What in the Joseph Goebbels F*ck is Happening on Facebook?

The in-group is being signalled to

Hate ages a motherfucker. Goebbels was only 35 in that photo.

The story about Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933-1945, and the “big lie” is likely a small lie. The quote begins “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Except there is no indication that Goebbels ever said that. In his hate-filled book Mein Kampf Hitler talked about the big lie, but it was in reference to something he proclaimed Jews did; it wasn’t something he advocated.

There is a quote that was said by Goebbels that is less exciting but is basically the same: “It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle.”

On Facebook I’m seeing that happen, with the square being Elon Musk, and the circle being the idea that’s he’s a loving father and a wonderful man. In the last few days my Facebook page has been infested with AI-generated propaganda to promote the brand of President Musk. It doesn’t matter how many times you click “Not Interested,” Facebook isn’t interested in you not being interest, and they keep ramming this shit down your throat. What kind of shit?

Here is one example:

And you can see at the bottom of that image that there is a SECOND oh look Musky is such a great dad appearing on my feed right below it.

Here is one where Elon is giving off some Asian Fu Muskchu vibes:

And what it the Artificially Unintelligent fuck is happening in this one?

And AI of course is “alive” in the comments. I don’t think even ten per cent of the hundreds of comments these posts get are real. It’s fake images on fake pages with fake comments all praising Dear Leader President Anal Musk.

What about the pages? “John Doe” is running this one:

And apparently dotcom is getting replaced with dotbom.

This is just a bare sample. I’ve seen about twenty-five of these in the last few days, clicking “Not Interested” over and over, and I haven’t even been scrolling much. What the fuck are they trying to accomplish?

I’m working on a new history book titled Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots and have been reading about Nazis and the Holocaust more than usual. The Holocaust was one of the greatest horrors of humanity, for numerous reasons, one of which was the sheer scale of it. I’ve also been reading a lot about the genocide of Indigenous Americans. In the United States there was less hatred and more greed motivating their mass murder. The Indigenous people were maligned as savage, but mostly there were seen as “in the way.” They were occupying land that colonizers wanted and so there was an inexorable push of murder and thievery and murder and thievery across centuries until they murdered almost everyone and thieved almost all the land.

The Holocaust was different. It was organized, bureaucratic, precise, and efficient. It was committed on such a massive scale by one of the most scientifically advanced and “civilized” nations of the era. Germany was an important center of Enlightenment thinking as well as giving birth to Romanticism as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. And yet, much of her population was so poisoned with hatred for Jews that they willingly embraced Nazism and the systematic, assembly-line-style murder of millions. More than a third of the world’s Jewish people died in the Holocaust, and those numbers have not yet recovered. There were fewer Jews alive today than before the war.

Propaganda played an important role in implementing the Holocaust. In 1939 Joseph Goebbels ordered the creation of a film titled The Eternal Jew, and he was heavily involved in its production. It was so over the top, portraying Jews as subhuman parasites, that it is unimaginable that people could believe it or be swayed by it.

Thing is, the target audience wasn’t swayed by it. They weren’t supposed to be swayed.

The film is far too ridiculous for anyone to believe it. They’re not supposed to believe it. The film was used as a signal of loyalty. Embracing and repeating the blatantly untrue and the stupidly inane is a badge people wear to show they are committed to the cause. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs.” Ivermectin cures the measles. Same kinda shit.

This ridiculousness of this propaganda doesn’t win people over. That’s not its purpose. It is a loyalty test.

When they use obvious AI to praise Elon as totally a genius who is rooting out corruption and also a great dad who is absolutely not using his kid as a human shield like that president in The Dead Zone, the targets signal their loyalty to the group by proclaiming their acceptance of the bullshit.

The square becomes a circle, and those outside the group angrily and repeatedly expose the falsehood which only serves to reinforce the strength of the in-group because “Why are these people we hate working so hard to expose this alleged propaganda? It must be true if it has them so riled up!”

Goebbels’s propaganda was mostly used to further secure the loyalty of those who already aligned themselves with Nazis and despised Jews. It bound the in-group ever tighter so they could be used to commit unspeakable atrocities. As an example, in 1940 the Hamburg Reserve Police Battalion was given the order to “cleanse” a Polish village of its 1,500 Jews. The leader of the Battalion, Major Trapp, said to his 500 men that anyone who did not wish to participate in the slaughter did not have to, and that there would be no consequences for those who refused. This was not even a case of “Just following orders.” They were allowed not to murder those 1,500 people, but only about a dozen failed to participate. That’s the power of propaganda for binding an in-group toward a hateful cause.

We’re going to keep seeing shit like this, shit that is wholly ridiculous and unbelievable and we’ll scoff and ask how fucking stupid are these people who believe such nonsense? And yeah, a lot of them are stupid. There is no shortage of research revealing that the more extreme a person is in their conservative beliefs, especially regarding the embracing of bigotry, the less intelligent they are. But it’s also about showing loyalty to their group, along with hating your group and being happy that the propaganda triggers you.

They are being primed to commit atrocities. I see these “Elon Is So Great” ads on Facebook that are so obviously paid for yet lack the “Sponsored” indicator which additionally exposes some backroom fuckery, and I view it as a warning sign for worse things to come. They are trying to make Elon and Trump seem like gods who are worthy of unquestioned obedience, while at the same time pushing others far in the opposite direction so that we—the ones who see the bullshit and the hate for what it is—become the enemy worthy of extermination.

Americans aren’t special. There are many millions of them just as easily coopted by evil the same as happened in Germany.

I fear war is coming.

Those who cannot remember the past … need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of my sweary history books ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.

And since Facebook IS full of this kind of hateful propaganda, please get a subscription and the only ad you’ll ever see is me asking you to buy my awesome books.