Proponents of propaganda go with Goebbelsian lie

“Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth,” said Joseph Goebbels. Perhaps, in no place is this principle more palpable than politics. More so, during the times of elections, when the air is thickly polluted with colourful half-truths and Goebbelsian lies by politicians of all hues. Just consider the just-concluded Punjab and US election campaigns: poisonous postures and preposterous poll promises were pluckily propped and proffered for the plucking by the pliable populace even as the pale parties and their picks pained the perceptive people. 

The historically famous strategy that Goebbels used to spread the anarchist campaign of Nazi propaganda from 1933 to 1945 when he was Germany's Minister for Propaganda in Hitler's Reich (regime) is being replicated even today as politicians continue to befool the gullible voters with the perpetual pounding of a point, usually a lie. Propaganda is information, especially biased or misleading, to promote a political cause. 

Goebbels took full control of the tools of communication - radio and cinema (then relatively new), print media, publishing, posters - and used them to the hilt to his advantage. He used his sharp tongue and oratorical prowess to perfection in speeches dripping with virulent fanaticism. He designed the renowned Swastika symbol towards this end. The exercise of saluting in the typical Hitler style was also a reinforcement of the forceful strategy. The Nazi propagandists played on the Germans' long-established anti-Semitic (anti-Jew) feelings to brainwash them. 

Hitler was able to influence the masses to inflict mass torture on non-Germans by imprinting upon their minds that Germans were the superior race. This ethnic cleansing act was terrifying. The Holocaust comprising the extermination of Jews is a blot. Holocaust is a destruction involving extensive loss of life through fire or slaughter. Originally meaning “a burnt sacrifice”, it comes from the Greek holokaustos (“burnt whole”: holo, whole, and caustic, cauterize, burnt).

The Holocaust refers to the genocide of European civilians, especially Jews, by the Nazis during World War II. Around 60 lakh Jews, 2 lakh Romanis, 2.5 lakh disabled and 9,000 homosexual men were slaughtered.

Incidentally, January 27 is the Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was on this day in 1945 that Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp, was liberated by the Red Army (Soviet). And interestingly, on January 27, 2017, the last of the persons alive who were closely associated with Goebbels died. His former secretary Brunhilde Pomsel, aged 106, passed away in a care home in Munich. Pomsel worked for Goebbels from 1942-45. But she had no idea of the Holocaust. In a documentary, ‘A German Life’, made last year, she insisted she felt no guilt: “I could not put up resistance - I was too much of a coward.” Pomsel was captured by Soviet soldiers from Berlin and she spent five years in Russian detention camps. 

However, her bosses did not survive the war. The two powerful leaders of the Third Reich met with rather tragic ends. As defeat stared at Nazi Germany's face at the end of WWII, Goebbels along with his wife Magda and five daughters and a son moved into Hitler's underground bunker complex on April 22, 1945. Hitler committed suicide on April 30. As per Hitler's will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor. But he served only one day in this post. On May 1, Goebbels, aged 48, his wife committed suicide after poisoning their six children, aged between 4 and 13, with cyanide.

Well, well. Now back to the current times. The times when our politicians have so many new tools of media for their activities: the traditional radio, TV, films, print and social media. And, the public has to deal with a lot more than mere propaganda, truth and lies. There is a surfeit of fake news and photoshopped messages and planted views.

There is a whole new terminology coined around this sphere: post-truth (post-truth politics, also called post-factual politics, is when debate is framed by appeals to emotion disconnected from details of policy, and by repeated assertion of points to which factual rebuttals are ignored), alternative fact (fact which presents an alternative view). All proffered by a whole lot of new-fangled spin doctors with a whole lot of new-age designations: media strategist, image consultant, campaign in charge, media adviser, social media expert, some with minister-rank portfolios, and so on. The communication experts with soft skills are not confined anymore to corporate houses or film and sports stars. The public management has become de rigueur (required by etiquette or current fashion) for the wannabe politicians too.

As Mark Twain said: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” In these days of instant messaging, when the lie travels full way around world in a jiffy, the truth needs to put on its shoes equally fast. That's the unenviable job of the modern adviser dealing with a Goebbelsian lie.

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