When Iran Quotes Goebbels: The Real Target Isn’t Israel – It’s Iranians

When an Iranian regime spokesman invokes Joseph Goebbels, he is not arguing. He is reaching for a moral detonation device.

Esmail Baqaei’s post accusing the US and Israel of deploying “Goebbels-like propaganda” is not a rebuttal. It is an attempt to criminalize the very act of speaking. By attaching the Nazi label to Western allegations about Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, or internal unrest, he is not contesting facts. He is declaring them inadmissible.

This is not debate. It is pre-emptive disqualification.

The maneuver is calculated. First, reference a real cognitive phenomenon — repetition can create familiarity, and familiarity can feel like truth. Second, weld that mechanism to the most radioactive name in modern history. Third, project it outward. Finally, instruct your audience: “No one should be fooled.” The message is clear. Do not examine. Do not verify. Do not compare sources. Reject in advance.

It is a soft form of censorship masquerading as moral outrage.

The brilliance — and the cynicism — lies in the inversion. The regime that criminalizes dissent, blocks platforms, jails journalists, and controls domestic narratives now presents itself as the guardian against propaganda. It occupies the judge’s bench while standing in the dock.

There is also a layer of almost theatrical irony. The “big lie” concept itself appears in Hitler’s own rhetoric, where he accused Jews of using such tactics. Projection was embedded in the original formulation. Now a regime that routinely calls for Israel’s elimination weaponizes that same historical currency against the Jewish state. This is not historical memory. It is historical appropriation.

But the real target is not Washington or Jerusalem. It is Tehran.

The phrase “no one should be fooled” is not a warning to foreign governments. It is a directive to domestic listeners. It tells them: treat external reports not as information to be checked but as infection to be rejected. The strategy is immunological. Seal the membrane. Pre-label the outside world as morally contaminated.

Once that filter is installed, facts become irrelevant. You can lose argument after argument and still win control over perception. The battlefield shifts from “what is true?” to “who is allowed to count as a source of truth?” That is a far more powerful terrain.

Notice what is never done in such statements. There is no data. No counter-evidence. No transparent methodology. No independent inspection regime offered as rebuttal. Instead, there is a historical analogy designed to shut down cognition before it begins.

And here lies the deeper danger. In the age of X, TikTok, and AI amplification, information wars are no longer fought primarily over content. They are fought over admissibility. If you can persuade your audience that certain voices are structurally illegitimate, you do not need to defeat their claims. You only need to brand them.

This is why responding with symmetrical outrage is a trap. Outrage feeds the frame. The more you argue about whether the Nazi analogy is “offensive,” the more you legitimize it as the central axis of the discussion.

The correct response is colder and more devastating: expose the mechanism.

Say plainly: this is an attempt to poison the channel rather than contest the evidence.

Demand procedures instead of analogies. Demand inspection instead of indignation. Demand falsifiable claims instead of historical theater.

Because once political discourse devolves into mutual accusations of “big lies,” something far more serious has already eroded. Not the truth itself — truth is resilient. What erodes are the shared conditions under which truth can still be examined.

And when that space collapses, every regime benefits from the fog.

The question is not whether propaganda exists. It always has. The question is whether we allow the accusation of propaganda to become a substitute for argument.

That is the real weapon being deployed.

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)