Re: Stanley Fish
From: Christopher Green (cj.green_at_att.net)
Date: 09/25/04
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Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 05:20:15 GMT
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:57:23 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>benlizross wrote:
>>
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> >
>> > John Lawler wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Christopher Green <cj.green@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>> > > >Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> writes
>> > >
>> > > >> Stanley Fish writes in the NYT, on Bush's superior rhetorical skills
>> > >
>> > > >> There is of course no logical relationship between the repetition of a
>> > > >> sound and the soundness of an argument, but if it is skillfully
>> > > >> employed repetition can enhance a logical point or even give the
>> > > >> illusion of one when none is present.
>> > >
>> > > >> Not, though, if you notice it; as if the writer were falling over
>> > > >> himself for his cleverness, indeed making a detour to show it.
>> > >
>> > > >> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/opinion/24fish.html
>> > >
>> > > >He managed to use a lot of words to describe what has been well known
>> > > >as the Big Lie for a long time: repeat a lie often enough and loudly
>> > > >enough, and people will forget it was never the truth.
>> > >
>> > > >Was the first use of "Big Lie" in description of Stalin's rhetoric, or
>> > > >was it earlier?
>> > >
>> > > Dunno; here's one at roughly the same time:
>> > >
>> > > "In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility;
>> > > because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily
>> > > corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than
>> > > consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of
>> > > their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the
>> > > small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little
>> > > matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."
>> > >
>> > > --- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
>> >
>> > MK predates Stalin's ascendancy, but the translation wasn't published
>> > till ca. 1940. What's the German, and did it become part of Nazi
>> > vocabulary? (I had to look some up once and the NYPL only had a couple
>> > of small-scale glossaries, which didn't agree much, and which didn't
>> > even have all of the handful of words Othmar Keel had used in his
>> > chapter on German creation-theology in the 1930s.)
>> > --
>> > Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net
>>
>> OED says the German is grosse Lüge, and there is a reference to the
>> Nazis, but no specific place of origin. Their earliest English citation
>> is from Orwell in 1946: "The friends of totalitarianism in this country
>> usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big
>> lie is no worse than a little lie."
>
>I suppose we can't blame them for not trying to slog through Mein Kampf
>in search of earlier citations ...
It is "große Lüge" in Mein Kampf (Vol. 1, Ch. 10). In context, Hitler
was attempting to blame the Jews and Marxists for putting about the
"big lie" that Ludendorff was responsible for Germany's defeat. I
don't know whether the argument (that a "big lie" is more plausible
than a small one) was original with Hitler or not. I'm disinclined to
dig much deeper, but the idea that petty people would employ lies
believable to the masses to bring down a supposedly great man sounds
like something out of Also sprach Zarathustra.
-- Chris Green
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