Techniques · Language

Big lie

A falsehood so large and so confidently asserted that the audience cannot believe anyone would dare invent it, and so assumes there must be something to it.

Family Language First documented 1925 Exploits Illusory truth effect, Authority bias Related fallacy Argument by assertion
How it works

Small lies are caught by ordinary skepticism. A big lie gets past it by being out of scale: the audience reasons that no one would risk so enormous a claim without grounds, and that reasoning, which is usually sound, is exactly what the device exploits. The lie is then repeated without variation and never withdrawn, because any correction would break the confidence that carries it.

Hitler described the mechanism in Mein Kampf, attributing it, as propagandists do, to his enemies: the "broad masses" fall victim to a big lie more readily than a small one because "they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." A 1943 U.S. intelligence profile summarized his own practice as "never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; 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." Exploits Illusory Truth Effect and Authority Bias.

Historical examples

1918–1945 · Germany

The "stab in the back" was the founding big lie of the interwar German right: the army had been undefeated in the field and was betrayed at home by socialists and Jews. It was contradicted by the army command's own admission in September 1918 that the war was lost. Repeated for two decades and never withdrawn, it did the work the device is designed to do.

Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. London: Allen Lane, 2003; Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf, vol. 1 (1925), chapter 10.

1943 · U.S. intelligence

Walter Langer's psychological profile of Hitler for the Office of Strategic Services set out the rules of his propaganda: never admit a fault, never concede the enemy any good, never leave room for alternatives, never accept blame, concentrate on one enemy at a time, blame that enemy for everything, and rely on the big lie repeated often enough. The list has been quoted ever since as the operating manual of the device.

Langer, Walter C. A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend. Washington: Office of Strategic Services, 1943; published as The Mind of Adolf Hitler. New York: Basic Books, 1972.

In advertising and commerce

1900s–1910s · patent medicine

Patent-medicine advertising claimed cures for cancer, consumption, and "all diseases of the blood" in display type, and the claims were believed partly because they were so large. Samuel Hopkins Adams's 1905 series "The Great American Fraud" exposed the trade and helped bring about the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

Adams, Samuel Hopkins. "The Great American Fraud." Collier's Weekly, October 1905–February 1906; Young, James Harvey. The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Classroom prompt

Find the largest claim in today's news. Write down three things that would also have to be true for it to be true. Can you check any of them?

In the wild

Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.

1
"The entire audit was fabricated from start to finish. Every page. There was never any deficit."

What to notice. A total, flat claim with no evidence, sized so that doubting it seems like more work than accepting it.

2
"This one bottle cures rheumatism, consumption, and diseases of the blood. Doctors have tried to suppress it for years."

What to notice. An enormous claim, plus a conspiracy to explain why no one has confirmed it.

3
Challenged with the figures, the spokesman repeated the same sentence, slower and louder, and said no more.

What to notice. Restating without varying or conceding is how a big lie is maintained under challenge.

Sources

  1. Langer, Walter C. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report. New York: Basic Books, 1972. ISBN 978-0465046201
  2. Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. London: Allen Lane, 2003. ISBN 978-0141009759
  3. Herf, Jeffrey. The Jewish Enemy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0674027381
  4. Young, James Harvey. The Toadstool Millionaires. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.