In Adolf Hitler’s 99-year-old Mein Kampf, he claimed that a lie, if told convincingly and repeatedly, can be accepted as truth. The man who would later orchestrate the murder of six million Jews and wage war against 1.6 billion people believed that effective propaganda must be simple, emotional, and repetitive to manipulate public perception and achieve political goals. The Big Lie was born.Hitler wrote: “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility... the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily... in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie.”In short, the bigger the lie, the likelier it is to be believed.Donald Trump invoked this same tactic in a baseless claim during his presidential debate with Kamala Harris, when he accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of consuming dogs, cats, and geese. This outrageous fabrication is emblematic of the deep-seated racism that continues to plague American society. Trump’s running mate JD Vance compounded this lie by claiming Haitians are a source of communicable diseases, including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. This slur, eerily similar to the racist lies spread 40 years ago blaming Haitians for AIDS, mirrors Nazi-driven hatred. Some German physicians falsely blamed Jews for the spread of typhus, illustrating the dangerous consequences of using fear to stigmatise entire communities.