Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bob Stannard, an author, musician and former lobbyist. This piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
“FAKE NEWS”
– Donald Trump
“Just what the truth is; I can’t say anymore”
– The Moody Blues
[P]eople lie. That’s a fact. People have lied to each other forever. Some lies are harmless like telling children there’s a man in a red suit living at the North Pole making gifts for kids around the world. Lies we tell our kids so they think the world is a more magical than it already is, is probably OK. Lies perpetrated on a nation by an adversarial nation for the purpose of dividing a nation and creating chaos is not OK. Yet that is what has been occurring in America for years now.
Social media is a wonderful tool. I have found friends that I thought I had lost forever. It reminds when birthdays are coming and to a large degree keeps me informed on what is happening around me. Like any other good idea, there are always those out there who will work hard to ruin it. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is one of the world’s bad guys who’s decided to use social media for an unintended purpose: to intentionally spread lies and create chaos in America and Europe. Why? Because democracy is the greatest threat to an authoritarian. By allowing for a free press, the authoritarian runs the risk of being held accountable, something that is unacceptable to one committed to doing wrong.
In his book “The Plot to Destroy Democracy,” former United States Navy senior chief petty officer specializing in naval cryptology Malcolm Nance describes not only how Putin has used social media as a weapon against us, but also why. Putin has been at this a long time, since the fall of the Soviet Union. Like any authoritarian he has come to learn that people are easily lied to and more often than not would prefer to be lied to than hear the truth. Crazy conspiracy theories are much more believable.
Remember during the last election when we were told that Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking ring out of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C.? Most people that that was ludicrous, but not Edgar Welch. He walked right in there with an AR-15 and started shooting, shouting he was saving the kids. He bought the lie proving lying works. He’s in jail now. Those promoting that lie are not.
I can hear you saying, “Yeah, well we lie, too. We spread propaganda around the world,” and you would be right. However, right now as you’re reading this we are under attack by a foreign adversary working hard to disrupt/destroy our democracy for his own gain. This is serious.
We spread propaganda and we’ve tried to interfere with other nations when we probably should’ve been minding our own beeswax (as I say to my grandson, Ernest). However, we’re being attacked and should be defending ourselves. Instead, we’re doing nothing. We’ve taken few, if any steps to stop this attack. If anything we have a president who seems to not care. Why should he when he’s lied to us over 8,000 times in two years?
It would seem as though we would want to defend ourselves from an attack, right? Unless, perhaps you support the liar. I don’t think we should support the one attacking us and that ain’t no lie.
