• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. ukraine>

From Russia with lies: A message to all of us about why to fight for truth

Dennis Aftergut
April 25, 2022

Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor in San Francisco, is co-counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Political lies, like the disproven assertion that there was any significant ballot fraud in the 2020 election, are not harmless. Every one of us who believes in civil society must fight them with truth. That is the way to preserve a free and peaceful society.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has starkly shown us that big lies lead to the opposite.


Look back to the start of Putin’s barbarous invasion of Ukraine. Even though Ukraine’s heroic president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish, Putin justified the attack as a “military operation” to “de-nazify” a neighboring country.

Russian soldiers clearly believed the lie that helped justify criminal actions. In March, they put a black bag over the head of 33-yea- old Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the Ukraine city of Melitopol, and kidnapped him. They told him “they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis.”

The soldiers’ misbelief illustrates the core principle of totalitarian propaganda: The more outrageous the lie, the better for a strongman seeking to make war on enemies domestic and foreign.

As Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels put it: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. … [T]he truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

In Ukraine on April 8, we saw how Big Lies are not only destructive but also become habit-forming. A Russian Tochka-U missile hit the main train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, killing more than 50 civilians, including five children, and injuring more than 300 others. The Russians preposterously blamed Ukraine for murdering its own people.

Because Big Lies are essential to totalitarian leaders maintaining domestic power, external enemies are not the only ones who suffer from the state’s mistruths. On April 7, students in the Russian city of Penza turned Irina Gen, their English teacher, into authorities. Speaking about Russian invaders during class, she said: “They wanted to reach Kyiv to overthrow Zelensky. This is a sovereign state.”

She faces 15 years in prison.

Weeks before, in Buryatia, 3,700 miles east of Moscow, someone reported archery coach Valery Yakovlev to police for tearing down a large letter ‘Z’ that had been placed on his school’s entrance. The letter has come to symbolize the Russian war, as tanks and military vehicles invading Ukraine have prominently displayed a “Z.”

Which brings us back to Goebbels. He called it “vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie.”

Attention in America must be paid to these lessons about what comes of attacks on truth. On April 10, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey released a campaign ad titled “Stole,” in which she says: “The fake news, big tech and blue state liberals stole the election from President Trump.”

Importantly, investigations continue to confirm the falsity of Trump’s continuing claims. On April 6, Arizona’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich, released his report on Maricopa County’s election. Though as a Republican Senate candidate he had every incentive to play to the Trump base, he “turned up bupkis.”

The best he could do was say that he found “serious vulnerabilities” in the system. That didn’t cut it for GOP state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who said Republicans “want arrests, not letters and drawn-out investigations.”

There you have it. No matter what the facts show, “lock them up.”

Critically, individuals continue to stand up for truth. Republican Stephen Richer, Maricopa’s elected recorder, quickly rebutted the narrative that there was any factual basis on which to question the vote in Arizona. And on April 5, Princeton historian Julian Zelizer also told us that even Trump admitted the truth when, while speaking to a group of Zelizer’s colleagues months earlier, he spoke the words “when I didn’t win the election.”

One doesn’t need a megaphone to speak one’s truth about the importance of preserving American democracy against the attack on it by lies, small and large. Speaking to neighbors and on social media both matter.

We also have the vote. The November midterms provide each of us with the opportunity to say that we value our freedom and that the truth is vital to it.

From Your Site Articles
  • Vladimir Putin and the false promise of autocracy - The Fulcrum ›
  • Ukraine invasion is latest sign of rising authoritarianism - The Fulcrum ›
  • A united effort against Russia and our dysfunctional domestic politics ›
  • Transparency helped rally world against Russian aggression - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Is Putin secretly the world's richest man? His real net worth is a ... ›
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin asserts that sanctions have failed ... ›
  • Why has Russia invaded Ukraine and what does Putin want? - BBC ... ›
ukraine

Join an Upcoming Event

Join, Design & Build the EMPATHY MOVEMENT

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
May 28, 2022 at 10:00 am
Read More

Leadership and Community Engagement Training

Urban Rural Action
May 31, 2022 at 12:00 pm CDT
Read More

Join, Design & Build the EMPATHY MOVEMENT

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
Jun 04, 2022 at 10:00 am
Read More

Four Freedoms: Exploring Freedom from Fear, Session 4

Interactivity Foundation
Jun 08, 2022 at 1:00 pm EDT
Read More

Join, Design & Build the EMPATHY MOVEMENT

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
Jun 11, 2022 at 10:00 am
Read More

GLOBAL: Patriotism, Nationalism and Globalism

The Great Reset
Jun 14, 2022 at 11:00 am CDT
Read More
View All Events
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

But what can I do?

Pedro Silva

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Paige Chan

Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

David Thornburgh
John Opdycke

The U.S. has been seeking the center since the days of Teddy Roosevelt

Dave Anderson

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar
latest News

Biden follows Trump’s lead in expanding use of executive orders

Reya Kumar
3m

Podcast: 100% Democracy

Our Staff
12h

Americans want action on gun control, but the Senate can’t move forward

David Meyers
25 May

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Our Staff
25 May

Nearly 20 states have restricted private funding of elections

David Meyers
24 May

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Our Staff
24 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
President Biden signs executive order on police reform

Biden follows Trump’s lead in expanding use of executive orders

Balance of Power
Podcast: 100% Democracy

Podcast: 100% Democracy

Leadership
people talking

But what can I do?

Leveraging big ideas
Shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas

Americans want action on gun control, but the Senate can’t move forward

Congress
Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Big Picture
First-ever majority-female New York city council

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Campaign Finance