Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Nuder's Strategy of Repeating Lies

Swedish finance minister Pär Nuder seems to think that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes "truth". I don't know how many times he have claimed that Sweden have the strongest growth in Europe, but it must be a dozen times at least. And he repeated this claim today, albeit now with the modifying disclaimer of "with the possible exception of our Nordic neighbors". Yet according to the latest Eurostat statistics, Sweden have a shared (together with Finland) 11th place of the 24 EU countries which have presented fourth quarter growth. And according to the Economist (not online for non-subscribers ), the number for Poland is higher too. Yet of these 10-12 (Depending on what number is correct for Poland and the number for Luxembourg) EU countries which have higher growth, only one (Denmark)is Nordic. In addition to these EU countries, there are also several non-EU countries in Europe which have higher growth than Sweden.

Yet Nuder just keep repeating the lie that "Sweden have the highest growth in Europe". Just repeating this lie won't make it more true. However, it is unfortunately likely to convince more people as journalists don't challenge this lie, and as regular Swedes who don't read economic statistics see that Nuder can repeat this claim without being corrected, they are in many cases likely to be deceived.

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