The Pseudoscience in Propaganda – a plain non-surgical analysis

Hemantha Abeywardena writes from London…..

Josef Goebbels of the Third Reich elevated the subject of propaganda to a frightening philosophical height during his tenure as the minister for propaganda under his beloved Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. At the heart of his theory lies a very strange concept, defined by, one-and-only Goebbels; he called it the Big Lie.

According to the club-footed monster, the learning of the concept of the Big Lie is not rocket science; you just have to repeat a lie frequently enough in a manner it sounds impudent enough, for a certain period of time; guess the predicted outcome - masses accept it as a fact or even truth.

Those who want to model the phenomenon of Big Lie, can recite Swine Flu, pandemic and if time permits, the end of mankind too, frequently enough at a place where freedom of speech is permitted - in the absence of threat of prosecution for scare-mongering. A trace of medical significance can be added by wearing a facemask. As the mankind is strong enough to survive until this time, next year, the exercise can be a monument in a mild form to Goebells’ Big Lie, at least for those who want to study the European history in a serious manner.

Goebbels proved he was right. His meteoric rise through the Nazi hierarchy, despite the obvious physical handicap in terms of his diminutive physical size - compared with that of Herman Goering and the likes - and the walking disability, can only be accounted for by his skill to manipulate the German masses by the Big Lie concept.

For instance, when he kept repeating the slogan that the Jews were blood sucking parasites - a phrase borrowed from Hitler - frequently enough with the evidence of certain atrocities committed by a few misfits of the Jewish community against German citizens of Aryan origin – sharp-nosed, blue-eyed and blond-haired stock - the Big Lie worked; it struck a chord with millions of Germans and they adopted the same attitude against the beleaguered Jewish community. So, the majority of Germans just went with the flow while treating the collective social conscience as something for the faint-hearted.

In the short-run, Goebbels became a star in his own right: he rose to fame and power was at his finger tips; his penchant for beautiful blondes never bordered on thirst.

However, in the long run, his propaganda mechanism has been humiliating the entire German nation for generations to come, despite the end of the war, six decades ago.

In retrospect, what Goebbels had been doing in a relatively short despicable period of time was personifying the combination of both embarrassment and ruthlessness. Historians just wonder whether the man who earned a PhD by submitting a thesis on contemporary romantic drama, ever had an opportunity to hear the famous Aesop’s fable about the shepherd boy who used to cry wolf.

When allies liberated Europe, in addition to the challenging tasks that they encountered on daily basis, unwinding the effect of the Big Lie on the ordinary Germans was at the top of agenda too.

Mass graves, walking skeletons, mountains of corpses were hurriedly filmed and made into short movies so that the German masses were exposed to what they didn’t see or believe to be true, at cinemas in the city of Berlin. Some were visibly dismayed; some pretended to be so; and some even found it funny. When two German girls were caught by the British soldiers leaving a cinema laughing on one occasion, the pair was forced to watch the horror movie again and again until they realized their act of stupidity.

The inverse philosopher of modern propaganda ended his life and those of his loved ones by poison, before leaving behind a gruesome legacy for generations to loathe.

Of course, even a die-hard nationalist doesn’t emulate Goebbels as a role model – at least in public. However, his Big Lie concept has not been laid to rest, despite its enviable potential for self-destruction in the long-run.

The verbal metamorphosis of the terms in describing the various trouble spots across the world is a case in point - from executions to genocide through a brief phase of bloodbath. By strange coincidence, it stems from same trunk of self-righteousness that the morally-handicapped mortal, Goebbels, tried to glorify in vain.

Exaggerated casualty figures coupled with invented nightmarish scenarios of starvation or famine do help some media personnel to moonlight as tentacles of marketing arm of certain terror groups, especially when the latter clutch at a straw for survival.

By doing so, they indulge in the dangerous practice of polarizing the terrorists into two camps – good and bad – only until the former matures into the latter by circumstances through the passage of time, may be making their presence felt at the doorsteps of the defenders. Those who are engaged in this exercise as part of their vocation have been expanding the concept of Big Lie in every imaginable direction – until it becomes transparent.

The demise of Goebells led to the opening of a can of worms. Everything that he had been hiding from the masses was laid bare, much to the Germans’ dismay; the excuse of being ignorant of the reality, however, didn’t spare them from the juggernaut of wrath of the civilized world, even as a very feeble form of defence.

Modern terrorists cannot survive a day without hanging on to the Big Lie concept. So, they use everything at their disposal to draw inspiration from it. Media personnel who struggle to survive in the fiercely competitive world of reporting are attracted to them by the magnetic force of scoop and a familiar drama unfolds: threat levels upgraded; sound bites of hunger, starvation and famine are jumbled up in proportion to the pulse rate of the gullible public; terrorists are glorified by stealth at the expense of democratically elected governments – of course, they have their own faults; turning a blind eye on evil acts committed by the terrorists behind bushes, as if they were out of bound for the field of vision of the telescopic lenses.

When media manipulation or manipulation by media completes the full circle, the Big Lie concept comes to an uncomfortable abrupt halt, only to force those who use it to embrace the inevitable reality-check. The propaganda based on Big Lie concept is not a science; nor is it academic stuff for any serious analysis. It is sheer stupidity – plain and simple.

People cannot be taken for a ride for ever; they see through the Big Lie with their third eye, when being subjected to a lengthy period of time by the process of repetition.

The sage, who said that truth and non-violence are as old as hills while wearing a loin cloth as the only garment, just reinforced a view accepted by many generations before him: "Truth Triumphs."

What we witness before our very eyes is the outward manifestation of it; the emphasis of its feasibility only in the Indian Subcontinent is an unwanted geographical distraction.

- Asian Tribune -