BIG LIE VERSUS SMALL LIES – CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF US PRESIDENT TRUMP’S COMMUNICATION TACTICS

THE “BIG LIE”

Many people are worried about the return of the “Big Lie“. In general, a prototypical lie is characterized by falsehood, which is deliberate and intended to deceive. The “Big Lie”, in particular, is a (political) propaganda technique first referred to by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 landmark book “Mein Kampf” about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”: “…the Big Lie (has) always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses … in the primitive simplicity of their minds (are) more (ready to fall) victims to the Big Lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters …”.

Hitler suggested the “Big Lie” technique was used by the Jews to blame Germany’s loss in the First World War on German General Ludendorff, a prominent post war nationalist and antisemitic political leader. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s PR man, stated, that “… 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.” He insisted that “… all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public has understood.”

Ironically, later in history it was Hitler’s regime that actually employed the “Big Lie” propaganda by mass disseminating this core and a few additional chief falsehoods to the German public. Like a pyramid building, the “Big Lie” organized underneath a configuration of smaller lies. The primary rules of the National Socialists’ “Big Lie” propaganda strategy were:

Distort the truth massively and infamously;
Never allow the public to cool off;
Never admit a fault or wrongdoing;
Never concede that there may be some good in the enemy;
Never leave room for alternatives;
Never accept blame;
Concentrate on one enemy at a time, and
Blame the enemy for everything that goes wrong.

After Germany’s military defeat in 1945, and although the “Big Lie” was a product of a very short historical period in Germany, in particular intellectuals feared the emergence of another “Big Lie”. Amongst the most prominent was the author George Orwell (famous for his novels “1984” and “Animal Farm”). He warned of “the truth getting turned upside-down” again by just a handful of falsehoods. His obsession was about the next fiction, which would claim that “war is peace”, “freedom is slavery”, “four is five”, and “ignorance is strength”. His fears were not unfounded because the “Big Lie” as a principle continued throughout the following conflict between the capitalist West and the communist East during the whole so-called Cold War.

For the West, Russian Communism enslaved the individual;
For communist Russians, the West’s capitalists were enslaving workers through the false promise of capitalist “freedom”.

Each side accused the other of using a “Big Lie” as the means of respective alleged exploitation. Hannah Arendt, the German-American philosopher and political theorist, warned: “… in an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses (would) reach the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.”

The question is whether the “Big Lie” concept will function in our present-day environment, which is largely characterised by (individual) mobility, globalisation, digitalisation, borderless mass information, cross-border networking, limitless exchange of information, international networks and supranational political structures (e.g. European Union).

A look at communist China shows that in this closed society, one-party-rule country, the “Big Lie” concept is not functioning in perfection. The Chinese leadership was intelligent enough not to use a “Big Lie” approach to control any possible discontent. Although the country’s undemocratic leadership would have been most able to control any information, there is still a multitude of voices expressing political and civic dissent. Instead, the Chinese leaders decided to use alternative means such as smart mass distractions including free travelling, overseas tourism and the massive use of the Internet (different to neighbouring communist North Korea).

In contrast, in the USA, critics of US President Trump observe that in his communications, Trump has been “doing to political ends, what Hitler did to more brutal ends: Using “mass deception” as masterful propaganda.” The term “mass deception” does not necessarily assume the existence of a “Big Lie” and it is apparent that Trump did not choose that option. Still, at present, a real fear exists that the US (and some other countries in the world) may be at risk to become victim of a “Big-Lie syndrome”. However, a closer look at the facts suggests that the current threat is different: In reality, we are not faced with a single “Big Lie” but an accumulation of “small lies” (and / or variants of “small lies”).

In fact, independent data show that during 2017, Trump lied 2,140 times about various subjects, all of them individually not qualifying as one single “Big Lie”. The many smaller dishonesties (generously characterised as “stretching things” by US top Republican Newt Gingrich) and the resulting confusion are one of the defining features of Trump’s Presidency when one realizes that, on average, he lied 5.9 times a day.

The regularity, frequency and rapid succession of these deplorable “information disorders”, which include “alternative facts”, “alternative truths”, and the like give reason to believe that Trump’s production of this whole bouquet of falsehoods, half-truths, misquotes, assertions, etc. is part of a systematic offensive. “Systematic” because the President has chosen in principle to act according to this model, but not in a way planned in any detail, as topics, people and occasions seem more or less left to chance.

Trump critics regularly get excited about confusion, chaos and unpredictability as negative features of his Presidency and his communication style. But this is a rather naive or conservative assessment of the President’s actions. It overlooks that from Trump’s point of view, unpredictability, confusion and chaos are intended. They important intermediate steps of his strategic plan to achieve the political goal “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) in a way that his former thought leader Steve Bannon pointed out to in many contributions. Although Trump removed Steve Bannon as his special “strategic advisor”, he has not ceded following Bannon’s ideological program. In the past, Bannon had declared himself a “Leninist,” stating that the Soviet ideological leader “…wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment…”. Trump’s obvious disrespect and openly manifested contempt for the “administrative state”, members of his close staff, established procedures, regulatory agencies and other bureaucratic institutions, as well as (international) conventions and alliances serve the goal of deconstruction for getting a better “deal” for the USA. As a logical consequence, unpredictability, chaos and the President’s very lax approach to facts and truths are an integral part of his agenda (“we have to be unpredictable … predictable is bad…”). Under no circumstances they are solely due to Trump’s ignorance, incapacity or amateurism. If they were just slips of a naive beginner, his emotional followers would probably have started already to turn away or make fun of him because their instincts would tell them that he is a loser.

The quality of Trump’s untruths and half-truths reflects the quality of his political goals. These are more based on deep-seated political resentments, “regulars’ table rant”, and superficial, vulgar analysis than on serious socio-economic and political analysis. The idea to solve a socio-political, demographic and economic problem such as illegal immigration, for instance, by constructing a wall like in the Middle Ages corresponds closely with Trump’s lie that the construction of the wall is under way (which is not the case).

This illustrates why many skeptics may be worrying about the wrong thing when fearing the emergence of a new “Big Lie” because the sheer amount of “small lies” and their many variants might just be as frightening. “If falsehood, like truth, had only one face, we would be in better shape,” the philosopher Michel de Montaigne famously wrote. “But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless field.”

2. “SMALL LIES” AND THEIR VARIANTS

Before analysing what different forms “small lies” (and their many variants) can take, one should know the tactical role “small lies” are intended to play as part of the strategic plan of those who are using them to push their political agenda. The tactical role assigned to the “small lies” influences directly the shape, character, composition of and the timing for a tailor-made basket of “small lies”, which are best suited to achieve the desired political / communication goals. In the political field, in general, and in the present political reality in the USA, in particular, political “small lies”, variants and substitutes are designed:

To distract (e.g. from negative or embarrassing news);
To entertain (e.g. as a way to effectively transporting messages);
To muddy (e.g. to hide uncomfortable truths), and, finally,
To confuse the public, the media, the opponents and even the supporters (e.g. to create an environment of “divide and rule”).

Some people say that “small lies” are never small and claim that “small lies” are “Big Lies.” And indeed, according to expert studies, people are more desentitized to dishonesty the more they are exposed to (small) lies. Expert findings also came to the conclusion that continuous telling of small lies can desensitize people’s brains and encourage to tell or to believe in bigger lies in the future. We know this effect from similar escalations in other areas such as risk taking or violent behaviour. The dangers of small acts of dishonesty become even more evident when full-fledged lies or surrogates such as alternative reality, alternative truths, conspiracy theories and other information disorders are accumulating to a “grand story” of falsehoods. That means that, in effect, there seems to be a similar problem with small lies as with an overarching “Big Lie” when too many (smart) small lies (or variations of lies) are produced.

Applying these insights to the current situation in the USA and examining President Trump’s behavioral pattern, one quickly comes to the conclusion that the sheer volume of small lies and the many other variants of disinformation make so-called “fact-checking” a totally irrelevant activity, in particular when “facts” are generally denunciated as “lies” and fact-checkers as “enemies”. It seems that at present fact checking has widely lost its political clout and impact, especially in a situation of information overload.

Just the enormous amount of information alone makes it almost impossible for the information corrected by fact checking to reach the desired addressees effectively;
In addition, fact checking lost some of its importance in a world, which can be described as a post-fact political world. Post factual, because as a result of ultra fast information technology developments, the emergence of highly individualised (social) media channels and the fragmentation of the media.

On the basis of these trends one can speak of a schizophrenic situation:

On the one hand, the new technologies allow for and lead to a high degree of specialization and individualization. This development is demonstrated by the recent emergence of highly specialised and micro-target group oriented radio and cable TV outlets, news sites, blogs, podcast, new social media channels;
On the other hand, the new technologies represent the risk of a development towards a presumptuous “synchronization” of information and its interpretations. This exposure is strengthened by a tendency in social behaviour according to which people increasingly tend to cluster with like-minded people. This and the introduction of changed algorithmic newsfeeds has resulted in a situation in which information is at risk to become “synchronized” in a kind of “silo effect” process under which each faction or (micro-) group is only exposed to their own (selected) “facts”, i.e. information that affirms their given point of view by exposing them only to what they want to hear. Today, Tweets are displayed based on a calculation of “relevance” rather than “recency”. The algorithm has taught itself that network users are more likely to stick around if they see content that has already gotten a lot of retweets and mentions, compared with content that has fewer. Human biases play an important role: Since one is more likely to react to content that taps into existing individual beliefs, inflammatory tweets will generate quick engagement. For this reason, Twitter, Facebook and other social media make the flow of misinformation as a combination of human and technical factors. At its worse, this cycle can turn social media into a kind of confirmation bias machine, which is perfectly tailored for the spread of misinformation.

In this information overload environment, the new combination of adversarial populist movements, on the one hand, and social media and its development into a quasi “bias-confirmation-machine”, on the other hand, the authority of facts is sent in decline. Resulting from this, the relevance of “fake news“ has become more important. In this new reality, the short-lived nature of information and public attention and the overwhelming wealth of information mean that even after a fact check has been carried out, a possible correction or proof of a lie is no longer of great interest or has become irrelevant, will be perceived as outdated or simply lost in the sea of information. The lie, if there was one, will disappear into the archives and added to the statistics, for which, as one can assume, there are few interested parties. The additional effect of the new realities is that small (specialised) lies can be effectively directed at different (specialised, micro-) target audiences. This targeted approach can make them even more powerful tools than a single “Big Lie” as their specific content will be designed to perfectly match the specialised recipients’ perspective. Today, consumers are able to shape their media consumption around their own expectations, opinions and prevailing prejudices, and populist leaders are prepared to encourage them, even when it involves excesses of populist, emotional and lying demagogy and abuses of facts. Populist politicians such as Trump use these new insights and tools intelligently or instinctively. The US President’s unusual and unprecedented social media presence and his raw, prolific stream of tweets on Twitter is a result of his decision to provide unfiltered messages to his constituents without the concern that his comments are being taken out of context (ironically a frequent complaint voiced by Trump’s supporters). The ready availability of Trump’s unfiltered tweets has become an alternative to the traditional practice that US presidents give interviews to the media. In comparing the alternatives, the concern is that using Twitter allows the President to lie without being contradicted by journalists in a face-to-face interview environment.

In addition, to his many lies, the US President has shown a proclivity to constantly repeat many of his false or misleading statements either via Twitter or at his many flee flying rally style public appearances. If the “Big Lie” seems to have been replaced in effectiveness by a multitude of small lies and knowing that small lies can take different forms and characters (ranging from a blunt lie to disguised or intelligently wrapped up variants or substitutes), one must identify these variants and substitute lies as such. This is important since, under this assumption, it is not the individual small lie, which counts, but the totality of the “information disorders” (whatever shape they take) that contribute to the degree of political dangerousness.

According to the Council of Europe’s 2017 “Information Disorder Report”, there are three types of “information disorder”:

Mal-information, i.e. information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organization or country;
Mis-information, i.e. information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm, and
Dis-information, i.e. information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country.

From this follows that it is important,

To distinguish messages that are true from those that are false, and
To distinguish messages that are created, produced or distributed with the intention to do harm from those that have no bad intentions.

The information disorder problem was formulated already a long time ago and the phenomenon of “fake news” already existed in the past (especially during World War I and II). After the world wars, during the Cold War period, Soviet Russia invented the word “dezinformatsiya” (disinformation) meaning false information that is deliberately intended to mislead.

There is no agreement on what “fake news” really means, how much of a problem it is, and what to do about it. Fake news are characterised bythe repeated use of catchwords, phrases and talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Currently, the term “fake news” is usually used to describe falsehoods or hoaxes, which are proliferated via social media and considered as dangerous in part because they are so easily and quickly shared online. In fact it was the emergence of the Internet and resulting social media communication that has made “fake news” more notable and more effective than before. In our post-truth political environment, “fake news” differ from the traditional contesting and falsifying of facts by relegating facts and expert opinions to be of secondary importance. Still, “fake news“ was not a term many people used a couple of years ago. But after his election in 2016, the US President began to use this term regularly to dismiss any negative press coverage of his Presidency. Whilst the US President sees “fake news“ as a reflection of his personal reality (in his case as a perceived victim), others see it as one of the greatest threats to democracy, free media and debate. Objectively seen, “fake news” is a type of propaganda. One could argue that the term “fake news” actually combines the above-referenced three types of information disorder (i.e. mal-information, mis-information and dis-information) and is always intentional. Usually, the intent is

To make it more difficult for journalists to cover significant news stories in a professional and objective way;
To mislead and influence public audiences in order to damage a cause and / or to mislead for a defined reason, generate online revenue, and
To (deliberately) increase political polarization.

In addition to “fake news“, as part of the three “information disorders”, there are many other shades of “information disorders”, including harmless satires or parodies, more serious misleadings, improper, manipulated or fabricated contents, false connections or contexts. However, a critical review of the arsenal of disinformation in all its shades would be incomplete if one ignored the fact that the quality of the target groups has changed recently. Demographic, social-psychological and technical developments are responsible for this development. The psychology of the target groups and the effectiveness of the information and disinformation tactics chosen to influence them are closely related and therefore cannot be ignored.

TARGETING

Targeting does not stop with the careful definition and analysis of the target groups. In addition, a successful communicator has to understand his target audience. This requires that the communicator must try to put himself in the psyche of the identified target group and understand the state of mind, the language and the expectations. Only if he knows what the expectations, hopes, concerns and the language of his target group are can he expect his communication to reach these people and be perceived with his messages (the “recipient perspective” principle). Under this principle, the communicator has to imagine himself in turn as a member of the different groups he must reach, and thereafter construct a campaign, which will appeal to as many people as possible. The campaign content shall be news, which are relevant and newsworthy, not necessarily in an objective way, but for the selected target audiences.

In his public communications Trump has, until todate, been very effective because his communications widely match his target group’s expectations. He knows that a lot of people in the USA are unhappy with a lot of different things (e.g. terrorism, illegal immigration, the economy post financial meltdown, security, changing demographics, political correctness, environmental regulations, and lots more). A lot of those in US society that feel powerless and disaffected want to believe that one guy, who has crafted an image as a very successful businesman, will fix everything that they see as wrong. This is an important reason why Trump’s “fake news“ model seems to work so successfully. As long as there will be enough demand for his messages, as long as these messages are made in a way that they are appealing to his target groups and as long as there are enough people with strong partisan feelings who want to hear “fake messages“, Trump will be successful with his communication tactics. These are the prerequisites for a successful acceptance of this type of (mis-) information.

Being a populist means that the communicator responds successfully to public expectations (“public opinion”). This is also because he has interpreted “newsworthiness” in a non-conventional way: Ignoring the traditional requirements for a message to become newsworthy, his messages are frequently about subjects, which his audience like and wants to hear. This can also be lies or fake news and repetitions when these reconfirm the audience’s pre-set opinions. In addition, the message can deal with people the audience respects or admires or subjects they are familiar with or an area characterized by strong prevailing convictions. The messages must be brought forward using media channels, which capture public attention (in this case, a few interviews and lots of Tweets on Twitter). This and a major portion of aggressiveness is providing Trump with his successful activities in steering public opinion and maintaining his fans’ support. In his (ghostwritten) book “The Art of the Deal” Trump wrote: “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”

In an increasingly “populist” worldpublic opinion is becoming more and more a matter of interest. “Public opinion” can be defined as an random amount of personal judgments on the mind of an average individual, which generally is not well refined but can still be quiet strong, beyond any rational and resistent to any logic. Examples are prejudices, stereotypes, resentments and (largely unfounded) convictions. Communicators (e.g. the media, politicians but also corporations) must understand this complexity and assess what new facts the public (their selected publics) will absorb in consideration of the solid barrier of prejudices, stereotypes, pp. these people hold. An example for this mental barrier phenomenon is that large sections of the electorate and politicians are delusionally trying not to have to face reality, for instance, with respect to:

Problems of global warming and climate change (mainly in the USA, China and developing countries);
The approaching end of “dirty” fuels, raw materials and production processes and the associated loss of jobs;
Dwindling resources and resulting price explosions and conflicts;
The impending traffic congestion and resulting pollution in the world’s metropolises;
The approaching end of the internal combustion engine without a viable alternative available at present;
The dangers of re-ideologisation, the return to religious intolerance and the resulting (violent) cultural conflicts, “racism” and refugee problem;
The growing dangers of uncontrolled economically induced South-North immigration (Europe, Africa, USA);
The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (Iran, North Korea) and gun control (USA).

In his book “The Revolt of the Masses“ (1929/1930), Portuguese philosopher Ortega y Gasset is describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is very critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up. He identifies a new sociological species: The “mass-man”, who, in his view, is a plebeian (in ancient Rome: A commoner). In describing the “mass-man”, Ortega does not make reference to any social class. Instead, he sketches a certain type of European, mainly by analyzing his behaviour in the context of the respective civilization into which he was born irrespective from his social background. In contrast to the nineteenth century values and its aristocratic style of politics, the modern “mass man” is characterized by “a plebian absence of unique values, distinct personality traits and lacking a sense of personal and social responsibility”. Ortega portrays him as a specialist who believes that he “has it all“ and extends the command he seems to have of his subject to others, “contemptuous of his ignorance”.

According to this description, Ortega’s “mass man“ is the kind of human being who is the dominant social force in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the model basis for any kind of populism. Populism as represented by Brexit supporters in the UK, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey and Trump in the USA rejects the legitimacy of political institutions and the free media. For instance, Trump believes, that he is directly representing the will of the (majority of) people. He has made this very clear by his excessive use of Twitter. This must not be misunderstood as his special personal feature but must be seen as a calculated move enabling him to bypass institutions and be in direct contact with the US people. This is in stark contrast to the traditional doctrine of constitutional law. This law assumes that elected representatives do not implement the will of the people directly. Instead, elected representatives have a social responsibility towards their country to act as “ennoblers of the will of the people”. Their task is to ensure that prevailing prejudices, false convictions, resentments and stereotypes will not be translated into political actions but get refined in the interest of the whole. Populist leaders do not accept this social responsibility. They just refer to the outcome of the vote (as done by the Brexit supporters) and ignore their responsibility, which would require them to enhance the people’s opinion for the good of the country. This is particularly necessary when the vote (like the Brexit vote in the UK) was based on false figures, misinformation, disinformation, fake news, unwarranted fears and not realistic expectations among the people. In this case, prejudices, stereotypes, false beliefs and errors should have fought or refined by these politicians and not be strengthened for political motives.

In addition to charcterizing the mass man (who is allowing the success of populism), Ortega points out to the “mass man’s” lack of even a rudimentary understanding of culture. He concludes that the “mass man’s” inability to make a distinction between “civilisation” and “culture” represents a specific danger. One of the effects of this inability to distinguish can be the growing vulgarization of our society and, part of this, a vulgarisation of human interaction, values, esteems, style and communications. Although people often conflate the terms culture and civilization, there are major differences:

Civilization is a means: It is a process of organising and developing the human society by the means of technical and technological tools, social and political organisation that make life possible in a social group;
In contrast, culture is an end: It is the set of knowledge, experiences, values, traditions, morals, (intellectual and artistic) achievements and behaviours, which is commonly shared by a group of people. A culture normally exists within a civilization. In this regard, each civilization can contain weak or strong, and not only one but several cultures. Culture can exist in itself whereas civilization cannot be called a civilization if it does not possess a certain culture. From this follows that a civilization will become empty if it does not have its culture, no matter how little it may be.

Vulgarity is a senseless violation of the norms and standards established in society. In the recent years, it has been manifested in daily life by people, generally showing contempt for decent language (in real life in the USA, the phenomenon concentrates and is exemplary through the omnipresent word f… In official parlance this word, originating from the language of vulgarized sexuality, is no longer denied as a generally used expression, but hypocritically replaced by the abbreviation f…. The user of this abbreviation knows which word he means and assumes that the addressee also knows it. Both parties know and still pretend to preserve a rest of decency, which makes this tacit “complicity” even more embarrassing as it is revealing their lack of good education and their hypocrisy.

The completely unfounded overestimation of the importance and senseless glorification of trivialities such as sports, film, TV, rock and pop careers (today one is already a “star” if one lets play the same “sound” as smoothly as possible as a so-called “disc jockey”) makes Nobel Prize winners pale although they generally make an undisputed timeless scientific, artistic or political contribution to humanity. Movies today, do not even pretend to be art but have degenerated just to a business with no justification of the rubbish, the horror and the vulgarity they produce, unless they are produced for a small number of people interested in culture who are forced to meet in special niches of the entertainment arena. Here too, Ortega’s mass-man takes his toll. Vulgarization pervading the whole society changes its psychology, which in turn has consequences for the forms of communication with which people can be effectively reached. This has an effect on communication tactics and tools, the language and channels used to reach the targeted audiences. Again, Trump can serve as a good example for the vulgarisation of words, wasy and means and subjects of communication. Trump uses words, which have a clichéd and casual (non-presidential) nature, stock phrases, exxagerations (”biggest in history”), particularly “discourse markers” like “anyway”, “so”, “you know”, “belive me”, and, prominently, the “queen of weak formulations”: “things”. Especially outstanding and worth mentioning here are his personal insults of any kind of opponents, his or his supporters’ use of two-word adjective-plus-name combinations such as ‘crooked Hillary’ or ‘porn lawyer”.

The particular reference to Trump’s contribution to “culture” leads to a brief consideration of the role of the USA as contributor to human culture and the influence of that contribution on the political target audiences’ psychology. To say that US-Americans have no culture may be dismissed as snobbish. But it seems fair to say that the USA in particular have spread around the world a lot of the cultureless aspects of this and the preceding centuries’ modernity. Observers who complain about “globalization” are really complaining about “Americanization”. They see that today, US culture has become the world’s most widespread and influential culture, so powerful and ever-present that they fear it may actually damage their own national cultures. Much of American culture aims for the lowest common denominator and this more in the popular (“pop”) than in the “high culture” field. It celebrates the commonplace, the average, the universal. This assumption is highlighted by a US-American patriot’s claim that “Elvis is as important as Mozart”.

The reason for US culture’s predominantly “popular“ character is the result of so-called “universal systems” which were deliberately created in the USA to form a nation. After its foundation the American leaders desperately tried to unite the diversity of different nationals, customs, mentalities, traditions, beliefs and races pouring into the country to experience the so-called “American Dream“. Their challenge was to create a new nation state with an own, new identity.

The universal character of the USA’s cultural contribution, its common touch and common taste became popular around the world because it stuck to the basics and frequently chose the lowest common denominator. This is what led former French President Chirac to support putting a limit on the number of US films that could be shown in French cinemas because he did not want to see “European culture sterilized or obliterated by American culture for economic reasons that have nothing to do with real culture.” On the other hand, other countries opening up to globalization such as China, India and its neighbours in South East Asia and the Middle East, for instance, only seemed to be interested in the civilization of Western technology. The Chinese, in particular under their current regime, are apparently unprepared to accept what Ortega called the cultural underpinnings that creates Western technology (civilization). They and others have shown relatively little interest in Western values such as individual freedom, democratic institutions, the workings Western educational institutions and the free exchange of ideas and information.

In consideration of growing populism, the continuously increasing vulgarisation and global technologoical change, the analysis of political target audiences requires a thorough understanding of “crowd psychology”, also known as “mob” or mass psychology” (Ortega: “The Revolt of the Masses”). An important factor in effective targeting is the insight that today publics are increasingly synchronised by the omnipresent social media and other sources of easily accessible information. The ways in which the psychology of a crowd differs from and interacts with that of the individuals within that crowd relates to the behaviours and thought processes of both, the individual crowd members, and the crowd as an entity. Crowd behaviour is heavily influenced by the loss of responsibility of the individual and the impression of universality of behaviour, both of which increase with crowd size. A talented mass communicator like Trump knows that to influence crowds he has to serve existing stereotypes (“illegal immigrants”), has to combat opaque machinations commonly perceived as undertaken by powerful intransparent groups (“the Washington swamp”), and create new or strengthen existing stereotypes or prejudices as perceived appropriate (e.g. by using “small lies” or “fake news”).

In addition to these demographic, cultural and mass psychological changes of the public, rapid digitalisation and growing online activity of people in the private and the professional sphere are bound to transforming people’s overall behaviour. In general, the Internet has become a dominant force when it comes to social interaction, networking, how information is accessed, gathered and exchanged, (relevant) news and perspectives are shared and discussed, and individuals are mobilized to become interested. The Internet, smartphones, tablets, smartboards and e-readers and the like are currently reshaping people’s reading and learning habits as intensively as Gutenberg’s first printing press did in the 15^th century. As a result, the way of obtaining new information (e.g. by visiting libraries versus using a search engine) is changing and llinear reading is increasingly becoming a lost skill. For many students and former book lovers, using physical books have become a thing of the past. Any communication plan has to adapt its tactics to these new habits to reach its target audeineces and to thus to remain effective.

Another (newer) trend is the growing scepticism, which a large part of the public has developed towards parliamentary democracy. Citizens seem to be increasingly disenchanted by and disengaged from democratic processes and particularly core institutions of representative government. There is a widespread public feeling that government is remote, insensitive and untouchable and that the “political class“ conducts politics in a way that turns off ordinary voters. A good example is the European Parliament and the European executive institutions, which have an important influence on the day-to-day life of European citizens. Although politicians are aware of this scepticism they do not seem to find the right answers to this challenge. On the other hand, everybody knows that people lamenting about the deficiencies of democracies are not only frequently uniformed but show no interest in engaging, take office or responsibility but stay apathetic.

In the USA it can be seen where the sometimes only dull and hardly expressed dissatisfaction of large groups of voters can lead. The dissatisfied US citizens and those who feel overlooked or missed out have generally reacted positively to the crude communication tactics and promises of their current president. And this even in a manner almost reminiscent of “faith” that seems to forgive Trump for any mistake. This constitutes a big, almost insurmountable tactical challenge for his opponents, as their political adversary seems unassailable as long as his supporters trust him blindly. This experience should serve as a warning for those democratic politicians in other countries who feel comfortable by just relying on facts, fact checking and the supposed strength of their political arguments. They can very quickly be outmaneuvered. If a challenger enters the political scene on whom hope is pinned by large parts of a generally dissatisfied population, established politicians and parties could quickly find themselves in the opposition even if they thought they had the better arguments (example: France’s Macron).

The challenger’s use of populist arguments will help him, even if they include falsehoods (as demonstrated by the successful Brexit campaign in the UK). Regardless of the credibility and truth of the challenger’s arguments, there is hardly an effective resistance if the challenger uses:

The whole bundle of small lies, half-truths, untruths, mis- and disinformations and other attractive means (para. 1, above);
Mass psychology;
The psychology of his target groups, and
Communication tactics adjusted to above (para 3).

4. WEAPONISING “SMALL LIES”

Although the strategies of the “Big Lie” and many “little lies” may diverge, they threaten similarly in scope. In their means they may differ, but in their ends they are not so different. Many demagogues, political leaders and other public figures have understood that “small lies”, its variants and additional alternative information disorders can be added up to a “Grand Story”, which will have similar effect as a single “Big Lie”. A condition for making “small lies” as effective as a “Big Lie” is when the “small lies” and their variants are “weaponised” as part of a comprehensive “information warfare” concept.

During the last decades, the term “weaponize“ has proliferated outside its initial military context. The original meaning was “to adapt or convert something into a powerful means of gaining advantage“. This is illustrated by the following example: The word “racist” was created specifically to target white people’s suprematist attitude. But today, it has become a “weaponized“ word. The reason for its use is generally to stigmatise certain judgmental or derogatory remarks. In the current political environment of “political correctness“, this stigmatisation can become a weapon in the hands of the person using this word against someone else. This person’s defaming use can, in many different situations, may have a devastating effect on the person designated as such, especially when used quite unreflected and sweeping as it is frequently the case.

The “weaponization” of small lies and its closest variant, i.e. misinformation, have abandoned the traditional goals of public diplomacy, persuasion, propaganda and the conventional standards of truth and credibility. They are replaced by more subtle shifts of meaning: Hyperbole, credible deniability, obfuscation, and, more recent, “whataboutism”. The 2016 US presidential election can be seen as an unprecedented climax in the “weaponization” of words, themes, attitudes and people.

Amongst many others, Trump has particularly “weaponized“ the issues of immigration and trade;
Putin has weaponized Wikileaks against the Clinton campaign, and
Trump opponents have weaponized “diagnoses of alleged mental illness“ and television testimonies of women with questionable reputations against Trump.

Under Putin, ideology is no longer the “wardrobe of politics“ (as it was under the Communist regime) but rather an interchangeable and contradictory set of accessories. Where the Soviets once co-opted and repurposed concepts such as “democracy,” “human rights” and “sovereignty” to mask their opponents (dialectics), Putin uses them to suggest that not even the West really believes in them (“whataboutism“). His more fluid approach to ideology allows him to simultaneously back far-left and far-right movements, obscure conspiracy theorists, greens, anti-globalists and financial elites as the only aim has become to exacerbate divide and strengthen support for Russia’s national (no longer ideological) goals. In support of these goals, Russia has made much use of information warfare including the “weaponzation“ of (dis-)information.

Russia exploits the idea of freedom of information to inject disinformation into society. The effect is not to persuade, as done in classic public diplomacy, or to earn credibility but to sow confusion via conspiracy theories and falsehoods. There is an increasing use of social media to spread disinformation and trolls to attack publications and personalities. This approach based on “weaponisation“ does not need a “Big Lie“ but lives from a wealth of small lies and countless variations. Examples for how the Russian are mastefully operating their system of “weaponsation“ of small lies and others include:

The Russians embrace Instagram but deem the Internet a CIA invention;
Russia censors online information but provides a platform to the founder of WikiLeaks who is proclaiming total “transparency”;
Russia condemns corporate greed by celebrating Occupy Wall Street while presiding over an economy as corrupt as Nigeria’s.

The rebranding and repositioning of the international branches of its state-owned news groups reflect Russia’s intent to influence and manipulate opinion abroad. Today, Russian state-owned or state-controlled media distribute outright lies and distribute specially targeted disinformation. The fabricated reports of the crucifixion of a child by Ukrainian forces and the fals reports of the kidnapping of a Russian-German national in Berlin are just two examples.

In the past, Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, relied on the compliant broadcast system under which a small number of people under his central direction were able to influence and shape the perceptions and beliefs of an entire nation (“the few-to-many architecture). In contrast, the Internet provides a structure under which every desktop is a printing press, a broadcasting station, and place of assembly (“many-to-many” architecture). New information technologies make it possible to recreate the perfect information plaza, a meeting place where citizens could go to be fully informed and to participate directly with no intermediary involved.

This is Trump’s explanation of why he has become hyperactive on Twitter: He is using simple language and is seeking the direct dialogue with his citizens without the media as an intermediary. This system allows him, undisturbed by well-meaning counsellors, to to spread his information, which have been proven to include many lies and variants of lies. In addition, Trump is using Twitter as a communication platform in which his talking points travel in both directions:

Pro-Trump media such as Fox News reflect Trump’s claims right back to him giving him a millions-of-viewers platform (no matter how outlandish his statements are);
Trump, in turn, promotes his media allies in his Twitter communications, for instance by openly promoting their shows and publications.

Trump’s notorious Twitter feeds and his favourite TV and radio talk shows have almost become mirror images of one another featuring totally identical claims (“Attorney General Jeff Sessions is weak”) and catch-phrases (“witch hunt”). The result of this “echo chamber” system is an “alternative reality” where Trump is portrayed as the innocent victim of a plot to undermine his presidency and to take him down.

Although fact-checkers are successful in disclosing his version of reality as a lie, their corrective work has not made a difference for Trump, his media allies and supporters. On the contrary, Trump has repeatedly said that he does not trust the fact-checks and recently he has even accused fact-checkers across the board as “bad people”. The risk is that attitude at the top starts to serve as a model and encourages for other communicators to do the same.

This risk is real as exemplified by the following example: A Florida (USA) Parliament candidate was forced to suspend her election campaign. She had come under fire after claiming that she had received a diploma from her university although the university said she did not received a degree there. When public pressure on her intensified, her spokesperson said that she was not prepared to react to “fake news”. Soon after, she made an apologetic public statement saying that she made “a mistake”. This example shows that someone who knows that he lied still believes that he can save his skin by using the term “fake news“ as a weapon (in form of a denunciation) against those who rightly accuse him of not telling the truth.

Some critics argue that rather than invigorating it, the Internet could seriously undermine the well functioning of democracy. By providing access to basically everything, it could result in increasing group polarisation, accelerating political arguments to become more simplistic, shrill, distorted, insulting or make it easier for “fake news” or even lies to be noticed in the information overload in such a way that they remain in the memory as “truth”.

In one of his Twitter tirades Trump falsely claimed that the “millions of people who voted illegally” prevented him from winning the popular vote in the US elections. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”.

Until today, there is no evidence to back up this claim. It was a lie based on the reporting of a conservative website that frequently traffics right-wing conspiracy theories like the idea that “millions of undocumented immigrants somehow managed to get themselves registered and stole the popular vote from Donald Trump”. Trump is using Twitter for all purposes, including insults. His favorite insult is “loser“ (used 246 times as of June 2018). Recently, in the case of an opposing FBI official, he even got carried away insulting him as a “sick loser“. Inceasingly Trump is using de-humanizing terms such as “animals“ (for illegal immigrants), or, more specifically, “dogs“ for people, irrespective of their gender, who have aroused his displeasure.

Other critics even go so far to say that the Internet is a platform for facilitating political turmoil, civil unrest, increasing political wrath and violent demonstrations amongst previously passive people. The Iran Green Movement, for instance, which succeeded in gathering up to three million peaceful demonstrators had no hierarchical structure but used the Internet to organise itself. In response, to the upheaval, the regime shut down websites and made the Islamic Revolutionary Guards majority owner of Iran’s telecommunications company to prevent the Green Movement’s use of the Internet.

A first step towards “weaponising” information in this new environment of “many-to-many” communication is creating a sense in the public that no source of information can be trusted and that everything said in public is a function of a particular interest. The goal is not to persuade people (that a certain point of view is correct). Instead, the goal is to undermine the adversary’s position by confusing people. This is usually achieved by persuading people that there is no “objective truth”, that no media can be relied upon, that most, if not all news is simply “fake news”, biased, partisan or unfounded propaganda (another version of reality). A successful tactic is to produce different versions of the “truth”, claiming that there is always “another side” to every story.

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani, delivered the last example for this form of “weaponisation information” when he claimed that there is no “truth”. This Orwell-inspired remark confirms earlier statements, which look like an attempt to undermine empiricism. Giuliani is on record saying that “trust is relative”, that “truth cannot be separated from opinion” and that “facts are in the eye of the beholder” (an alternative interpretation would be that one of the two parties is lying). Another Trump lawyer has assured the public, that “over time, facts develop”, while Trumps senior advisor Conway is on record defending “alternative facts”. Trump himself continues to tell his supporters that he should be considered as the sole authority for truth: “Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening … polls are fake, just like everything else”. From this it emerges that the President obviously wants the public to be kept off-balance, confused and unsure of what’s “true” and what’s not, confident that in a battle against reality, Trump’s White House will prevail.

These intentions are also evident in the hostile treatment Trump is giving the mainstream press. Like Putin in Russia, or Erdogan in Turkey, Trump has understood the power of the media and developed his own concept of dealing with that threat. His “enemy-of-the-people” campaign concept against the press is not to win that conflict. Instead, he wants to stabilise his supporter base (by portraying himself as a victim) and create a state of “destabilised perception” to better manage the situation. He knows that information “weapons” can act like an invisible radiation upon its targets so that people do not even feel that they are being acted upon. Therefore, his most important objective has been to erode the public’s belief in the integrity of independent political journalism, particularly investigative journalism and replace it by uncritical reporting (e.g. Fox News).

Additional instruments helping to “weaponise” small lies and their many variants are (1) “repetition”, (2) the use of simple (vulgar) language, (3) (hardly concealed) aggression, (4) tactical “partnerships”, (5) the tactical “occupation of semantic fields”, (6) “emotions”, and (7) role playing (e.g. the victim’s, patriot’s, saviour’s or hero’s role versus the villain role).

ad (1) Repetition was the essence of National Socialist propaganda. Goebbels was a proponent of the “repeated exposure effect.” He conceded with admiration that the skill of British propagandists during World War I resided in the fact that they used just a few powerful slogans and kept repeating them. The underlying principle is quite unsophisticated: Repeating a message enough times that those listening will remember and believe it (at least its substance) whether it is true or not. Trump has been using the terms “crooked Hillary”, „no collusion“ and “witch hunt“ quite a lot (rightly) assuming that after sufficient repetition of those words, a lot of people will believe him. His associated “chutzpah“ becomes clear when one realizes that Trump has been sued for fraud for Trump University and has been involved in at least 169 federal lawsuits. According to Bloomberg, Trump has either sued or been sued 1,300 times since 2000.

ad (2) Trump may portray himself as a “very stable genius” and “really smart” but his spoken statements say otherwise. An analysis of Trump’s statements and speeches found that he speaks at a level which is lower and that his vocabulary and grammatical structure is significantly more simple than commonly expected from a President of the USA. But his professional past in the rather crude real estate industry and after years of practice as a reality TV star he must have figured out how to use words that everyone listening will understand.

ad (3) Trump finds out the weaknesses of his opponents and aggressively exploits them. In case his opponets are strong, he uses a tactics of taking their strengths and turns them into weaknesses. This is easy for him because he feels that he can say whatever he wants about them without much scrupel and concern for the truth. Trump feels confirmed in his tactics because his fans seem to like it a part of his promised general attack on established structures and people who represent them.

ad (4) The German Third Reich represented the evolution of a tactical “partnership between masses and demagogue“. What the German National Socialists were really meaning was that their (alternative) truth lay deeper than their lies. Their lies were merely instruments (or weapons) as part of a permissible methodology since, in their view, the end justified the means. Therefore, equating their propaganda with lies does not reflect what was really meant: “Propaganda is a form of truth reshaped through the lens of regime intentions”.

ad (5) Trump is successful in occupying semantic fields, for example by continuously focussing on the terms “fake” in relation to “news” and “information”. In linguistics, a semantic field is a set of words, frequently defined by subject matter and related by meaning. A good example is the semantic field of “war” and “battle”. Sport reporters often use it, because some popular sports activities are associated with conflict and violence. As regards his quasi-proprietary use of “fake news”, Trump knows that what was said by the “fake media“ is neither untrue, nor that it was meant to deceive but he does not care. Otherwise he would use alternative language, which explicitly avoids assuming intent, for example, “falsely said,” “claimed without evidence,” or “wrongly asserted”. Trump does not care because it is not his objective to be factually and politically correct but tries to create his “alternative facts”. This become obvious in his occupation of other semantic fields such as “witch hunt”, (no) “collusion”, “voter fraud”, “wire-tapping”, “crooked” and, with reference to Nixon’s Watergate, “spygate” and “pizzagate”. Even the semantic term “immigration”, which, for historical reasons has a positive connotation in the USA, has been negatively occupied by Trump. In public debate today, it is widely understood as “illegal” immigration.

ad (6) Another core part of the German National Socialist “Grand Lie“ theory was the rejection of reason and the prioritisation of emotion. The nature of National Socialist propaganda was to feeling and the mobilization of emotions rather than thinking. For them, the role of the propagandist was to express in words what his audience felt in their hearts.

ad (7) Trump’s loyal supporter base is instinctively convinced that he is putting America first, fulfilling his many crude promises, is fixing the economy, and heroically fighting mysterious dark forces (“deep state”), which are trying to stop him. In a variation of this “heroe versus villain” saga, Trump’s story is about wall building (immigration), divisions (“the good” and “the bad”, winners and losers), the destruction of the notoriously “corrupt” Washington establishment (“brotherhood” networks), swamp-draining (fighting corruption), and defeating the media, the latter conveniently stigmatized as “enemy-of-the-people”.

According to the USA Constitution, an “enemy of the United States“ means any country, government, group, or person that has been “engaged in hostilities, whether or not lawfully authorized, with the United States”. Even tolerating the greatest extensibility of the term, the Trump-critical press cannot be described as a group that wants to harm the US people in one way or another. This obvious defamatory lie was only created by Trump to portray himself, the New York billionaire businessman, and now political leader, as an American “hero” battling against those who have lost touch with big parts of the US people. His statement is serious as it attacks the principle of US style “checks and balances”, but it does not represent an overarching idea or “Big Lie”.

Tob e accepted and applauded by his supporters For this reason, propaganda had to be primitive and appealing to the audience’s primitive desire for simplification, even at the cost of alienating the intellectuals. As few others, Hitler had understood, the need for the serial creation of enemies. He was a “political entrepreneur“ possessed of the insight that all individual enemies could eventually merge into the one super-enemy (in his view, the Jews). The desired intuitive understanding was that “self-definition“ was best achieved through “other-rejection“. This means that solidarity, loyalty, support, identity, and community are gained at the expense of others. Appeals to style, decency, dignity, good behaviour and traditions will ultimately fail. Applied to the current Trump period (and developments in some other countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Turkey), one sees a parallel: The clear message about “enemies“ (the press is “the enemy of the people” or “drying out the Washington swamp“) and the total disinterest in what is commonly referred to as “presidential style”.

Entertainment and distracting events to place false messages and “alternative facts”: In our highly connected and televised environment, “entertainment and distraction” plays an enormous role in a highly developed society and is frequently used as a platform for conveying alternative realities. Trump masterfully uses his knowledge and experience in this field.

Trump supporters flock to his rallies, are motivated to applaude and defend “their” President prepared to ignore both facts and subsequent false fact corrections. Trump fans, trolls, Trump loyalist politicians, donating business people and eloquent White House staffers play along in a well-orchestrated movement that seems to represent something powerful although it is not representative of the US public at large. Much of what is said in these cercles and in public becomes an alternative reality, which bears almost no resemblance to real news. A good example is the promised construction of a Wall on the US southern border. Trump claims that construction is progressing although he knows that this not true because of the absence of a budget. Other falsehoods are that the opposing Democrats love drug dealers, Obama was born in Africa and wire-tapped Trump Tower and that all journalists who are critical of Trump are “enemies of the people“.

Despite reality television’s junk-food reputation, the Reality-TV genre has grown into a political force in America by taking over US politics, shaping US culture and the US people’s perception of truth. Of course, reality TV is not necessarily real but there is evidence that for some viewers, it can warp their sense of reality and fuel skepticism in the prevailing culture. Trump has used this medium to his advantage. First, the viewing of reality TV has made people used to call into question everything, which fully complies with his above referenced “confusion and chaos” tactics. Second, it seems that Trump runs his Presidency like a TV-reality show: He ignores any protocol and style by attacking his opponents with insults, hires White House senior advisors based on ther TV-reality show acquaintance, puts others into simple made-for-TV archetypes and builds stories in which he is the only hero or saviour.

The tacit toleration of the followers of conspiracy theories at Trump rallies and his decision not to distance himself clearly and explicitly from them: Trump attracts conspiracy theories. At one of his last rallies, there was a visible presence of “Q”, an alias under which racist, anti-semitic, and white suprematist conspiracy theories circulate in online forums. With Trump as President, “Q” now perceives itself as “mainstream” stated online: “Hopefully Trump Q!”, stipulating that Trump is secretly saving the world by doing something amazing and heroic. It is not yet clear how many people are supporting the crude “Q” theories but they are not harmless as demonstrated by “Pizzagate”.

Trump uses the tactics of “storytelling” as a means to portray himself as a hero, the saviour, the dragon-slayer: He knows that stories to be interesting need heroes and villains and there are doubts that Trump has the talent of a storyteller. The villains include Democrats, foreigners, immigrants, unfair trade / contractual partners and the “fake” media. So in the end, it is “Us” versus “Them”, America versus unfair allies, good versus bad. His stories are often more fiction than fact, but like a novel, they are not really meant to be fact-checked. The narrative is meant to provide drama, which is demonstrated by Trump’s un-presidential expressions of rage, resentment, jokes and insults. In addition, he is able to add an air of mystery about what he is saying. He said for example that quote “We’re doing a lot of things that people don’t even know about” endquote. Of course, this statement cannot be fact-checked and thus it is just part of the story.

Trump is also a master of the technique of “whataboutism”: “Whataboutism” is a reversal of accusation in form of defamation. The tactic behind “whataboutism” is a form of “you too”. In a situation, Trump is getting accused of something, he will not respond to the accusation or refute the truth of the accusation but charge the accuser with whatever it is he has just been accused of. The Russsians have frequently used that tactic but Trump gave “whataboutism” a renaissance by frequently using it as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions (“why am I accused when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?”).

Another example for “whataboutism” was displayed at the occasion of the recent diplomatic conflict between Canada and Saudi Arabia on alleged human rights violations in the Kingdom. After Canada tweeted their accusations in Arabic language, the Saudi Government was fighting back. But they were not by dismissing Canada’s allegations or arguing against them. Instead, they ignored the allegations and took a counter attack approach by launching a media campaign criticizing Canada’s human rights record by referring to the struggle of indigenous people in Canada claiming that this minority in Canada had been historically subject to discrimination. At the same time, other Saudi reports listed “the worst Canadian prisons” and described harsh prison conditions.

Trump regularly uses the “scapegoat” approach which means that he is trying to escape responsibility, even for his own direct actions by blaming others. His tendency to blame in particular the political establishment and former administrations for everything is legendary. An additional example for Trump’s “scapegoat” tactics is Trump’s stance on immigrants. As part of his aggressive anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric (“animals”, “take a young, beautiful girl” and “slice… and dice them”), Trump does not just condemn the negative effects of illegal immigration. His words are part of a larger concept under which he tries to scapegoat immigrants as outsiders who are responsible for deep societal problems, crime and violence. Scapegoating immigrants as criminals-in-waiting is not only objectively and politically wrong and immoral, but also politically counter-productive in that it is likely to endanger, not enhance, public safety. In addition, scapegoating foreigners can have a devastating impact on domestic social peace and justify inhumane policies and law enforcement practices.

Trump and his surrogates are also masters in the area of so-called “false-flag” tactics: Anthony Scaramucci, friend of Trump and former White House Communication Director, for example, was forced to walk back a “false flag” tweet that insinuated Democrats opponents might have been responsible for threats phoned into dozens of Jewish community centers around the country.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, and to stay within the military jargon, it can be said that whether a communicator is using one single “Big Lie”, or, alternatively, a concentrated (and “weaponized“) orchestration of many “small lies“ (and/or their numerous variants), will result in the same. The alterantives can be compared to the alternative use of a gun versus a scatter gun. In both cases the desired effect will probably be achieved. But in our current individualized and fragmented environmemt, in the end, the use of a tactical scatter gun concept may probably be even more effective.