Worse Than Hitler

New Yorker invokes “the Big Lie”

The New Yorker directly invokes “the Big Lie” in this August 24, 2008 article by Hendrik Hertzberg (reprinted on MSNBC.com). “Obama must battle the Big Lie: Democrats must hold McCain and Republican accountable” is a piece outlining many of the ways that certain conservative authors are alluding to falsehoods about Obama’s religion, place of birth, etc.

It’s notable that the article does make a direct explanation for referencing the “Big Lie.” When describing a new book by Jerome Corsi about Obama, Hertzberg says:

“The Obama Nation” erects a superstructure of innuendo, guilt by (often nonexistent) association, baseless speculation, and sinister-sounding but irrelevant digression. The result is an example of what used to be known, in the glory days of ideologically driven totalitarianism, as the Big Lie—in this case, a fabricated, alternate-universe Barack Obama, who, we are told or invited to infer, is a corrupt, enraged, anti-American, drug-dealing, anti-Israel, pseudo-Christian radical leftist, black militant, plagiarist, and liar, trained as a Muslim and mentored by a menagerie of Marxists, Communists, crypto-Communists, and terrorists.

But claiming that the Big Lie is from “the glory days of ideologically-driven totalitarianism” and not saying flat out that this term is associated with Hitler and the Nazi regime seems disingenuous.

Outrage-O-Meter
Audience Reach 4
Direct vs. Indirect 7
Inappropriateness 6
Final Score 6