Big Lie

"[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The Big Lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique usually used for political purposes. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about 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 believed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and anti-Semitic political leader in the Weimar Republic. The claim that Germany was not beaten in 1918 was itself called a big lie.

A Big Lie is often the product of a Propaganda Machine, which can also support and expand on an existing Big Lie. One can be used to establish a Cult of Personality, as well as to direct such a Cult to a specific purpose.

Big Lies are insidious, and once one is accepted by a believer it is extremely difficult to convince them of its falsity. At least part of this can be attributed to ego-investment, where the believer refuses to accept any proof to the contrary because of how badly it would reflect on them to have fallen for the lie. Thus rather than expose themselves to the possibility of being shown wrong and/or feeling stupid, believers will instead double down on the lie and support it even more fervently.

Big Lies will often employ carefully-crafted Insane Troll Logic to give them a veneer of plausibility. They take advantage of the Appeal to Audacity fallacy and are in fact a more extreme version wielded exclusively for political purposes. Often depends on an Appeal to Authority to give it weight and momentum. May incorporate or be a Conspiracy Theory, to give it added appeal.

See also Bavarian Fire Drill, Poe's Law.

Literature

 * "We have alwasy been at war with Eastasia." The Party of Nineteen Eighty-Four has turned the Big Lie into both an art form and everyday tool of control, with a population so numb and accepting that anything the Party says is automatically believed, even if it directly contradicts yesterday's "truth".
 * The Ministry of Magic and the Daily Prophet attempt a Big Lie when they begin their campaign to discredit Dumbledore and paint Harry Potter as a possibly-insane attention-seeking liar in Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix. They don't entirely succeed, but they do convince enough people to cause problems for both Dumbledore and Harry.

Real Life

 * Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis used the Big Lie to turn long-standing anti-semitism into mass murder. The Big Lie here was a narrative of an innocent, besieged Germany striking back at an "international Jewry", which it said started World War I. The propaganda repeated over and over the claim that a conspiracy of Jews was the real power in Britain, Russia and the United States. It went on to state that the Jews had begun a "war of extermination" against Germany, and so Germany had a duty and a right to "exterminate" and "annihilate" the Jews in self-defense.
 * The denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
 * Similarly, Holocaust Denial is an attempt at a Big Lie by the members of the far right, Neo-Nazis and apologists for Hitler.
 * For over two months after the November 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies -- including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz -- claimed without proof that Joe Biden's victory had been the result of a vast program of voter fraud executed by the Democrats. While they repeatedly insisted that they had evidence to prove this assertion, none ever materialized and no court (out of sixty lawsuits) ruled in their favor.  One lawsuit filed with the Supreme Court of the United States by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in early December 2020 actually claimed that the complete lack of any evidence of voter fraud was in fact proof of the existence of a massive conspiracy that had perfectly hidden all traces of both its existence and its efforts to "undermine" the "true" results of the election.  Regardless of the absence of any proof, the members of Trump's Cult of Personality uncritically accepted these claims, which directly led to the mob assault upon the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
 * The infamous QAnon conspiracy theory -- which contributed strongly to the Trumpist assault on the Capitol mentioned above -- is a Big Lie executed by the pseudonymous "Q" who first promulgated it and periodically "updates" it.