If you tell a big enough lie, and tell it often and loud enough, people will believe it is true. The Nazis and Soviets had it down to a science, with their propaganda ministers, like most totalitarian states. Modern day propagandists, however, are taking it to a whole new level.

While it is true that there are some outrageous conspiracy theorists, who weave together a narrative that everything bad that happens is a part of a vast, overwhelming conspiracy, their existence does not negate the existence of real conspiracies, and there are many wide-ranging examples. Edward Snowden did humanity a tremendous service by exposing the vast, actual conspiracy of the security state to spy on Americans and collect data on everyone, regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. Did you ever wonder how some seemingly negligible event from someone’s distant past can suddenly pop up out of nowhere when such person gets out of line or gets too close to the truth? How about why people suddenly change their points of view and give in on political issues with no logical explanation? It had crossed my mind plenty of times in the past. When you have control of all of the information on everyone, opposition research becomes much easier. If someone gets a little too close, there is bound to be some juicy tidbit that can be dug up, or something innocuous can be trotted out and distorted all out of proportion.

The Democratic Party leadership’s multi-year secret collusion with the FBI using a fraudulent dossier to try to unseat a duly elected president certainly qualifies as a conspiracy. Whether you call the main stream media’s active promotion of the radical left agenda and outright dishonesty a conspiracy or, because it has been so blatant and out in the open, just collusion, it fits the definition of propaganda. They tell such big lies and tell them often enough that they think all Americans, as well as the rest of the world will think it is truth.

Regrettably, there is a fairly wide swath of the population that buys the narrative, but it also appears that there is hope. Quite a few organizations are popping up or gaining traction that support the ideas of free people, free markets, and a government limited in scope and power. Among these are Student for Liberty, which has become an international movement, Young Americans for Freedom, Young Americans against Socialism, and so on. There is a fair number of young adults who have decided to think for themselves rather than be told what to think.

The big problem we face now is that there is an international conspiracy to implement radical leftism through dishonesty and treachery. Maybe collusion is a more appropriate word here also, because it is so out in the open. Radical leftist riots have broken out in many countries around the world, which was ostensibly about the killing of a black man by police. The narrative holds that police are racist and kill people simply because they have dark skin. What is ignored by that narrative is that more whites than blacks are killed by police.

Blacks on average are much better off than they have ever been, here and in most other places, and those who aren’t generally reside in poverty pits run by the very leftists who are instigating and promoting the violence. Yet all you hear about is blacks being killed by cops. You don’t hear about the thousands of blacks being killed by blacks or 4 year old white girls being killed by blacks. Black people are being callously used as a prop for leftist propaganda, but it doesn’t become true just because it is repeated often and loudly.

Dan McLaughlin is the author of “Compassion and Truth-Why Good Intentions Don’t Equal Good Results.” Follow him at daniel-mclaughlin.com