The immensity of crimes makes murderers’ lies more credible than victims’ truth
Evidence
This doubt of people concerning themselves and the reality of their own experience only reveals what the Nazis have always known: that men determined to commit crimes will find it expedient to organize them on the vastest, most improbable scale. Not only because this renders all punishments provided by the legal system inadequate and absurd; but because the very immensity of the crimes guarantees that the murderers who proclaim their innocence with all manner of lies will be more readily believed than the victims who tell the truth. The Nazis did not even consider it necessary to keep this discovery to themselves. Hitler circulated millions of copies of his book in which he stated that to be successful, a lie must be enormous—which did not prevent people from believing him — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 984
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: This inverted-credibility mechanism is ripe for the toolkit: representation and the construction of the Other depends on who is believed. Connects to Foucault’s power/knowledge and to the Islamophobia field’s treatment of who gets epistemic authority.
Related
- Immense crimes render legal punishment absurd and make killers’ lies credible (similarity 0.90)
- Totalitarian complicity is made total by implicating victims in the crimes (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Slowly escalating punishments prove more credible than sudden fatal threats
#complicates(0.72) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 111 - Totalitarian complicity is made total by implicating victims in the crimes
#complicates(0.70) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1015