Dealing with the Big Lies of Achmadinijad, Abbas, Obama, and Goebbels

Dealing with the Big Lies of Ahmadinejad, Abbas, Obama, and Goebbels

It may be instructive to generalize the problem posed by R. Hier in his excellent article (see: http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/mr._president_the_problem_is_not_holocaust_denial),  as follows:

How do you deal with liars, especially Big Liars?

Now there are liars, and then there are Big Liars.

So on the one hand we have the lies of relatively high officials or representative of organizations, such as referred to by R. Hier, namely:

1) lies by the President  of the Palestinian Authority,
2) lies by a representative of the Palestinian Ministry of Information,
3) lies by the Chief Judge of the Palestinian Authority,
4) lies by a Senior Palestinian Authority official,
5) lies by the President of the United States, or
6) lies by the Nazi master propagandist Josef Goebbels.

These are lies spoken, kind of "at large", or "writ large" . These lies are spoken to an audience; to everybody listening or reading. They are not personal, such as lies that are whispered in your ear, or told to your face personally. Such as: "I'll pay you tomorrow". These are "Big Lies", famously defined by Josef Goebbels, which have a political or statist purpose, designed to subvert the truth and substitute a fake reality for the truth, for purposes of gaining political and social power, to assert power, and gain political ascendancy and control of people.

Included in the above sense of the "Big Lie" are all the lies of the current presidential campaign, such as the lie that Mitt Romney was responsible for the death of a woman, or that he paid no taxes, or that there is a Republican "war on women",  and many other lies perpetrated and endlessly repeated by the Obama campaign.

What is to be done about these types of lies? There is only one answer, which is that they must be publicly and repeatedly called out, and debunked as the lies which they truly are. And who is charged with this responsibility? Unfortunately, no one. We have in the past come to rely on the media for this function, but clearly that cannot be relied on. So we must each of us take on that role. Personally, early, and often.