Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Let’s start off today with a review of a fallacy we covered earlier in the season: Snob Appeal. Snob Appeal is when someone tries to persuade us that doing their thing will make you better than other people or make you stand out from everybody else. It appeals to our desire to be raised up to a higher class or status. This also carries with it the idea that doing this certain thing will make you better than everyone else, that they’re just not as knowledgeable or special.
Question to ask yourself when you’re facing Snob Appeal is this: “Is it really true that this is going to make me better in some way?
If you want to go back and review or learn more about this fallacy, check out Episode 48.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the Meme Fallacy Quiz. Did you know I’ve created a quiz that you can take to test yourself on how well you do at recognizing and naming what I like to call “Fallacies in the Wild”? It’s super fun, only 11 questions long and just takes a few minutes to complete. I’d love for you to check it out at filteritthroughabraincell.com/quiz.
Alright, let’s dive into today’s fallacy called The Big Lie. The Big Lie is when someone or some organization tells a story or a narrative that is actually an extreme distortion of the truth. It is specifically used as a propaganda technique to get people to believe something that is blatantly false.
Interestingly enough, the phrase was used by…you guessed it…Hitler himself…in his book Mein Kampf. Now, you would think he was using the phrase to describe the Big Lie he was telling…b/c he certainly was. Hitler and the Nazis were telling the Big Lie that the Jews were to blame for all the troubles that Germany was facing coming out of WWI. And in fact, he launched a massive propaganda campaign to convince all of Germany that the Jews were the problem and therefore to blame and that exterminating them would solve the problems. However, that’s not how he was using the phrase in his book. In his book, he was actually accusing the Jews of telling the Big Lie…even though he was the one doing it! Crazy, huh?
In fact, the OSS psychological profile made on Hitler described his use of The Big Lie like this, and I quote: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” End quote.
The problem behind the Big Lie fallacy is really simple: It’s a lie! And just because someone tells a lie often and with conviction doesn’t make it true. It’s still a lie. Guys here’s the thing: it’s not a bad thing to carry a little skepticism with the stories & messages you’re hearing. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s the fact that there’s always at least two sides to any story and we can’t always trust that the storyteller we’re listening to is the one telling the truth. We have to do the work to think about it, ask questions, and dig in a bit to push toward the truth. That’s our privilege and it’s our responsibility.
If the name of this fallacy or propaganda technique sounds familiar, you’d be right. After the 2020 election, President Trump used this term often…he claimed that the Democrats were committing the Big Lie Fallacy when it came to their messaging about the integrity of the election. They were claiming over & over again that there was no fraud in the election whatsoever and demonizing anyone who questioned that narrative. President Trump felt like they were covering up and distracting from the truth and called out their “Big Lie”.
Honestly, it can be difficult to spot when someone is telling a Big Lie, which is why we need to be really good at asking ourselves the question: “Is that really true?” Yep, that’s the simple question to help you combat the Big Lie: “Is that really true?”
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
