapons of the radical right deployed to hide their big lies.
As you point out in your analysis, big lies are a propaganda technique not unique to Trump’s rhetoric.
What I find worrying in the age of social media is the ease with which misinformation and big lies can be spread and become the main narrative for groups of people. These narratives are then reinforced by social media algorithms, showing you similar content with which you previously interacted. This constant repetition throughout multiple media is what makes these lies believable. The speed at which they can spread and reach a large audience makes them much more dangerous than they were 80 years ago.
Thanks for your interesting analysis.
Big lies are huge, unexpected and perverse and the people behind them are fascinating and shocking at the same time. In a negative way, they are fascinating because they seem to handle a big lie so naturally as if it was nothing to blame about. Mostly they are driven by success and a good reputation or to feel better in their lives but their conscience must be on a minimum.
The shocking part is how a person can care this less about rights, values and emotions but live with that in a normal way. What does a big lie do with a personality that is suddenly responsible not just for believers but the ones who get to know the consequences? Sometimes fatal consequences build on nothing but comissions and omissions.