In the last 24 hours, twenty new pages cite the phrase “truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” All are from the right, using the quotation to attack President Obama. This is fairly typical. During the Bush administration, those on the left found it useful to attack him as an acolyte of Joseph Goebbels.
The blog Polichicks has a post titled “Truth is the Greatest Enemy of the State.” It claims that former IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller was following Goebbels’s strategy. And following Goebbels’s advice, the post claims, has been the policy of the Obama administration: “This has been the across the board mantra for President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for four and a half years.”
Friday, May 24, 2013
Tracking Report #6
A search on Google for the phrase “truth is the greatest enemy of the State” returns 380,000 hits. Bing returns 8,510. These are holding relatively steady since the last time we checked on 12 February 2013.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Google vs. Bing Search Results
A search today on Google for the phrase “truth is the greatest enemy of the State” returns 396,000 hits. On Bing, it only gets 8,710, an interesting difference.
And on Google, the first hit is our page on False Nazi Quotations. It doesn’t make the top ten on Bing, although this blog is the 5th item on the first Bing page. Rather curiously, the top Bing hit is a 2007 blog entry — and the blog has not been updated since 2008. Makes one wonder about Bing.
And on Google, the first hit is our page on False Nazi Quotations. It doesn’t make the top ten on Bing, although this blog is the 5th item on the first Bing page. Rather curiously, the top Bing hit is a 2007 blog entry — and the blog has not been updated since 2008. Makes one wonder about Bing.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Tracking Report #5
As of today, a Google search for “truth is the greatest enemy of the State” returns 348,000 hits. We are happy to report that the top two are our pages that attempt to persuade people not to use the dubious quotation. However, we don’t seem to be having a great impact. People tend to believe that “if it is on the Internet, it must be true.”
There are also 83,000 pages that attribute the quotation to “Joseph M. Goebbels.” As we’ve noted before, “M” was not his middle initial.
There are also 83,000 pages that attribute the quotation to “Joseph M. Goebbels.” As we’ve noted before, “M” was not his middle initial.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Other Dubious Quotations
The 7 December 2012 Wall Street Journal has a page 1 story on a fake quotation by Thomas Jefferson that has been used by, among others, President Obama. There is a page on Monticello.org debunking several dozen falsely attributed Jefferson quotations. The article also discusses other scholars who attempt the Sisyphusian task of debunking fabricated quotations by Churchill, Lincoln, and others. The article cites Churchill expert Richard Langworth:
It’s a hopeless task, he says, complaining the Internet is like an electronic “Hyde Park Corner” where anybody can say anything, whether it is true or not. “You would need an army of secretaries to reply to all these tweets. Twitter and Facebook have made it worse, because people glom onto these things and pass it on and there it goes.”It’s good to have company in opposing dubious quotations.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Sighting Report #8
We're at high season in the election cycle and the quotation continues to spread: 179 new pages in the past week. Most associate Romney or Obama with Goebbels.
Another quotation site has popped up, too. Crossquotes provides quotations “from a Christian Perspective.” It includes the quotation. As a Christian myself I like to see people take the trouble to be accurate.
Meanwhile, a Google search for the phrase “truth is the greatest enemy of the State” provides only 166,000 hits, a significant decline. We find, though, that Google results vary widely so we will wait to see if this represents a long-term decline. There are still 32,000 pages that attribute the quotation to ‘Joseph M. Goebbels,” although “M” was not his middle initial.
Another quotation site has popped up, too. Crossquotes provides quotations “from a Christian Perspective.” It includes the quotation. As a Christian myself I like to see people take the trouble to be accurate.
Meanwhile, a Google search for the phrase “truth is the greatest enemy of the State” provides only 166,000 hits, a significant decline. We find, though, that Google results vary widely so we will wait to see if this represents a long-term decline. There are still 32,000 pages that attribute the quotation to ‘Joseph M. Goebbels,” although “M” was not his middle initial.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Success Report #1: Michael C. Moynihan in “Tablet”
One of our hopes for this blog is that it will spread the knowledge that the Goebbels quotation is a forgery. We’re beginning to have occasional successes. Just recently Michael C. Moynihan wrote an interesting piece titled “Hitler on the Campaign Trail” that looks at the spread of Nazi comparisons in American politics. He writes:
There is one point at which Moynihan is a tad unclear. He writes in his penultimate paragraph:
It’s also probably worth noting that leading Nazis believed their own propaganda. Much of what the Nazis said about Jews was false, but the only credible explanation for the enormous effort Hitler put into killing Europe’s Jews is that he really did believe that they were Germany’s great enemy in the world.
A central claim of Nazi propaganda was was that “world Jewry” intended to wipe out Germany both as a nation and as a people. This was a false claim (or else the alleged powerful forces of “World Jewry” were remarkably weak, since within ten years of total defeat West Germany was in the midst of the “economic miracle” that continues today). However, the common definition of “lie” assumes intent to deceive. A first-grader who writes on a test that “2 + 2 = 5” is wrong, but not a liar. I don’t mean to suggest that the falsehoods in Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda were equivalent to a first-grader’s addition error — there is moral culpability in spreading false information. One might argue, however, that although Nazi propaganda was often false, its makers did not always think that they were lying. In that sense, perhaps some Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda is less an example of the “big lie” than of the human tendency to see what one wants to see.
While fascism is a major political force almost nowhere, it is inaccurately referenced everywhere. The “Big Lie” myth is bipartisan, popular with excitable representatives of both political parties and all ideologies: Sen. Chuck Grassley, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, and Chris Matthews have all accused their enemies of planning to lie loud and lie often—just like the Nazis. And the fear of impending American fascism, a charge made most recently by Rep. Ron Paul during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, are distressingly common. Even the recent kerfuffle over an anti-Obama cover story in Newsweek led one Huffington Post blogger to dismiss the author, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, as a “British fascist.”
If an American politician playing fast-and-loose with the facts is indistinguishable from an editorialist for Der Stürmer, than how does one distinguish between Paul Ryan and Heinrich Himmler? If Niall Ferguson is a “British fascist,” what would one call Lord Haw-Haw, Oswald Mosley, or the bald-headed street brawlers of the British National Party? “Rather severe British fascists”?That’s exactly the point we’re hoping to get across in this blog and it’s satisfying to see it used in ways that make the point to a broader audience.
There is one point at which Moynihan is a tad unclear. He writes in his penultimate paragraph:
The “big lie” wasn’t a Nazi propaganda “technique.” It wasn’t “invented” or “pioneered” by either Hitler or Goebbels. Nor was it the backbone of an anti-Semitic media strategy that precipitated the Holocaust.I initially misread the first sentence as suggesting that the Nazis were not major users of falsehood, which seemed odd in the context of the essay — I think the quotation marks around “technique” threw me off. Mr. Moynihan dropped me a note explaining that his point was the the technique was hardly unique to the Nazis. That makes excellent sense, and is much more consistent with the flow of the essay than my original reading.
It’s also probably worth noting that leading Nazis believed their own propaganda. Much of what the Nazis said about Jews was false, but the only credible explanation for the enormous effort Hitler put into killing Europe’s Jews is that he really did believe that they were Germany’s great enemy in the world.
A central claim of Nazi propaganda was was that “world Jewry” intended to wipe out Germany both as a nation and as a people. This was a false claim (or else the alleged powerful forces of “World Jewry” were remarkably weak, since within ten years of total defeat West Germany was in the midst of the “economic miracle” that continues today). However, the common definition of “lie” assumes intent to deceive. A first-grader who writes on a test that “2 + 2 = 5” is wrong, but not a liar. I don’t mean to suggest that the falsehoods in Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda were equivalent to a first-grader’s addition error — there is moral culpability in spreading false information. One might argue, however, that although Nazi propaganda was often false, its makers did not always think that they were lying. In that sense, perhaps some Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda is less an example of the “big lie” than of the human tendency to see what one wants to see.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)