I'm kind of dazzled at how simple it (big lie and repetition) seems to be. And how effective. It seems there must be some classic work that discusses this somewhere, no? But outside of some famous quotes, I can't think of anything that addresses this directly. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Michael
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Any particular big lie? The current totemistic mantra, `...weapons of mass destruction' or the latest, `George is not a moron?'
The classic work on themes related to the big lie at least for me, was Cassirer's Myth of State (1946). It's a collection in three parts that opens with mythical thought, language and social life. Part two contrasts Logos and Mythos in Greek philosophy, with an essay on Plato's Republic. It then traces a rough development of religious and metaphysical background of the Medieval theory of state, and the beginning of a modern idea of state with Machiavelli and leading into the philosophies of the Enlightenment.
Part three opens with an analysis of Carlyle, which James Heartfield considers a completely mistaken reading. I never got around to reading Carlyle to figure out if Cassirer was that far off or not. In a sense it doesn't particularly matter, since Cassirer's use of Carlyle is as an example of a more general idea or ideal of 19C political thought, heros and hero worship. If Carlyle was mocking some idea and Cassirer mis-read him as celebrating it, the points Cassirer uses Carlyle for still stand. The last subsection deals with Hegel and ends with a final essay, `The Techniques of the Modern Political Myths'.
Obviously this book deals with more than just the big lie and its repetition. It was Cassirer's last work and was incomplete when it was published. The last sections were devoted to understanding the background of how the Nazis in particular developed their ideology and its political effectiveness to overthrow the German state. It links up these `modern' and rational techniques with their grounding and content in mythological thinking.
There is also Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) which has long passages of analysis on the big lie, the fabrication of new words and titles, and the seamless mediocrity of the totalitarian mind.
I like the two, Cassirer and Arendt woven together because of their high modernist rationalism and the extreme range of their erudition and conceptual reach. I think between them, they just about cover it all.
Just now, looking through Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, trying to find a suitable passage on the big lie there is this:
``The assumption that Nazi law was binding beyond the German border and the punishment of non-Germans were more than mere devices of oppression. Totalitarian regimes are not afraid of the logical implications of world conquest even if they work the other way round and are detrimental to their own peoples' interests. Logically, it is indisputable that a plan for world conquest involves the abolition of differences between the conquering mother country and the conquered territories, as well as the difference between foreign and domestic politics, upon which all existing nontotalitarian institutions and all international intercourse are based. If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror. And it is perfectly true that the totalitarian movement seizes power in much the same sense as a foreign conqueror may occupy a country which he governs not for its own sake but for the benefit of something or somebody else. Imperialist conquest, as we have seen, introduced into the old scheme of exploitation the new device of keeping one country not for its own riches but for its usefulness for rule over still another country. In the case of totalitarianism, this ultimate end is pressed still further, because there exists neither a third nor a mother country to which the conquered people are sacrificed, but only a nontangible notion of ultimate global rule...''
...The trouble with totalitarian regimes is not that they play power politics in an especially ruthless way, but that behind their politics is hidden an entirely new and unprecedented concept of power, just as behind their Realpolitik lies an entirely new and unprecedented concept of reality. Supreme disregard for immediate consequences rather than ruthlessness; rootlessness and neglect of national interests rather than nationalism; contempt for utilitarian motives rather than unconsidered pursuit of self-interest; `idealism,' i.e., their unwavering faith in an ideological fictitious world, rather than lust for power---these have all introduced into international politics a new and more disturbing factor than mere aggressiveness would have been able to do...
...The structurelessness of the totalitarian state, its neglect of material interests, its emancipation from the profit motive, and its nonutilitarian attitudes in general have more than anything else contributed to making contemporary politics well-nigh unpredictable. The inability of the nontotalitarian world to grasp a mentality which functions independently of all calculable action in terms of men and material, and is completely indifferent to national interest and the well-being of its people, shows itself in a curious dilemma of judgment: those who rightly understand the terrible efficiency of totalitarian organization and police are likely to overestimate the material force of totalitarian countries, while those who understand the wasteful incompetence of totalitarian economics are likely to underestimate the power potential which can be created in disregard of all material factors...
...Totalitarianism in power uses the state as its outward facade, to represent the country in the nontotalitarian world. As such, the totalitarian state is the logical heir of the totalitarian movement from which it borrows its organizational structure. Totalitarian rulers deal with nontotalitarian governments in the same way they deal with parliamentary parties or intraparty factions before their rise to power and, through on an enlarged international scene, are again faced with the double problem of shielding the fictitious world of the movement (or totalitarian country) from the impact of factuality and of presenting a semblance of normality and common sense to the normal outside world..'' (395-8p)
In these passages Arendt is referencing Hitler and Stalin as examples, which I omitted, partly for length, but more to highlight the contemporary application of these thoughts to George Bush and the US extreme rightwing government.
Big lies are created as pieces of a much more comprehensive mythological system of beliefs. So, I think the effectiveness of any particular big lie depends upon a common and very basic confusion between what is rational and logically coherent with what is factually correct.
It is always possible to fabricate a self-consistent, coherent and rational explanation for some set of material circumstances which has little or nothing to do with their grounding in empirically determined facts. This is the core of mythological thinking and we do it all the time. A mythology, like an ideology depends on its own self-contained logical coherence for its system of verification, its `truthfulness'. And it was this feature of mythological thought that Cassirer found was appropriated by modern political states and movements, with the Nazis as the critical example. The difference between a naturalistic mythological system of beliefs, and the modern and technically perfected fabrications based on the same general principle, is that in the latter case, making the workings of the natural world intelligible is completely irrelevant. The point is not to understand the world, but to obscure it.
Arendt takes up this theme, but as seen through the lens of its social and political consequences and more concrete elaborations.
While I consider both Cassirer and Arendt very important to understanding what we are living through, they were both blind to how deeply and profoundly the US socio-political culture was effected and deformed by its wars and contact with these sorts of regimes.
Chuck Grimes