On Sunday, Dec. 4, last year, a 28 year-old man from North Carolina entered Comet Ping Pong, a restaurant in Washington, D.C. He carried an assault rifle, which he initially pointed at an employee before firing several rounds into the ceiling.
He reported to authorities who arrested him that an internet news site had alerted him to a child sex ring being run from the pizza establishment by Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager. He drove to the site to rescue the alleged victims. The owner of the restaurant reported that he had received hundreds of threats after his support of the Clinton campaign had been revealed in hacked emails.
Dr. Clif CleavelandWelcome to the age of fake news, or propaganda, as it was dubbed in earlier years.
Since earliest times, rulers and insurgents have relied upon false stories to sow fear or to portray rivals as evil or incompetent. The term propaganda derives from 1622 when Pope Gregory XV established a Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith.
In “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler outlined a tactic for aggressive use of propaganda to promote his fascist vision of world conquest. He wrote that a big lie would be more likely believed by a gullible public than a small lie because the more spectacular the story, the greater the likelihood that it must be true. Endless repetition made the false story even more credible. Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, his Minister of Propaganda, launched a sustained attack on the truth to propel the evils of the Third Reich.