Historians of propaganda are familiar with the concept of the Big Lie, a claim so extreme that many people end up accepting it because they can’t believe that authority figures would make up something so at odds with reality.
What I mean are policy proposals so corrupt, so obviously designed to benefit an undeserving few at everyone else’s expense, that many voters balk at the notion that seemingly respectable politicians actually advocate such things.
A case in point is the current demand by House Republicans that funding for Israel in this moment of crisis be tied to budget cuts that would undermine the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on wealthy tax cheats.
funding would actually increase the deficit by enabling more tax evasion, a conclusion confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday in its score of the House proposal.
Alex Jones, the proprietor of the conspiracy site Infowars, best known for claiming that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook was a left-wing hoax, made his money by selling bogus dietary supplements — what my colleague Farhad Manjoo calls the “wellness-conspiracy industrial complex.”
And now that conspiracy theorists have effectively taken over the G.O.P., it kind of makes sense that one of their overriding policy priorities is to deprive the government of the resources it needs to crack down on grifters and financial fraud.
The original article contains 919 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Historians of propaganda are familiar with the concept of the Big Lie, a claim so extreme that many people end up accepting it because they can’t believe that authority figures would make up something so at odds with reality.
What I mean are policy proposals so corrupt, so obviously designed to benefit an undeserving few at everyone else’s expense, that many voters balk at the notion that seemingly respectable politicians actually advocate such things.
A case in point is the current demand by House Republicans that funding for Israel in this moment of crisis be tied to budget cuts that would undermine the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on wealthy tax cheats.
funding would actually increase the deficit by enabling more tax evasion, a conclusion confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday in its score of the House proposal.
Alex Jones, the proprietor of the conspiracy site Infowars, best known for claiming that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook was a left-wing hoax, made his money by selling bogus dietary supplements — what my colleague Farhad Manjoo calls the “wellness-conspiracy industrial complex.”
And now that conspiracy theorists have effectively taken over the G.O.P., it kind of makes sense that one of their overriding policy priorities is to deprive the government of the resources it needs to crack down on grifters and financial fraud.
The original article contains 919 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!