The American Psychological Society (APS) defines a “big lie” as “a propaganda device in which a false statement of extreme magnitude is constantly repeated to persuade the public. The assumption is that a Big Lie is less likely to be challenged than a lesser one because people will assume that evidence exists to support a statement of such magnitude.”
According to Wikipedia, a big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth, used especially as a propaganda technique.[1][2] The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his book Mein Kampf (1925), to describe the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany’s loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic.
According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder. Herf further argues that the Nazis’ big lie was their depiction of Germany as an innocent, besieged land striking back at “international Jewry”, which the Nazis blamed for starting World War I. Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held power behind the scenes in Britain, Russia, and the United States. It further spread claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany, and used these to assert that Germany had a right to annihilate the Jews in self-defense.
DiMaggio, A. R.. (2022). Conspiracy Theories and the Manufacture of Dissent: QAnon, the ‘Big Lie’, Covid-19, and the Rise of Rightwing Propaganda. Critical Sociology
“This paper examines the impact of partisanship, rightwing media, and social media on attitudes about contemporary conspiracy theories. mainstream scholarly views that ‘both sides’ of the political aisle indulge routinely in such theories are challenged. i adopt a gramscian hegemonic framework that examines rising rightwing conspiracy theories as a manifestation of mass false consciousness in service of a political-economic system that serves upper-class interests. issues examined include the qanon movement, ‘big lie’ voter fraud conspiracism, and covid-19 conspiracy theories, and the way they related to partisanship, rightwing media, and social media. i provide evidence that republican partisanship, rightwing media consumption, and social media consumption are all significant statistical predictors of acceptance of modern conspiracy theories.”
Geraldes, D., Heinicke, F., & Kim, D. G.. (2021). Big and small lies. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
“Lying involves many decisions yielding big or small benefits. are big and small lies complementary or supplementary? in a laboratory experiment where the participants could simultaneously tell a big and a small lie, our study finds that lies are complementary. the participants who lie more in the big lie, also do so in the small lie and vice versa. our study also finds that although replacing one dimension of the lying opportunities with a randomly determined prize does not affect the overall lying behavior, repeatedly being lucky on a high-stakes prize leads to less lying on the report of a low-stakes outcome.”
Obar, J. A., & Oeldorf-Hirsch, A.. (2020). The biggest lie on the Internet: ignoring the privacy policies and terms of service policies of social networking services. Information Communication and Society
“This paper addresses ‘the biggest lie on the internet’ with an empirical investigation of privacy policy (pp) and terms of service (tos) policy reading behavior. an experimental survey (n = 543) assessed the extent to which individuals ignored pp and tos when joining a fictitious social networking service (sns), namedrop. results reveal 74% skipped pp, selecting the ‘quick join’ clickwrap. average adult reading speed (250–280 words per minute), suggests pp should have taken 29–32 minutes and tos 15–17 minutes to read. for those that didn’t select the clickwrap, average pp reading time was 73 seconds. all participants were presented the tos and had an average reading time of 51 seconds. most participants agreed to the policies, 97% to pp and 93% to tos, with decliners reading pp 30 seconds longer and tos 90 seconds longer. a regression analysis identifies information overload as a significant negative predictor of reading tos upon sign up, when tos changes, and when pp changes. qualitative findings suggest that participants view policies as nuisance, ignoring them to pursue the ends of digital production, without being inhibited by the means. implications are revealed as 98% missed namedrop tos ‘gotcha clauses’ about data sharing with the nsa and employers, and about providing a first-born child as payment for sns access.”
Jacobson, G. C.. (2021). Donald Trump’s Big Lie and the Future of the Republican Party. Presidential Studies Quarterly
“Donald trump’s bid to nullify joseph biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was a grotesque assault on american democracy that ultimately provoked an invasion of the capitol by a right-wing mob trying to derail certification of biden’s victory. although most americans were appalled by his actions, trump retained the support of nearly three quarters of ordinary republicans, most subscribing to this big lie of a stolen election. this poses dilemma for republican leaders hoping to hold trump’s base without narrowing their party’s appeal to the broader electorate. this article investigates the parameters of their dilemma by examining how the public in general and republican voters in particular have responded to trump’s attempt to steal the election from biden and what these reactions imply for the party’s future.”
Whitehead, M. A., Foste, Z., Duran, A., Tevis, T., & Cabrera, N. L.. (2021). Commentary disrupting the big lie: Higher education and whitelash in a post/colorblind era. Education Sciences
“James baldwin (1998) described whiteness as ‘the big lie’ of american society where the belief in the inherent superiority of white people allowed for, emboldened, and facilitated violence against people of color. in the post-civil rights era, scholars reframed whiteness as an invisible, hegemonic social norm, and a great deal of education scholarship continues to be rooted in this metaphor of invisibility. however, leonardo (2020) theorized that in a post-45 era of ‘whitelash’ (embrick et al., 2020), ‘post-colorblindness’ is more accurate to describe contemporary racial stratification whereby whiteness is both (a) more visible and (b) increasingly appealing to perceived injuries of ‘reverse racism.’ from this perspective, we offer three theoretical concepts to guide the future of whiteness in education scholarship. specifically, we argue that scholars critically studying whiteness in education must explicitly: (1) address the historicity of whiteness, (2) analyze the public embrace of whiteness, and (3) emphasize the material consequences of whiteness on the lives of people of color. by doing this, we argue that critical scholars of race in higher education will more clearly understand the changing nature of whiteness while avoiding the analytical trap of invisibility that is decreasingly relevant.”
Martin, R. L.. (2014). The big lie of strategic planning. Harvard Business Review
“The colonial and apartheid knowledge systems and eurocentrism have not been sufficiently questioned, let alone transformed, during the first two decades of democracy in south africa. the movement to decolonize higher education was launched by students in 2015. the fact that the students are at the forefront of the campaign for decolonization and not the university leaders, academics, and administrators tells a lot about the state of higher education in post-apartheid south africa and the continued maintenance of the hegemonic status quo when it comes to the knowledge, teaching, learning and research at the country’s universities. decolonization of knowledge is crucial in order to rewrite histories, reassert the dignity of the oppressed and refocus the knowledge production and worldviews for the sake of the present and the future of the country and its people, as well as the rest of the african continent. the dismantling of the ‘pedagogy of big lies’ rooted in colonialism and apartheid will require a complete reconstruction of the episte-mological model. the decolonized curriculum must place south africa and africa in the center of teaching, learning and research and incorporate the epistemic perspectives, knowledge and thinking from the african continent and the global south and place them on an equal footing with the currently hegemonic eurocentric canon.”
Canon, D. T., & Sherman, O.. (2021). Debunking the “Big Lie”: Election Administration in the 2020 Presidential Election. Presidential Studies Quarterly
“The democratic process in the united states was sorely tested in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. our electoral institutions survived that test, but the fragility of our democracy was exposed by a concerted effort to overturn the results of the presidential election, first in the courts and then with an insurrection at the nation’s capitol on january 6, 2021. we examine how this happened. specifically, we will attempt to answer the following questions: how did the big lie evolve and what were its claims? how did the covid pandemic and foreign interference complicate the voting process and contribute to the claims of fraud? how did the courts adjudicate the claims of fraud? finally, how do we restore trust in the voting process?.”
McVeigh, M.. (2020). Telling big little lies: Writing the female gothic as extended metaphor in complex television. Journal of Screenwriting
“This article investigates the writing of the female gothic as extended metaphor in the complex tv series big little lies (2017). it builds on my earlier work, ‘theme and complex narrative structure in hbo’s big little lies 2017’ (2019), wherein i applied porter et al.’s (2002) structuralist narrative tool, the ‘scene function model’, to investigate the way narrative and theme is progressed in complex interweaving stories via the writing of core or ‘kernel’ narrative scenes. herein, i further investigate storytelling in series tv by proposing the ‘satellite’ narrative scene as a means by which the screenwriter may conceptualize and deploy metaphor to create viewer engagement. first, i consider david e. kelley’s series screenplay, big little lies, as a blueprint for hbo’s televised series. specifically, i apply theories of complex tv, gothic television and domestic noir to consider how kelley deploys the female gothic as extended metaphor to inform formal narrative elements including the pre-titles sequences and flashbacks repeated across episodes.”
Zenko, M.. (2016). The Big Lie About the Libyan War. Foreign Policy
Obar, J. A.. (2016). The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Networking Services. SSRN Electronic Journal
“This paper addresses ‘the biggest lie on the internet’ with an empirical investigation of privacy policy (pp) and terms of service (tos) policy reading behavior. an experimental survey (n=543) assessed the extent to which individuals ignore pp and tos when joining a fictitious social networking service, namedrop. results reveal 74% skipped pp, selecting the ‘quick join’ clickwrap. for readers, average pp reading time was 73 seconds, and average tos reading time was 51 seconds. a regression analysis revealed information overload as a significant negative predictor of reading tos upon signup, when tos changes, and when pp changes. qualitative findings suggest that participants view policies as nuisance, ignoring them to pursue the ends of digital production, without being inhibited by the means. implications were revealed as 98% missed namedrop tos ‘gotcha clauses’ about data sharing with the nsa and employers, and about providing a first-born child as payment for sns access.”
Katz, E.. (1992). The big lie: Human restoration of nature. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology
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“An overview of environmental ethics / clare palmer — the land ethic / aldo leopold — is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic? / richard sylvan (routley) — not for humans only : the place of nonhumans in environmental issues / peter singer — animal rights : what’s in a name? with a brief extract from the case for animal rights / tom regan — the ethics of respect for nature / paul w. taylor — is there a place for animals in the moral consideration of nature? / eric katz — can animal rights activists be environmentalists? / gary e. varner — against the moral considerability of ecosystems / harley cahen — the varieties of intrinsic value / john o’neill — value in nature and the nature of value / holmes rolston iii — the source and locus of intrinsic value : a reexamination / keekok lee — environmental ethics and weak anthropocentrism / bryan g. norton — weak anthropocentric intrinsic value / eugene hargrove — moral pluralism and the course of environmental ethics / christopher d. stone — the case against moral pluralism / j. baird callicott — minimal, moderate, and extreme moral pluralism / peter s. wenz — the case for a practical pluralism / andrew light — deep ecology : a new philosophy of our time? / warwick fox — the deep ecological movement : some philosophical aspects / arne naess — ecofeminism : toward global justice and planetary health / greta gaard and lori gruen — ecological feminism and ecosystem ecology / karen j. warren and jim cheney — beyond intrinsic value : pragmatism in environmental ethics / anthony weston — pragmatism in environmental ethics : democracy, pluralism, and the management of nature / ben a. minteer and robert e. manning — the ethics of sustainable resources / donald scherer — toward a just and sustainable economic order / john b. cobb, jr. — ethics, public policy, and global warming / dale jamieson — faking nature / robert elliot — the big lie : human restoration of nature / eric katz — ecological restoration and the culture of nature : a pragmatic perspective / andrew light — an amalgamation of wilderness preservation arguments / michael p. nelson — a critique of and an alternative to the wilderness idea / j. baird callicott — wilderness– now more than ever : a response to callicott / reed f. noss — feeding people versus saving nature? / holmes rolston iii — saving nature, feeding people, and ethics / robin attfield — integrating environmentalism and human rights / james w. nic…”
Becker, J.. (2004). The big lie. Index on Censorship
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