Big Lies That Shape History:

Ongoing Patterns of Deception

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By Punditman and Bruce Miller

punditman says…I'm excited to announce that Bruce Miller and I have teamed up for this debut collaborative essay. Bruce can be found showcasing his expertise in politics and history over at his Contradicciones newsletter.

Throughout history, The Powers That Be have sold we the public some real lemons. 

At the start of World War I, there was a widely held sentiment on all sides that the soldiers would be home by Christmas. German Emperor Wilhelm II allegedly promised departing troops that they would return before the autumn leaves fell. Meanwhile English author H.G. Wells touted the conflict as "the war to end all war," symbolizing hope for a better future once the dust settled.

But military planners foresaw a long and bloody struggle, and sure enough, what followed were four years of stalemate and brutal slaughter.

The idea of the Big Lie has been around since Socrates. But the end of the First World War produced the often cited modern version of the Big Lie: that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by Jews and Communists and that's why they lost the war.

Germany’s military government under Ludendorff (who later joined Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch attempt) and Hindenburg (who later appointed Hitler as Chancellor) consciously set up that alibi before turning the government over to the German Social Democrats, who were then blamed for the stab-in-the-back.

The instability and resentment of this period was exacerbated by the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Economic hardships imposed on Germany fostered deep-seated resentment and a widespread sense of national humiliation. The social unrest created by these conditions provided fertile ground for extremist ideologies, helping to pave the way for Hitler's rise to power, the emergence of the Nazi regime and the horrors of World War II.

The Big Lie involves telling a falsehood over and over again until people start believing it. Spreading the lie relentlessly helps to shape public perception and  create a false reality. 

The past is strewn with examples of official lies—from clever distortions to big whoppers. The intention is always to create consent amongst the citizenry. This occurs in both autocratic and democratic societies, the latter being our focus here.

Escalating Untruths

Fast forward to the Cold War and we see patterns of manipulation and propaganda, revealing a recurring theme that those in power routinely employ deceit to further their agendas, even at the cost of dire consequences.

The Tonkin Gulf Incident of 1964 marked a pivotal moment in the escalation of the Vietnam War. 

On August 2, the destroyer USS Maddox reported an alleged attack by North Vietnamese naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, followed by a second reported incident on August 4. These served as a pretext for the U.S. Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers. However, subsequent investigations and declassified documents revealed that the second attack likely did not occur. 

What the Johnson administration didn't bother to mention was that US troops were secretly conducting operations in that area inside North Vietnam, which could have provided legitimate reason under the laws of war for North Vietnam to fire on American military vessels.

The Tonkin Gulf Incident has been widely cited as a case of manipulated information that was used as propaganda by the Johnson administration to justify an increased American military presence in Vietnam. 

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed by a joint session of Congress on August 7 paved the way for deepening U.S. involvement in the conflict, with far-reaching consequences for Southeast Asia, the United States and well beyond. In a phrase, the American people were sold a “bill of goods.”

Shoveling Big Lies

In the 1950s and into the 1960s, as part of a massive civil defence strategy throughout the West, ordinary citizens were advised to build bomb shelters in their homes as part of the psychological component of the Cold War.

President John F. Kennedy's administration thought this would signal determination to the Soviets. But the idea that fallout shelters would meaningfully protect people in a nuclear war was magical thinking at best, but officials apparently talked themselves into it. Kennedy became dismayed when the program led to discussions about whether it's legitimate to shoot your neighbors to prevent them from getting into your bomb shelter.

Bomb shelters served to placate an anxiety- ridden populace even though it was later admitted that the idea of hanging out underground until the canned goods ran out, only to emerge into a radioactive hellscape, would be a fate worse than death.

Nonetheless, the fantasy was revived in the early 1980s under the hawkish Reagan administration.

In fact, T.K. Jones, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, fully endorsed the idea in a 1982 interview with Robert Scheer of The Los Angeles Times.

"Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors and then throw three feet of dirt on top. . . . It's the dirt that does it. . . . . If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it."

Anyone with a functioning brain at the time knew that a nuclear exchange between the superpowers would be not only Bedtime for Bonzo but lights out for the human race. Ultimately Reagan shifted towards dialogue and compromise, especially when Soviet President Gorbachev arrived on the scene.
 
Yet the notion that the U.S. could "win" a nuclear war was a key component of America's nuclear policy during Reagan’s first term.

The fact that officials who hold important positions sometimes have such outlandish and dangerous beliefs can be deeply unsettling. But more often than not, cynicism is the rule.

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Iraq Attack Lies: Part I

Once in awhile, geopolitical manoeuvrings are buttressed by highly deceptive psychological operations.

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the Kuwaiti government funded twenty different public relations, law, and lobby firms in order to help shape global opinion.

One crucial juncture in the campaign involved the emotional testimony of a 15-year-old "refugee," Nayirah. Standing before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, she recounted witnessing Iraqi troops allegedly stealing incubators from a hospital, resulting in the abandonment of 312 infants on the cold floor to perish.

There was only one problem: the entire episode was a complete fabrication—part of a $10 million propaganda operation managed by the US public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton. Nayirah, portrayed as a hospital volunteer, was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington.
 
None of this mattered at the time because it served to gin up public support for George H.W. Bush’s 1991 Gulf War. The false testimony was meant to manipulate public sentiment. And the compliant, corporate media lapped it up.

Iraq Attack Lies: Part II  

Twelve years later, the George W. Bush administration fabricated claims regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, which had been all but eliminated through the efforts of UN weapons inspectors. It stands as one of the most famous and successful uses of deception to rally a country around an unjust war.

The operation was largely directed by Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the principal “neoconservatives” in the administration, who were dedicated to not only invade Iraq but also reshaping the political landscape of the Middle East, in what they pictured would be several wars of liberation to bring “democracy and freedom” to the region. Deluded as this thinking may have been, the goal was nonetheless blunt imperialist geopolitics of a very aggressive brand.

“Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. …There is no doubt he is amassing [WMD] to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” Cheney declared publicly in August of 2002.

In the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney administration promoted the WMD threat and also the completely baseless claim that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had been behind the Al Qaida 9/11 attacks of 2001. United Nations weapons inspectors were still at work in Iraq—and not finding the non-existent WMDs—but the Bush-Cheney administration proceeded with the invasion.

As James Pfiffner and others have described in detail, Cheney involved himself very directly in the intelligence analysis of the supposed threat. 

Cheney engaged in “stovepiping” of intelligence (i.e. taking raw intelligence information and cherry-picking it to justify the desired result), bypassing the normal intelligence evaluations for accuracy and significance. Those constructed, alarmist claims were then selectively leaked to create momentum for invading Iraq. A National Intelligence Assessment was provided to Congress in late 2002 as well as a public White Paper that, according to author James Pfiffner, “contained the most disturbing assertions of Iraq's WMD but few of the reservations expressed in the original document.”

Judith Miller of the New York Times was a main source of leaked phony intelligence claims. The administration would provide doctored intelligence claims to allied groups like the Iraqi National Congress, headed by the now-largely-forgotten Ahmed Chalabi.  As British journalist and author Jonathan Steele recalled years later in the Guardian, “The New York Times, whose star reporter, Judith Miller, used Chalabi as a main source for her allegations about WMDs — the newspaper later apologised for the shaky reporting — called him in a 2008 headline ‘Neoconner.’”

Paul Pillar was in charge from 2002–2005 of coordinating assessments of Iraq from the whole intelligence community. In 2006, he wrote:

The greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD (there was indeed a broad consensus that such programs existed), but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the lraq expedition to the "war on terror" and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood. [emphasis added].

Sadly for Iraq, the US and the world, this remarkably brazen manufacturing of false claims to justify a second invasion of Iraq was successful—despite worldwide opposition.

No essay about the Big Lie would be complete without mentioning the serial mendacity of Donald Trump. Suffice to say space does not permit a full accounting. Journalist Daniel Dale kept careful track of The Raging Bullshitter’s daily fibs, and here he lists Trump's top 15 lies. Arguably Trump’s most egregious lie is the continuing false claim that he was cheated out of the 2020 election, which culminated in the Capitol Riots on January 6, 2021.

Those who wield power will attempt to generate consensus through a variety of methods. Once in awhile those who wield great power pull out all the stops and go for the Big Lie, and by the time the self-serving fairy tale becomes evident, it's too late. The damage is done; mission accomplished. And often untold numbers of people die.

We’ve barely scratched the surface here.

But as we consider today’s global crises and hotspots and all their machinations, those who think we aren't being fed some Tall Tales ought to consider history as their guide.

Indeed from Gaza to Ukraine, from Taiwan to Yemen, one prominent falsehood emerges: the notion that there are military solutions where none truly exist.

Another Big Lie to put to rest.

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