Joseph Goebbels was the Minister for ‘Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’ in Hitler’s Third Reich from 1933 to 1945. The post gave him total control of communication media-radio, press, publishing, cinema and other arts. He is historically remembered for his famous strategy which is evident from his quote—“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the moral enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

What happened yesterday is no longer intriguing. It is a normal strategy of the votary of alternative politics in India. The AAP’s head Arvind Kejriwal is not arrested or detained. During the operation of Code of Conduct the police and district administration in enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct no longer report to the elected State Government. They follow the instructions of the Election Commission. All of us in various elections are stopped and checked; our personal baggage is also searched to verify whether cash is being transported in them or not. We always accept that as part of the Election Commission’s efforts to conduct free and fair elections. But Kejriwal makes his non-detention into a national crisis.

The routine strategy of the Aam Aadmi Party has been to utilize its cadre network through the SMS, assemble them at particular places and create a scene. They did so outside the Rail Bhawan, outside my house and this time at my Party office. There were similar demonstrations at BJP offices elsewhere in the country. Stones were pelted into the office, the bill-boards were demolished, a prominent member climbed on to the wall virtually trespassing into the property. After provoking and altercation with BJP cadres and police in various parts of the country the Aam Aadmi Party leaders landed up in TV studios. They pretend to be innocent victims. It was a peaceful protest which was attacked from inside, they say. One member compared the routine check under Model Code of Conduct with the historical developments in Chauri-Chaura.

Regrettably, even the likes of Rajmohan Gandhi offered themselves to become instruments of this false propaganda. The violent protest of AAP was peaceful, he asserted. The victims were in fact violent. When its members are booked for violence and law breaking they plead for equality on the premise that the victims should also be booked.

My experience of the last few days has been that the AAP utilized the propaganda technique of manufacturing an issue, real or fictional, and then persisting with it. Unable to defend itself its disastrous 49-day performance in Delhi, it invented the issue of a prominent corporate house as a political issue. Its opponents are all close to the corporate house; everybody else receives dubious funding, they argue. Their own funding is puritanical. What evidence do they have to prove all this? — NIL. The demonstration outside my house was justified on the ground that somebody used my name to bribe an MLA called Madan Lal. Till the demonstration took place I was not aware that Delhi had an MLA called Madan Lal. Yesterday the protests all over the country are now being justified as peaceful actions. The victims are the real culprits, they claim in shrill tones.

If Joseph Goebbels was reborn, he surely would have joined the Aam Aadmi Party.