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Believing Their Own Lies: Difference between revisions
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See also [[Becoming the Mask]], in which a character assumes a fake identity he ultimately wishes to keep. A [[Straw Hypocrite]], who manipulates others by feigning to follow a cause, may get taken in by their own rhetoric this way. Compare [[Conspiracy Theorist]]s, who think their outrageous claims are true from the get-go. With a little [[Obfuscating Stupidity]], one can ''pretend to'' believe for as long as this gives an advantage.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]]
* God Eneru in ''[[One Piece]]'' had serious [[A God Am I]] issues. While knowing that, in the Sky Islands, "God" is merely a title for an island's leader, Eneru's [[Shock and Awe|Lightning-based Rumble-Rumble Fruit powers]] combined with the near-omnipotence granted by his enhanced mind-reading Mantra ability convinced him that he truly ''was'' divine.
** Buggy the Clown; breaking a bunch of prisoners out of their cells in order to facilitate his escape from [[The Alcatraz|Impel Down]] caused him to start being referred to as "The Great Buggy-sama". This hit a critical mass when it emerged {{spoiler|that he once served on the Pirate King's ship, alongside one of the current Four Emperors.}} As a result, he started thinking he had a chance of taking Whitebeard's head. To put that in perspective, Buggy is on the low end of ''One Piece's'' [[Sorting Algorithm of Evil]], and Whitebeard is called [[World's Strongest Man]] with zero exaggeration.
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* Because of their tendency to lose their old memories to [[The Fog of Ages]], the Marra of ''[[The Madness Season]]'' who live for too long under a particular cover story eventually wind up believing it, to the point that they actually think that they are mortal and can die.
== [[Live
* The Goa'uld in ''[[Stargate SG-1]].'' They're such [[Large Ham]]s that it's impossible to believe they ''don't'' actually think they're gods. Ba'al and Anubis stand out, and have the advantage, by being savvy enough to remember they're not ''really'' gods.
** An early episode, "The First Commandment," also featured the commander of an SGC team who fell into this trap himself and had to be put down by SG-1.
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* [[Church of Happyology|L. Ron Hubbard]]
** Possible subversion? L-Ron himself never intended Scientology to be an ''actual'' religion. He wrote it as a '''science fiction novel'''. So this is a case of ''other people'' believing someone's lies.
*** He supposedly wrote it to win a bet with fellow sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein, on whether a sci-fi writer could actually start a [[Cult of Personality]] around their works. Supposedly, ''[[Stranger in
* [[Those Wacky Nazis]]. Which was part of the reason they were so... wacky.
** To glue the new enemy to the old one<ref>note how a propaganda narrative follows [[The "Unicorn In The Garden" Rule|rules of fiction]] when trying to speak clearer than reality</ref>, Nazi propaganda made up [[Josef Stalin]]'s imaginary
*** Unusual in that this particular fairy tale survived longer than its authors — after the war she eventually turned into either "''secret'' wife", "''Dr.'' Rosa Kaganovich ''Stalin''" and even "mother" of Yeltsin's wife, or (in other branch, more responsive to the lack of evidence) Stalin's mistress. As the variations of this mythological character multiplied with time, now we have Roza Lasarevna/Moseevna/Mikhailovna Kaganovich, a sister/daughter/niece of Lasar Kaganovich, and/or also his personal doctor who poisoned him and became the cause for the last purge during his life, but at the same time vanished tracelessly. There was even a study ''How a Legend became a Woman: the Story of Rosa Kaganovich, Stalin's Secret Wife'' ("This presentation is dedicated to the problem of mythological versions of the biographies of political leaders" - you can find English abstract [http://www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/english/news/events/2012/visitorseminars_spring_2012.html on the site of University of Helsinki]).
** Historian Ian Kershaw wrote extensively on the so-called "Hitler Myth", the Nazi propagated belief that Hitler was some kind of infallible genius and [[Messianic Archetype|Germany's God-appointed saviour]]. As time went on and Hitler racked up achievement after achievement (rearming Germany, taking over Austria and Czechoslovakia, "solving" Germany's economic problems) that he started to believe it himself. Kershaw calls this moment "the beginning of the end for the Third Reich".
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** When the Pacific war against the Americans began to go south, the Japanese military from top to bottom began lying about inflicting losses to save face: increasingly disastrous defeats and ineffective attacks were rewritten as glorious victories and crushing defeats upon the Americans. The army often claimed fantastic victories (when they in fact had been defeated) and assigned their commanders ludicrious objectives based upon these assumptions, and the navy and the air force again and again claimed to have sunk entire American fleets, even when they had sunk no ships at all (certain American vessels, such as the ''Enterprise'' and the ''Essex'' were claimed to have been sunk multiple times). The Japanese high command, desperate to hold off the Americans, eagerly swallowed these lies and didn't bother to confirm them before informing the other branches of the service. This had disastrous consequences for all concerned; the army would often launch attacks and hold impossible positions because the navy blustered that the American fleet had been sunk, and vice versa. Japanese self-delusion was so effective that their defeat at end of the war came as a complete shock to much of the Japanese military and populace.
* Korsakov's Syndrome. It's a form of amnesia brought on by excessive alcohol abuse. To cover up for their forgetting, patients will invent information that sounds highly plausible to everyone else and eventually come to believe it themselves.
* Many of [[Donald Trump]]'s detractors have said this is true for him, and that he actually believes the 2020 Election was rigged by the widespread voter fraud that only he can see.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]
[[Category:Truth and Lies]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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