What in the Joseph Goebbels F*ck is Happening on Facebook? The in-group is being signalled to by James Fell, Mar 01, 2025, Sweary History with James Fell
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.
I left Facebook, along with Threads and Insta, the day Zuckerberg got rid of fact-checking. I knew it was going to turn into a festering right-wing pesthole, and it sounds as if it’s well on its way.
Facebook was a way to keep up with friends and family, and I miss that; but it was passive, and too easy, and made me think I was staying in touch when all I was really doing was clicking “like” on the occasional photo.
I’ve read an argument that we should stay on Facebook and Twitter (which I left when Musk bought it), because we shouldn’t consent to being forced out of public spaces and let them become toxic right-wing troll-infested wastelands. I see that argument, but these aren’t people I need to read. And it sounds like most of them are bots anyway.
Let them entertain each other, and I’ll keep up with my friends the old-fashioned way, over coffee.
Very much enjoy the “Sweary Histories”
I love them~!, and recommend them to my friends.
I hope you’re on FB just to monitor this stuff because why else would you still be on FB? Why?
Let me just say this. Fuck
I spend as little time as possible on Facebook. I don’t respond to any ads, just scroll past them. Unfortunately, I cannot leave Facebook completely as it is the only way so far of knowing what is happening with my city. It is the only way that I am aware of that the mayor and city council communicate with the community. I pay no attention to Twitter or TikTok. I have found Substack to be far more interesting and informative. Keep educating people, James.
Nextdoor app. You can get local gov info & city officials are on there.
Here in Tucson, Nextdoor is filled with racist Karens reporting a brown person walking on their street.
That Afrikaner MF needs to meet 90 grains of lead
Hoping for a murder-suicide involving Musk, Trump, Vance, and Mike Johnson.
5.8 grams in the rest of the world.
I am currently reading “Europe Against the Jews” by Getz Aly. Basically, the Nazi focus didn’t come from nowhere.
Deb:
Also, Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horowitz illuminates why we have such a tangle of stupid, non-interest in history.
ThankYou heaps!!! You write with the inspiration and a depth of perception that jumps off the page and this essay is a real eye opener.
Wow, yes
“I feel war is coming” – James, what type of war? Civil or external or both?I think three wars: 1) The most important one has been ongoing since before I was born – humanity destroying earth’s ability to sustain lie; 2) WW3 which started years ago with Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, escalated when Putin illegally invaded Ukraine, but most people don’t want to see it and 3) civil but not just in the USA (will likely hit many peaceful countries, as climate, environmental and societal collapse escalate)
Scroll my FB page and read the 5-part series on AI. With the war between the gazillionaires who will “own” it, our information will be more narrow in scope than can be imagined.
War is coming. The propaganda machine is hard at work spreading mis and dis information (more accurately, lies , lies , and damn lies. ) They will then say “see? War is because of…Ukrainians, jews, trangender folk, those gays, brown people, (and etc).
Facebook and zuck is a right-wing platform very busy spreading the lies, and not to be trusted.
Bezos just made wapo into a total right-wing platform, ending what was once a great paper. The only press I trust are the independents and foreign. Swear history is always a breath of fresh air.
We all need to be aware, stay informed of truth, and be prepared. Trump said it out loud even though we knew it before. War is coming and it is 100% due to the current corrupt traitorous republican administrationand Israel’s insatiable mass murdering greed, and Putin’s and and and and water running out, food running out, housing and shelter running out as climate chaos and wildfires/floods/temperature, storm and wind extremes/, etc.
I share your fear and the nasty orange shit-ass all but pulled the trigger hesterday. I’m interested in the history of totalitarianiam more than ever now, as are many other Americans-just ask the librarians while we still have them. What I worry is that we have been so brainwahsed by the white man’s history they shoved down out our gullets all throughout our primary and secondary education that there is no hope of seeing the truth now.the truth is always there for those who seek it, and live in it.He tells obvious lies, says that things we know happened didn’t happen, and his people get in line. What hope do we have to understand our past in a way that might help us put the brakes on this and hold them accountable when they are rewriting the present before our very eyes? Well before cancelling DEI they crushed the teaching of critical race theory and in my town, even the teaching of Mexican American studies to high schoolers- when they literally sit on land that was ‘purchased’ from Mexico not that long ago. Trump sits on a throne of lies, built by centuries of rewriting our stories to suit white men in power.and those white men (even those without power) do not like to share, anythingI appreciate your writing, it’s part of the solution, along with all the swearing, I’m convinced the anwers we need now lie the past, but only if we mine them for the truth, and it seems so slippery right now.
“I fear war is coming.” I remember before Trump was elected for the second time you insisting that the MAGA would never start a civil war, because people like then who aren’t losing their rights don’t have the willpower to want to give up their life to fight (or something to that affect). I will fight Trump/Musk/Harper/IDU et al to the death and boycott the evil. There is no other wayAfter it became clear that Trump and his administration are hell-bent on taking away rights of everyone in this country who is not white, straight and Christin I have been terrified that a civil war is going to happen.
KIG:
“I fear war is coming.” Could you (or if you have point me in the right direction) to more details? It seems to me the highest chance of war would be the US invading Panama. The US taking on Canada, or Greenland seems unlikely in the next four years. Or do you fear a wider scale war in the next few years?
The US is already opening its first new concentration camp of this administration in Cuba.