Fake News / Lying Press: Parallels

Years ago I attended the local March for Science in 2017. It was a lovely day and I had a great time. What I didn't get was an opportunity for further involvement. At the end of the march we ended up in a beautiful park. A guy tried to speak, but there was no stage, no sound equipment. There was no one there collecting email addresses or asking anyone if they wanted to get more involved than a nice walk on a nice day. I'm convinced that if a right-wing organization had planned this it would have been very different. Money would have been raised; email addresses would have been collected to further spread propaganda.

You really must give the right credit. They are far better organized than the left. They play the long game and have recently scored some wins via Supreme Court decisions. But the right is not done. One of their tactics that they continually hammer away at is "fake news". The campaign to sow distrust in the press is part of the fascist playbook.

The Nazis used it quite successfully too. Starting in the early 1930s they consistently referred to the "lying press" in their propaganda. Over the course of time the populace began to believe the government version of events over what the press reported. In the summer of 1939, before the Nazis invaded Poland, they stopped referring to the German press as the "lying press", only using that for the allied press: primarily Britain, France, and the United States. Why? Because by then they had "synchronized" (their word) the press. All German press reflected the government explanation of events, so of course they were now to be trusted.

The right still talks about fake news, over and over and over. We don't have a synchronized press yet, and hopefully we never will. But don't count out the possibility. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. Joseph Goebbels said that - and it turned out he was right!