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Based on a Great Big Lie: Difference between revisions
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* Jordanian author Norma Khouri wrote ''Forbidden Love'', a memoir detailing her life in Jordan and her friendship with a Muslim woman who was murdered by her family in an honour killing for meeting a Christian man in secret. When an Australian literary critic did some digging and discovered that Khouri had not been in Jordan at all during the book's timeframe (and even got [[You Fail Geography Forever|certain locations in Jordan wrong]] and [[Did Not Do the Research|misrepresented their legal system]]), the publisher hastily recalled the book. Khouri admitted to taking some liberties with original story, but maintains that the book is still [[Based on a True Story]], despite all signs pointing to the contrary.
* Both a real example AND an in-universe example: ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' begins with the narrator (Huck) informing the reader that you won't know who he is unless you've read "a book by the name of ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]''. Huck tells us the book was written by Mark Twain, "and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth." He then goes on to make the same claim about the story the reader is about to be told.
* Done for satirical effect by ''[[wikipedia:The Report from Iron Mountain|The Report from Iron Mountain]]'', a [[The Sixties|'60s]] counterculture book written by Leonard Lewin as a [[Stealth Parody]] of [[The Vietnam War|Vietnam-era]] military think tanks. Posing as a leaked document written by a "secret government panel", it claimed that war was a necessary part of the economy and served to divert collective aggression, and that society would collapse without it -- basically, the plot of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''. Therefore, in the event of peace, they recommended that new bodies be created to emulate the economic activities of war, including [[Blood Sport|blood sports]], the creation of new enemies to scare the people (including [[Alien Invasion|alien invaders]] and environmental destruction), and [[Refuge in Audacity|the reinstatement of slavery]].<br /><br />Before the hoax was revealed in 1972, even President [[Lyndon B Johnson]] was fooled by it (and reportedly "[[Berserk Button|hit the roof]]" when he read it), and there remain [[Conspiracy Theorist|conspiracy theorists]] who believe that it actually ''is'' the real deal, claimed to be a hoax [[Parody Retcon|as a means of damage control]].
* ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', a notorious anti-Semitic tract claiming to be the records of a meeting by a Jewish cabal plotting to [[Take Over the World]]. In reality, it was written by the Okhrana, the [[Secret Police]] of [[Tsarist Russia]], as a tool for starting pogroms with, and was later carried into western Europe and the US by White Russians in the wake of [[Red October]]. It was exposed as a forgery by ''[[British Newspapers|The Times]]'' of London in 1921, which revealed that large sections of the book were cribbed wholesale from a 19th century anti-Napoleonic tract. Even so, it was made part of the school curriculum in [[Nazi Germany]], and anti-Semites to this day cite it as "evidence" of a Jewish conspiracy.
* [http://www.cracked.com/article_17003_the-5-most-ridiculous-lies-ever-published-as-non-fiction.html Cracked.com has a whole article devoted to this.]
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