By the pricking of my thumbs...

[smokingboot]

First there's the Conservative party doctoring a video to the extent that it very heavily implies Sir Keir Starmer cannot answer the question put before him. In fact he answers the question fluently and without hesitation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAoreomYfQM

Then, during the Leaders' Debate, the Conservative party rebrands its twitter feed as 'FactCheck UK' looking for all the world like an independent fact checking body, and loads said feed with pro-Tory propaganda. After the debate they change the name to CCHQpress. The actual fact finding charity Fullfact protests to Twitter saying: It is inappropriate and misleading for the Conservative press office to rename their Twitter account ‘factcheckUK’ during this debate. Please do not mistake it for an independent fact checking service.'

Twitter responds: “Any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information - in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate - will result in decisive corrective action.”

Then the Conservative party set up a website called Labourmanifesto.co.uk. In fact it is a spoof website with anti-Labour propaganda.

Does it smack of desperation, or something more ominous? And yes, we are back at the Große Lüge, the big lie that works because in the words of Hitler, no-one believes people 'could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.'

Impudence is the perfect word to describe these current antics. To make matters worse, British mainstream media may well be complicit. Peter Oborne, one time political correspondent for the Telegraph, now working for the Mail, claims that a fake news campaign is being run out of number 10, with the Beeb and ITV passive so as to retain access. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-journalists-have-become-part-of-johnsons-fake-news-machine/ This man is a credible journalist of many years standing, and a Conservative voter who has written for two of the UK's most high profile right wing papers. When he says something is wrong, we can't accuse him of opposition sympathies.

Varying profiles including a report from the US office of strategic studies described Hitler's political methods:

Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; 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.
- A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend, by
Walter C. Lange (origin wartime report for US office of strategic
studies 1943/44)

Never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind
- In Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of
His Future Behaviour and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and
After Germany's Surrender, by Henry A. Murray, October 1943.

It's hard not to see echoes of methodology here. The best that can be made of it is that dubious techniques are being used for comparatively trivial ends; winning a campaign, being top boy for 5 years, creaming off as much money as possible, still terrible but by no means 1930s Germany. So much for the sanguine option. There is something chilling about the amorality of those who could use such tactics though, something terrifying about those who could fall for it.

And if the majority of voters do fall for it?