Political

The Big Lie

What it is

Telling a lie so enormous and audacious that people assume it must contain some truth, because they cannot believe anyone would fabricate something so significant. Term coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925), attributed there to Jewish opponents; ironically deployed most systematically by Hitler's own regime.

How it works

People can easily identify small lies but struggle to conceive that someone would completely fabricate a major claim. The scale of the lie itself becomes evidence of its truth in the audience's mind. When repeated frequently enough by authority figures, the Big Lie gains a veneer of legitimacy that makes questioning it feel unreasonable.

Real-world examples

  • •Historical: Nazi propaganda blaming Germany's WWI defeat on a "stab-in-the-back" by Jews and socialists rather than military factors — a foundational Big Lie that enabled subsequent atrocities.
  • •Historical: Soviet-era denials of the Holodomor famine (1932–33), and later official denials of specific purges under Stalin, maintained across decades despite documentary evidence.
  • •Corporate: tobacco companies denying the cancer link for ~40 years despite internal knowledge; fossil-fuel companies denying climate science for ~30 years despite internal knowledge.
  • •Contemporary — US right: Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 US presidential election was "stolen" through widespread fraud, maintained despite dozens of court losses and unified rejections by state election officials of both parties.
  • •Contemporary — international: Jair Bolsonaro's pre- and post-election claims (2022 Brazil) that voting machines were systematically fraudulent, leading to the January 8, 2023 storming of government buildings.
  • •Contemporary — historically on the left: repeated official denials by the PRC of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, and denial of the scale of the Great Leap Forward famine deaths — the Big Lie is a technique of consolidated power, not a partisan technique.
  • •Contemporary — cross-partisan: sustained claims of stolen elections after losses that lacked corroborating evidence (e.g., some 2000 US "selected not elected" rhetoric on the left; 2016 "Russia stole it" overreach separate from documented interference; 2020 US "stolen" claims on the right).

Ethical guidelines

  • ●The Big Lie is among the most dangerous and destructive propaganda techniques in history.
  • ●It directly attacks the foundations of shared truth necessary for democratic society.
  • ●Those who deploy Big Lies bear responsibility for all downstream consequences, including violence carried out in their name.
  • ●The technique is a tool of any actor with the power and reach to sustain a coordinated narrative — it is not the property of any political side. Evaluate specific instances on their evidentiary merits.

How to defend against it

  • ►The scale of a claim does not correlate with its truth — demand evidence proportional to the claim.
  • ►Check if the claim has been verified by multiple independent sources with no coordination or shared incentives.
  • ►Be especially skeptical of dramatic claims that conveniently serve the interests of the person making them.
  • ►Notice the pattern: Big Lies are usually paired with attacks on the institutions (courts, journalism, science, election officials) that would normally refute them. If a claim comes bundled with "and don't trust anyone who tells you otherwise," that's a tell.
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