From the latest installement of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, someone’s “primary rules”:
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.Sounds like Donald Trump, but it’s not. Can you guess who?
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Goebbels?
You’re close. Click on the link and you’ll see.
Regarding disinformation, in Finland they teach the schoolchildren, with the president being interviewed, that Russia has troll factories. I am baffled that the US still has no consensus to not "believe in" social media. I guess because folks have an emotional vested interest in such media.
Solzhenitsyn said, "One man who speaks truth can bring down a tyranny."
But the person has to be heard. The Steve Bannon strategy (quoted in the HCR piece) is to drown out everyone else. It makes me crazy that Kamala Harris has become so marginalized in “mainstream” news coverage, while “$745” and false claims about FEMA are everywhere.
I am slowly learning to say, "That's social media" when someone says something stupid that they have read. It's not easy; they get annoyed.
I’d be tempted to say “That just isn’t true,” though I doubt it’d get the reaction I’d hope for.
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