Same Big Lie, New Audience

Throughout my adult life I've heard claims by the left and the right about each other that were shocking and beyond belief... repeated over and over by members in unison for a large number of news cycles. My humble opinion is that the goal was to make me believe what they were saying was true and then become a fanatical useful idiot to their partisan message. 

I felt that I should chronical in real time each assertion in context for future reference but alas, my attempts were always preempted by the demands of this... this damned daily reality. Today I'm left with assurance I have frequently experienced THE BIG LIE yet if asked for a specific detailed verifiable dated example I'll just shrug my shoulders.

About the BIG LIE... (copy and paste is a fantastic invention).

"... Adolf Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, launched a massive campaign to convince the German people that the Jews were their enemies. Having taken over the press, they spread lies blaming Jews for all of Germany's problems..." Replace the above names with the names of your political enemies. Sounds familiar? 

“No salvation is possible until the bearer of disunion, the Jew, has been rendered powerless to harm," Hitler said to his followers in 1922. The end result was that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews and 5 million other prisoners of war, Roma, gay men and members of other groups Hitler deemed "undesirable" [source: National WWII Museum].

https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/10-biggest-lies-in-history.htm

"The OSS psychological profile of Hitler described his use of the big lie:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot

I subscribe whole heartedly to and believe it's empirically provable that history repeats itself. I also believe it's very possible psychological manipulation techniques are in play to guide popular opinion of folks who just don't have the time to think through the news.

Heaven forbid either political side dehumanize the other side to the extent that  utter physical destruction of heretics becomes an acceptable final solution. 

So how do you protect yourself from THE BIG LIE; the emotional, mindlessly recurring underhanded attempts to control your opinion?

Know there is something called the illusory truth effect. I bumped into it while surfing the net. Do your homework. Check it out. 

All I can suggest is what my common sense tells me regarding freedom from the trap of THE BIG LIE.

Who is the source? What have they to gain by misleading the masses? Are there INDEPENDENT SOURCES confirming the message? Ha, independent sources... 🙄

Take a deep and refreshing breath upon reading a post that' s trying to get a rise out of you. Is it trying to push you into instant emotion? Does the post want you to ignore evidence to the contrary?

As extremely unpleasant as it sometimes truly is, please read news from different political perspectives with the goal of finding contradictory evidence. Helps to prevent you losing face in discussion or debate.

Here's a good one for you. I just ran across it accidently. It's a fun website to help you discern what's news vs manipulation.

https://www.getbadnews.com/en

Last idea is talk to opinion manipulators as they are human beings. People respond in kind to respect. We all have common ground. If you do find truth, share it. No matter how the other person responds, even if they are defensive, aggressive or even passive, you can still continue speaking  truth, respectfully.

Please hold back "what aboutism". It's an interminable dead end.  Communication is necessary to protect against propaganda.