Adolf Hitler’s Reich minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels (controller, and facilitator of the Third Reich’s media initiatives, which led to events such as Kristallnacht, the destruction of Jewish synagogues and businesses; the burning of books; and ultimately the facilitation of the “Final Solution”), maintained that human thought and behavior can be powerfully influenced by “the lie.”
In Goebbels’s words: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” He further went on to say that: “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Clearly, while some may rightfully argue that the motives for the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol building are complex, what is clear is that the attack was designed to undermine our nation’s legal transition of presidential power (a critical variable in the maintenance of our democracy), and was motivated by personal interest and the dissemination of big, fabricated, and oft-repeated lies regarding the legitimacy of our presidential election. (Lies included alleging that close to 5,000 dead people voted; to baseless claims about Dominion voting machines; to alleging Donald Trump ballots were dumped into a river; to Vice President Mike Pence having the right to reject state electors; to Joe Biden only winning in a rigged election, etc.)
While the crisis at our Capitol building was horrific, it provided us with an opportunity to see more clearly the critical nature of the threat that existed within our nation. (As Goebbels conjectured, “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie” – and now, after the Capitol’s storming, the “political, economic/or military consequences of the lie” are much clearer.)
Thus, we are now facing a crisis whose solution may be further understood through again reflecting on Goebbels’s insights, when he states: “It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
So, we must now aggressively, and with every fiber of our being, pursue said truth.
To move beyond our current state of crisis, shore up our democracy, and heal, it is time for resolute and tenacious dissent! It is time that those in our government who have formal prescribed power, and those of us with the power our democracy still gives us to speak our minds, recognize the ominous nature of the threat before us, and use all of the legal, political, and persuasive assets at our disposal to fully expose the lies, and hold all perpetrators and enablers of the lies fully (to the utmost extent of the law) accountable, and to do so now, before the violative acts that threaten the very existence of our democracy become even more devastating.
(Michael L. Fischler of Holderness is professor emeritus in the Department of Counselor Education and School Psychology at Plymouth State University. He founded the university’s Counseling and Human Relations Center, which he directed for 40 years.)