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You need only go back 80 years to find two of Europe’s biggest nations ruled exclusively through lies.

When Stalin and Hitler turned Russia and Germany into totalitarian states which murdered tens of millions of their own, the first victim was truth.

Nazi ideology was based on a philosophy called Das Grosse Luge (The Big Lie) which claimed a besieged Germany needed to hit back at the “international Jewry” which started World War 1. Josef Goebbels wrote: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Stalin purged experienced army officers and intellectuals by inventing stories about their treachery at show trials. He also employed a technique called stultification, whereby party stooges would stand in streets where Soviet propaganda was being relayed through loud-speakers, acting like they believed all the lies the Kremlin was spouting.

(Image: REUTERS)

Fast-forward to the present, and it’s no exaggeration to say Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, with their constant denials of the truth and repetitions of falsehoods, are flourishing on the back of The Big Lie theory.

Trump denounces those who challenge him as “fake news” peddlers, Putin decrees them “imperialist propagandists” and Johnson just bellows rehearsed soundbites over them.

Now they’ve banned the Mirror from the Tory battle bus - denying Mirror readers access to the governing party.

Hours earlier they rebranded their official Twitter account as a “fact checker” during Tuesday’s TV debate.

As Emily Maitlis said to Tory chairman James Cleverly on the BBC’s Newsnight: “You were misleading the public. You were trying to coat your propaganda as hardened fact. You dressed up party lines as a fact check service: that is dystopian. You know that people do not trust you.”

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In that TV debate Johnson’s lies included Brexit being done by January 31, EU membership costing £10 billion a month, future immigration controls, Labour’s spending plans, the hiring of 20,000 new police officers (when they’re replacing ones lost since Tories came to power) and building 40 hospitals (when he’s up-grading six).

This is a man who was twice sacked for lying to bosses and last year told the DUP no British PM would ever split Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK with a sea border, then negotiated one. As well as countess lies to his partners. Oh, and the Queen.

Virtually every word he utters is a knowing deception and neither he nor his inner circle care. Indeed they actively promote it. Remember Johnson’s side-kick Michael Gove replying, when he was shot down with facts during the EU referendum, that Britain “has had enough of experts.”

Politicians have always lied but this mass application of truth-bending, especially during a General Election, is a sinister threat to our democracy. It is the slippery slope to a modern form of totalitarianism.

This is how populist dictators work. They hi-jack tensions and prejudices, brand themselves men of the people taking on the leeching elite, and lie for no reason other than self-preservation. Lying so frequently, they don’t even know they are lying.

It’s amazing how quickly a democracy can be sucked under their spell. One day you’re laughing at grainy footage of gullible Germans believing all that Nazi shtick, and then bang, the same thing happens on your doorstep.

Be warned.