Große Lüge

Große Lüge (2 x LED signs)

My imminent artwork entitled, “Große Lüge” will aim to examine the torrent of (so-called) “fake news” https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zf89vwx, media driven misinformation, fabrication and the deliberate intent to deceive the public. The term, “Große Lüge” (big lie) was a term coined by Adolf Hitler, which is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique.

The German expression was created, when he wrote his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so big that no one would believe it. Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to account for Germany's loss in World War I. According to historian Jeffrey Herf, “the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust”. Herf maintains that Nazi Germany's chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party implemented the “big lie” which they used to justify mass murder. Europe’s Jewish population had already suffered historical prejudice and outright contempt, often in the form of stereotyping, ardent suspicion and violence. Antisemitism has been referred to, "the longest hatred," as it has persisted in many forms for over two thousand years.

Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held immense secret power in Britain, Russia, and the United States. Anti-Jewish propaganda was further utilised in poster form depicting vulgar caricatures often alluding to the assumption that the Jewish population were wealthy money grabbing outsiders that retained enormous wealth with unprecedented greed. The big lie further propagated claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany and utilised these to justify Germanys right to annihilate the Jews in self-defence.

In the 21st century, usage of the term “big lie” has been applied to Donald Trump and his allies' attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, specifically the false claim that the election was somehow ‘stolen’ through massive voter and electoral fraud. The scale of the claims resulted in Trump supporters attacking the United States Capitol building in an attempted self-coup. Later reports indicate that Trump knew he had genuinely lost the election while promoting the narrative. Scholars assert that constant repetition across all forms of media is imperative for the success of the big lie technique, as is a psychological motivation for the public to accept the extreme proclamations stated, leading to further support to extremist ideologies.

In my interpretation of the big lie, I will utilise two scrolling LED signs (often placed as informational tools, from shop windows to doctors surgeries). These lurid and somehow tawdry signs echo the psychological tactics of fake news and propagandist methodologies. The signs will display words related to the concept, one will display red text, whilst the other sign will display white text. In propagandist terms, red lies are seen as blatant: In the context of propaganda, red often signifies the communist or socialist movements, it is also the colour of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. Whereas, white can represent purity, innocence, or peace, incorporating the commonly used idiom of “telling a white lie”, which is generally seen as somewhat less threatening in its context, and imparts an act of protection. However, the artwork will reverse the ideologies of red and white propaganda by displaying words of opposite meaning. The significance of this alteration denotes the true nature, and deliberate intention behind fake news, news that insidiously manipulates through its usage of words and reactionary narrative (a common tactic of mainstream tabloid newspapers). As an example, the white LED sign will utilise pejorative words such as, disinformation, bigotry, enemy, deceit, fake, deception, control, paranoia etc. In contrast, the red sign will be emblazoned with positive words: truth, support, acceptance, loyalty, inclusion, transparency and more.

The piece’s primary purpose is to serve as a warning against automatic belief, or what is known as, “The illusory truth

effect” (also known as the illusion of truth effect, validity effect, truth effect, or the reiteration effect) which is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure. This phenomenon was first identified in a 1977 study at Villanova University and Temple University, and uncritical acceptance responses to information garnered from the internet, specifically social media, emerging A.I. and printed media. As an antithesis to this effect, we should fact check, analyse and maintain inherent curiosity by reasoning and occasionally disconnecting from a media saturated world.