Spicer’s falsehood was an act of submission rather than a lie.

Evidence

Anyone who spreads objectively false information that is not just trivial entertainment, but has real, possibly harmful consequences, deserves to be contradicted. With this contradiction you help yourself not to be condemned to inaction, which you may regret later. You help listeners and fellow readers not to accept false claims as perceived truths at some point, because they have always remained unchallenged. But it also helps the person spreading the false claims, because they can otherwise chalk up the lack of contradiction as confirmation and miss a chance to challenge their unscientific beliefs. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 805 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Vaclav Havel, writing as a dissident in 1978, described the public speech of everyday life in Communist Czechoslovakia in his essay “The Power of the Powerless.” Havel invokes a sign hung in the window of a corner store: “Workers of the World, Unite!” The grocer hung the sign in the window because the entity that delivered the fruits and vegetables dropped off this official sign, and the greengrocer did as he was supposed to. He put that sign in the window, Havel says, “simply because it has been done that way for years, because everybody does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble.” In Havel’s essay, the greengrocer’s invocation of working-class unity was not about genuine conviction; the sign only conveyed that the storekeeper complied with authority. He submitted, as did the White House press secretary when he repeated Trump’s assertion about the size of his inaugural crowd. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 165 (#instantiates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Performing assent to authority’s claims is a form of submission, not belief. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 165; Contradicting false claims serves the claimant, not just the audience — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice: How to Communicate…, 805

Related

• Contradicting false claims serves the claimant, not just the audience (similarity 0.81)
• Performing assent to authority’s claims is a form of submission, not belief. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Contradicting false claims serves the claimant, not just the audience #complicates (0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 805