Forged attribution is a more potent lie than straightforward falsehood

Evidence

In the simpler kind of falsehood, the writer simply tells lies in his own name. In a more complex and insidious kind of falsehood, he fabricates written state­ ments and attributes them to others in order to give them greater credibility and impact. The same technique may be used without written texts, simply by starting a rumor. Flusterpropaganda, that is, whisper propaganda, was extensively used by the Third Reich during World War II and then by others. In the Soviet Union, the manufacture and dissemination of false news was entrusted to a de­ partment of the KGB and was given a new name—disinformation. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 490

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines flusterpropaganda/whisper propaganda and traces ‘disinformation’ to its KGB coinage.
• XREF: Connects to questions of authorship credibility and forgery — same theme as epigraph forgery in Renaissance studies.

Related

• Forged-ascription propaganda predates modern disinformation and the Soviet term for it (similarity 0.90)