The article below was first published in David Corn’s newsletter.our land. The newsletter is published twice a week (most days) and features behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media and culture. Subscription costs just $5 per month, but you get the following benefits:Sign up for a 30-day free trial.
For almost 10 years, Our world has been shaped and distorted by Donald Trump’s lies. He quietly entered the White House eight years ago and was expelled four years later due to public demand. But like a monster in a horror movie, he was not dispatched forever. He ignored norms and the Constitution and attacked American democracy. He may have failed in his covert effort to overturn the election, but millions of our fellow citizens believed he was the leader of Deep State actors, Democrats, the media, and other villains. That was quite an achievement. According to his presidency,washington postTrump made at least 30,573 false or misleading statements. (And the newspaper did not fact-check all of his statements.) Despite this, he still maintained the trust of many Americans.
Trump is unrivaled in the history of deception. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian who studies authoritarianism, recently told me: “Trump is one of the most successful propagandists in history. Working in the fully pluralistic media environment of a democracy rather than a domesticated media system or a one-party state, he convinced tens of millions of people that he had won the general election. No one has ever done anything like that on that scale. And look what he accomplished with the recognition of January 6th.”
Like many of you, as another day of judgment for Trump approaches, I remain puzzled by Trump’s ability to maintain his position as an advocate for many Americans despite his outright lies and extremely low-key, mean-spirited personality. He is a con man whose deception and hypocrisy are easily detectable (including the resulting lies about the pandemic and the attack on the U.S. Capitol that he incited). The questions won’t go away. How can he avoid it?
He is a fraud whose deceit and hypocrisy are easy to spot. The questions won’t go away. How can he avoid it?
Like many of you, as another day of judgment for Trump approaches, I remain puzzled by Trump’s ability to maintain his position as an advocate for many Americans despite his outright lies and extremely low-key, mean-spirited personality. He is a con man whose deception and hypocrisy are easily detectable (including the resulting lies about the pandemic and the attack on the U.S. Capitol that he incited). The questions won’t go away. How can he avoid it?
Some time ago I came across an academic study that attempted to answer this question. In 2018, Oliver Hahl of Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Management and Minjae Kim and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan of MIT’s Sloan School of Management published a paper.American Sociological ReviewThe title is “The True Appeal of a Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegality.” As they put it, they sought to explain “a puzzling pattern that has been widely discussed since the 2016 U.S. presidential election: How can a constituency of voters find a candidate ‘truly attractive’ (i.e. view him in a truly positive light)? ?) ) even though he is a ‘lying propagandist’ (a person who deliberately lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)?” In short, how should we understand Trump’s public support?
The three noted that Hillary Clinton was “harmed by the perception that she was inauthentic” during the 2016 campaign. Fair or not, many voters viewed her as dishonest and motivated by self-interest. But they argued that Trump “(1) was at least as sensitive to personal interests as Clinton and did not have a comparable record of public office; (2) He was much more prone to lying than Clinton. (3) He deliberately ignored many norms that had been taken for granted and widely approved for many years.”
After reviewing the existing literature on populist demagogues and conducting some research, these three scholars came up with an explanation. Here it is (without quotes).
We argue that certain social and political conditions must be in place for lying demagogues to appear genuinely appealing to their supporters. Simply put, if a constituency feels that its interests are not being served by the political institutions that claim to represent them fairly, a lying demagogue may emerge as a true advocate for their interests. (Political scientist Seymour Martin) As Lipset first pointed out, this “legitimacy crisis” could emerge under at least two conditions. (1) When one or more social groups are experiencing what is called a “crisis of representation.” He is not seen to rule on his own behalf. (2) When existing groups are experiencing a “power devaluation crisis” because the political system favors new social groups over existing groups. These scenarios broadly reflect the foundations of populist ideology that promotes a “politics of anger.” This leads disaffected voters to believe that institutions’ claims to represent the interests of “real people” are lies and hidden agendas they feel unstoppable. Candidates who engage in false propaganda may therefore be perceived as courageously speaking deep, repressed truths. By blatantly violating the establishment’s purported norms, thereby drawing criticism from the establishment, the candidate appears highly committed to the interests of his or her constituency. In contrast, serious opposition candidates appear less sincere.
I would like to summarize their conclusions as follows: Trump voters love to lie. Or lies is the point.
It’s not a bug that Trump makes boldly false declarations about himself, about his competitors and critics, and about the world. They are features. They show him sticking it on the other side. The elites, the media, the establishment, the government, academia, Hollywood, the Liberal Party, the woke crowd, minorities… whoever his supporters are, they are outraged, despised, and ignored. So whether he’s lying about legal immigrants eating pets, or that Kamala Harris has a “low IQ” and isn’t actually black and is a communist, or that schools are doing gender affirmation work on kids without parental consent. Stories of babies being murdered after birth, criminal gangs of foreign thugs conquering cities and towns across the Midwest, stories of the American economy going to hell, stories of his as president. It doesn’t matter that there are stories of epic feats, or of evil Democrats who intentionally brought in undocumented people (and criminals) to go to America to destroy the country, or that these days you can’t cross the street without being robbed, raped, or murdered. .
Surely some of Trump’s supporters buy his beds. But I don’t think many people care whether it’s true or not. To them, it is truth in the sense that what they feel and what they think may be true.
Trump is showing that these people do not play by the rules of an institution that they perceive (for a variety of reasons) as their enemy.
His wild claims, narcissistic boasts, and aggressive insults are not necessarily true. Trump’s ability to say whatever he wants isn’t just about his followers telling it like it is. It is a sign of strength. ‘Cause that’s the way he sticks his fingerthem. Trump is showing that these people do not play by the rules of an institution that they perceive (for a variety of reasons) as their enemy. It is for the same reason that they are put off or do not accept his crudeness, meanness, intolerance, misogyny and racism.
Trump’s lies and obscenities are proof that he will do anything to be their hero. And some Trump supporters probably envy his ability to say whatever he wants and avoid the usual consequences. Trump can do all this because millions of people want him to do it. His lying isn’t just a personal flaw. His various shenanigans, and the acceptance of them by tens of millions, are a sign that our politics, and perhaps our country, are broken. How broken it is will depend on what happens on Tuesday and in the days and weeks that follow.
