Dorothy Thompson
Boston Globe/February 27, 1946
IN Mein Kampf Hitler made some remarks on the lie as an instrument of policy: The people readily detect small lies, since they are accustomed to telling them themselves. But the colossal lie will be believed, because the people cannot imagine the daring it takes to tell it.
On the art of blackmail: One must demand so much that one’s opponent believes total opposition is hopeless and afterward demand more, realizing that he who has already compromised his country’s interests will compromise them further; having once given much there will be no point at which it seems worthwhile to resist.
If a war aim was to eliminate criticism it should have eliminated the lie and blackmail as international instruments. If victory means protection from the totalitarian practices which prefaced the “war for survival,” our most primitive instincts of self-preservation should have warned us against tolerating the very things that led to this war. At the least, we should have become able to recognize and call by name the familiar Hitlerian tactic.
Among friends and colleagues the other evening, some of them distinguished journalists, the question arose regarding the duty of the journalist. Shall we tell the truth, even if it disturbs our relations with another great power? Isn’t “cooperation” more important than airing the facts? Previous discussion had produced little divergence of opinion regarding what the facts are. But the answer to the question revealed a considerable difference of opinion.
Honorable men believed, however hesitantly, that it was their duty to maintain monstrous fictions in the interest of “good relations.” We were to allow lies to proliferate themselves, in the hope that by so doing we would further the cause of peace and justice. Now, the mere thought that it might be well to retreat from what has been a Hippocratic journalistic oath was a sign of the effectiveness of political blackmail.
Hitler worked that game upon the European countries for years. Contributions to monstrous lies emanate from supposedly respectable citizens.
During the war, for the sake of “good relations” with our Russian ally, Joseph Davies, former American Ambassador to Moscow, assumed responsibility for the creation of a film, “Mission to Moscow,” which was first, a justification of official murder, of peoples’ tribunals violating all civilized law, and, second, a deliberate falsification of history. How could Stalin believe that we really meant our definition of democracy, when a high American official handed him an instrument which he was later to display in neighboring states, marked for subjection in direct violation of solemn pledges?
Now, the Soviet Union has found the same apologist for its espionage activities in Canada, activities which, it is charged, involve the corrupting of Canadian officials, or the seduction of these who have been persuaded that “good relations” are more important than their oaths of office. By a miraculous abracadabra, which, as put forth in Soviet house organs, is reprinted with a straight ace in our own paper?
Canada, not the Soviet Government, becomes the offender. The Soviet Government has the right to spy and undermine the loyalty of her Allies’ officials (though, of course, similar activities on our part would result in wholesale assassinations in Russia), and Mr. Davies uses, as it were, an open invitation to foreign powers to do anything they like when their delegates arrive here to set up permanent headquarters of UNO. The American Communist party is thus encouraged to aid them with the blessings of Mr. Davies.
It escapes emphasis that the attacks of Vishinsky on Britain were merely to divert attention from the rape of Iran. The tactic, exactly like Hitler’s, is when caught red-handed to raise one charge after another, no matter how preposterous, on the theory that he who attacks loudest will be believed. Thus, by the lie and blackmail the only aggressively expanding power on earth emerges in the minds of millions as the aggressed-upon. And the only thing our civilization has to protect itself against methods which we cannot and should not emulate is the truth.
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