The Prosecutors' Goebbels Strategy: Employing the "Große Lüge"

Long before there was a Chris "Facebook" Arnt or a Len "The Man" Gregor polluting the earth, there was Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler's Minister of Propaganda (his real title). Readers who are familiar with Goebbel's role with the Third Reich also know that he used successfully a tactic which is called the "Big Lie."

It worked like this, to quote Hitler from his wretched Mein Kampf:

The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, for a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The idea was this: tell a huge lie, one that no one can believe, but as people hear it, they tell themselves, "Well, THAT can't be true, but there must be 'something' there." It is a tactic that the prosecution in the Tonya Craft trial has been using with impunity, and it is a slimy and utterly dishonest thing, and that House would permit such a thing in his courtroom tells us more about this man than we would want to know.

I write this post because someone wrote to me in an email that a number of people in the Chattanooga area were falling for this tactic (which is why the Dishonest Duo is using it). The person wrote:

I've read the blogs and comments, I've talked to people around town, and one thing jumps out at me: men, more often then women, have said "there must be something to the charges because those three little girls wouldn't have just made it up -- it would be too much of a coincidence." Or, "I can't believe that they could get that many people in on a conspiracy -- they couldn't get them to all say the same thing."

Unfortunately, people are misinformed, thanks not only to uneven media coverage (and pure prosecution propaganda on Channel 9), but also to the fact that most law-abiding people tend to believe everything prosecutors are saying, as they have a false belief that those in prosecutorial offices are incapable of lying.

With that in mind, I would like to address these issues one at a time. Here is the first quote again:

• "There must be something to the charges because those three little girls wouldn't have just made it up -- it would be too much of a coincidence."

It is important -- absolutely important -- to remember that at no time did these three children come up to their parents and say: "Miss Tonya did a nasty to me." No, the children came up with these accounts only after "interviewers" such as Suzy "I Don't Recall" Thorne and Stacy "So What" Long either asked dozens of leading questions or simply made up the thing out of whole cloth. Afterward, the children were instructed to give certain testimony.

I cannot emphasize enough this last point, and what we have seen is quite consistent with what occurred in the gaggle of child molestation hoaxes that swept this country and forever marred its judicial system two decades ago. If one examines how these various "disclosures" came about, one will find that no child -- not one -- said anything without first being badgered by unqualified and dishonest "investigators" and parents.

Let us now examine the second quote:

• "I can't believe that they could get that many people in on a conspiracy -- they couldn't get them to all say the same thing."

 Guess what? The witnesses have not said the same thing, which is the reason I have called them the "Gang That Couldn't Lie Straight." Why do you think that the prosecutors constructed a nebulous timeline? They wanted to create as much uncertainty as possible so they could try to fit the "changing fact" into this greater lie.

Furthermore, don't forget that the prosecution had months to help witnesses prepare for their day on the stand, and still there have been key inconsistencies. If you think they have not been coached, think again. A clinical psychologist contacted me and told me that it was obvious that coaching was going on, so if anyone really believes that these various witnesses just came to the stand on their own without prosecutors having written the script -- as bad and self-contradictory as that script might be -- then the Brooklyn Bridge is in Chattanooga and it is for sale at a bargain price.

Why do the prosecutors use the "Große Lüge"? They use it because it works. If you doubt what I am saying, just watch Channel 9's coverage during the day (if you can stand to listen to them report something akin to a claim that Goebbels was telling the truth) and you will see what I mean. It is clear that the reporters and their own newsroom have bought into the "Große Lüge," and I would bet that if you asked them why, they would say that no prosecutor would make such serious allegations if they were not true.

However, there is one pitfall to using the "Große Lüge," and that is once people conclude one is just telling whoppers, then one's credibility is shot forever. No one defends the name of Goebbels anymore, as the name is identified with producing lying propaganda.

Likewise, even if "Facebook" and "The Man" manage to get a conviction, a huge number of people are going to conclude the trial was a fraud and they got the conviction by lying to a jury, and neither man will have credibility that is essential for them to do their jobs in the future. (If they DO get a conviction, the information that will be made public when the attorneys file for an appeal will be an eye-opener, and a near-death experience for the Dishonest Duo.)

Don't forget that the name "Nifong" became a verb in the Urban Dictionary, and no one confuses "Nifong" with "integrity." I don't know if "Facebook" and "The Man" will reach such towering heights of fame, but they certainly are doing their best to outdo the "Fong" himself.