The Power of the Big Lie
The Big Lie is about power, just not in the way most sane people think it is.
There have been numerous reports his week about polling of Republican voters indicating broad support for violence based on easily disproved claims about election fraud.
Amanda Marcotte, writing in Salon, asked the question: Do people really believe all this crap?
The answer is mostly no. Lies empower the person repeating them, providing a needed boost in self esteem in an era where hope for a better future is fading.
…Lying, if anything, is valorized in the authoritarian ideology because lying is an expression of power. To lie to someone else — a judge, a journalist, randos on social media — is a display of dominance over them and contempt for their petty attachment to Enlightenment values.
That bad faith is the lingua franca of fascism is not a new observation. Jean-Paul Sartre famously noted that fascists see lying as a delicious troll "for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words." All of which is why it's important not to take it at face value when Republicans claim to "believe" various lies around Trump's attempted coup, from the claim that the election was "stolen" to the justifications rolled out for the rioters' behavior that day. None of it.
The institutions benefiting from these lies have placed their bets on prospering under an autocracy. Libertarians believe there’s profit in chaos. Evangelists see an opportunity for a state dominated by fundamentalist Christians.
Both groups see rapidly approaching shifts in demographics as the most dangerous strategic threat. And there is the implicit assumption throughout that today’s lies will be rewarded come the revolution. (History says otherwise, as German Communists who spent the 1930s attacking Social Democrats learned.)
For Fox News and other right wing colluders, the Big Lie (and associated others) are a circus, with center ring performers like Sean Hannity achieving star status as rage inducing mouthpieces.
The best show business allegory for what’s going on with the right wing media would be “Professional” Wrestling, where top-tier performers are expected to excite the crowds with seemingly dangerous actions. Lesser-knowns don’t get into the big arenas or on cable, but there are still legions of fans who somehow believe what goes on in the ring has some basis in reality.
As the texts released yesterday by the House Select Committee investigating January 6 reveal, Hannity’s macho swagger is very much performative. As he and his cronies were beating drums for the Big Lie, the Fox host was pleading with the former President and those in his circle to move on.
From Mother Jones:
According to the panel, those include a December 31 message in which Hannity suggested he knew that the White House Counsel’s office had legal concerns about Trump’s plans to try to overturn his reelection defeat and remain in office.
“We can’t lose the entire WH counsels office,” Hannity told Meadows. “I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6 th. [sic] He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen.” The identity of whomever Hannity was referring to as egging on Trump’s plans is unclear.
Politicians have been lying forever. There were, however, guardrails. Some of them varied by cultural norms, so southern politicians could get away with saying desegregation was a communist plot and nobody would raise an eyebrow.
Lies used to have a shelf life, determined by political circumstances. Sometimes they were expedient ways of getting past a crisis. Most of these disappeared into the dustbin of history, unless they served a higher military of economic interest.
Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch used a 2016 New York Times op ed titled Why Hillary Clinton Needs to Be Two Faced to explain how lies can even be beneficial:
In politics, hypocrisy and doublespeak are tools. They can be used nefariously, illegally or for personal gain, as when President Richard M. Nixon denied Watergate complicity, but they can also be used for legitimate public purposes, such as trying to prevent a civil war, as in Lincoln’s case, or trying to protect American prestige and security, as when President Dwight D. Eisenhower denied that the Soviet Union had shot down a United States spy plane….
Is it hypocritical to take one line in private, then adjust or deny it in public? Of course. But maintaining separate public and private faces is something we all do every day. We tell annoying relatives we enjoyed their visits, thank inept waiters for rotten service, and agree with bosses who we know are wrong….
https://twitter.com/donie/status/1478195004317347841?s=20
The mass psychology of belief in things that are demonstrably untrue got turbo charged with the growth of internet based media and social platforms where engagement equaled economic success.
Most folks have heard about “farms” operated by foreign powers and their role in spreading information in the 2016 elections. The crème de la crème of these were operated or controlled by Russian intelligence.
Interestingly enough, the same state sponsored groups generating misinformation for the 2016 election largely stayed away from internally created falsehoods in 2020. They correctly assessed all that needed to be done was to strategically amplify already existing voices from the fringes of the internet, including seemingly legitimate media. Where strategically necessary, particularly in the areas of race and religion, the dirty work was outsourced to contracted hackers in countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Mexico.
And sometimes all they had to do was sit back and watch, while making sure these lies were repeated in state-sponsored media.
A joint ProPublica/Washington Post investigation published this week reveals that an average of 10,000 posts a day on Facebook between Election Day and Jan. 6 attacked the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory, with many calling for executions or other political violence:
…turned [Facebook] groups into incubators for the baseless claims supporters of then-President Donald Trump voiced as they stormed the Capitol, demanding he get a second term. Many posts portrayed Biden’s election as the result of widespread fraud that required extraordinary action — including the use of force — to prevent the nation from falling into the hands of traitors.
Was a foreign power behind all this? I doubt it. Why risk intelligence assets for something that’s already being done? Sit back and enjoy the chaos which, after all, is the point of their involvement.
My take on January 6 is that there were multiple entities seeking to prove their worth by acting on the rantings of a man who could not take no for an answer.
Trump doesn’t issue marching orders, he merely suggests scenarios then the ecosystem of pilot fish surrounding him act these on to curry favor. Thus you end up with the Strategic Communications Plan provided by former New York police commissioner and convicted (then Trump-pardoned) tax frauder Bernie Kerik.
Then there’s Peter Navarro’s tale about the “Green Bay Sweep” where scores of Republicans were ready to object to the results of the 2020 presidential vote in six states. And it would have worked, he told MSNBC’s Ari Melber, if it wasn’t for the rioters storming the Capitol.
From the Washington Post:
“Do you realize you are describing a coup?” Melber asked Navarro at one point.
“No, I totally reject many of your premises there,” Navarro responded. How could Melber claim that secretaries of state had validated the election results when, in some states, “they were put in power by George Soros for the express purpose of shifting the playing field to the Democrats”?
Sadly, Melber let Navarro get away with the Soros lie, which is a foundational part of the right’s scare the crap out of suburban voters about crime program.
Self promo:
https://twitter.com/dougporter506/status/1478522647407255555?s=20
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One final note for today…
Grifters are gonna grift, and the anti-vaxxer crowd is getting ready for the next big scam.
Business Insider reports that COVID 19 conspiracy theorists may have mapped out a post-pandemic future.
Those who already proliferate baseless conspiracy theories about vaccines and lockdowns could turn their attention to spreading misinformation about climate policy, said one extremism expert.
They will "frame" climate policy as a "loss of civil liberties and loss of freedoms," said Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank, during an interview with PA.
Phrases like "green lockdown" and "climate lockdown" are already being used, he continued, which refer to conspiracy theories that groundlessly state environmentalists will order global lockdowns to help reduce carbon emissions.
Hey folks! There’s a change coming to Words & Deeds in 2022. This weekend I’ll be moving from Wordpress to Substack, which hopefully will mean just a few changes in formatting. Stay tuned for exciting details.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com