In his notorious Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler explained the political device of the big lie:
"... 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 <193> It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
If Liberal federal opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull wasn't consciously taking Hitler's political advice when he unveiled his party's new mobile political billboard blaming Labor for building up a $315 billion debt through "reckless spending", he was acting on a similar political instinct.
The truth Turnbull's big lie seeks to obliterate is that the $315 billion debt is just part of the social cost being forced on the Australian public to bail out capitalism from a crisis that follows decades of greedy speculation and social and environmental vandalism.
Since the late 1970s, both Labor and Liberal governments have fed capitalism's profit frenzy by pursuing a common neoliberal economic and political agenda. The culmination is the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. And now the public is being forced to pay.
Despite all the spin about economic recovery, 21,900 full-time jobs were lost in June. Meanwhile, families are getting bigger bills for childcare, rent, health, water and electricity.
Around the world, trillions of dollars of pain is being inflicted on ordinary people to pay for unbridled capitalist profiteering.
At a time like this, capitalist politics becomes a campaign to shift the blame away from the system itself. Scapegoats are needed. Given Australia's racist history, it is not surprising racial minorities are being targeted.
Mass SMS messages inciting violence against Indians, Lebanese and Muslims have swept through the most recession-hit suburbs of the big cities — sometimes with bloody consequences. Sly racist tracts work their way into email inboxes.
Small neo-Nazi groups are fanning racial hatred against immigrant communities and trying to regroup as an electoral force under the name "Australia First".
With such menacing developments afoot, a publication like Green Left Weekly, which is committed to exposing the big lies that permeate capitalist politics, is essential.
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