The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over…. It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.
- Josef Goebbels
As hesitant as I am to run the risk of having someone invoke Godwin’s Law on me, no one has been, or ever will be, more qualified to address this subject than Josef Goebbels. Call it propaganda, message management, spin doctoring, or as I prefer, “lying,” the result is what any competent political operative tries to accomplish: planting a mental seed that, when watered through mind-numbing repetition, will bloom into a conviction. This works best, of course, when a voter can be reached before they’ve really thought about an issue, and it’s why “talking points” are so successful. The Nazi propagandameiester wasn’t the first to understand this truth, just the one who elevated it to an art form
Goebbels, as reprehensible as he was, was and remains the master and model for political messaging. His theory was deceptively simple- “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth…. The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.” Propaganda, when you break it down to its most basic level, is a very simplistic undertaking; it’s the simplistic and easily digestible ideas that get the most traction. Goebbels understood this reality as no one else has before or since- though several- Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and Andrew Breitbart leap to mind- like-minded souls have come close.
Republicans have understood and effectively employed this truth for years; if you listen to Fox News Channel or any news conference given by a Republican leader, they use the same talking points and they repeat them incessantly. Democrats, unfortunately, have yet to discover that Goebbels was on to something- not that I’m advocating for this sort of propaganda activity, mind you. I’m just belaboring the blindingly obvious.
The video from The Daily Show may be from 2004, but you can see the same methods being practiced today. They work because most Americans can’t be bothered to pay attention and/or think for themselves. Most Americans are what have charitably been called “low information voters;” they don’t know, often don’t care, and are generally susceptible to the methods Goebbels employed so effective for the Third Reich. This doesn’t mean that I’m comparing the GOP (and Fox News Channel) to the Nazi Party; but their methods were certainly cribbed from Goebbels’ playbook. If Democrats could manage to remove their anteriors from their posteriors, they’d be doing the same thing…because it works.
Of course, if Americans would think for themselves, we’d be having a much different conversation. The truth is that it’s much easier to react that think critically. Today’s Lee Atwaters, Karl Roves, and Andrew Breitbarts understand this and employ Goebbel’s methods expertly. What makes matters worse is that the media is often all too happy to play along; it’s easier and requires far less effort than actually doing anything resembling journalism.
WE DESERVE BETTER. Then again, we have the power to achieve better, don’t we??
