Most people regard Republicans’ #StopTheSteal campaign, also known as the “big lie,” as an attempt to re-litigate the 2020 election and pander to a radicalized, Trumpy base. It is that, but it is also a massive and devastatingly effective deployment of Russian-style information warfare against American democracy — by Americans themselves — with an eye toward the future. We should think of it not as a momentary partisan outburst but a kind of epistemic 9/11: a moment when a menace that has been developing for years reaches maturity and displays its full prowess…
… The rise of Donald Trump brought a turning point. He and his allies in conservative media and Republican politics seized upon Russian-style disinformation techniques and applied them to domestic politics. In his 2016 campaign, Trump lied so frequently and flagrantly that the media couldn’t keep up and the public lost track, a favorite Russian tactic known as the fire hose of falsehood.
With the #StopTheSteal campaign, the turning point became a point of no return. In April 2020, Trump launched a propaganda onslaught against mail-in balloting. Much as the Russians had used Jade Helm 15 to test their disinformation methods, Trump used the attack on mail-in balloting to organize the propaganda campaign he would launch if he lost the election. The already-high rate of Trump’s falsehoods ticked up sharply. After he lost, he and his allies unleashed a flood of exaggerations, lies and conspiracy theories through the White House, conservative media, social media and even the courts.
#StopTheSteal is not merely Trump’s way of being a sore loser or clinging to relevance (though it is those things). It is the most audacious disinformation campaign ever attempted against Americans by any actor, foreign or domestic. And it has been devastatingly effective. According to a recent Ipsos-Reuters poll, the majority of Republicans think the 2020 election was stolen, and almost half of independents either think the election was rigged or are unsure. Vladimir Putin could only dream of creating so much cynicism, doubt and distrust.
The “big lie” is a wake-up call, and not just about Trump. Even today, most scholars and commentators talk about America’s rising levels of polarization, extremism, and distrust of institutions and expertise as if they were natural disasters or products of generalized forces such as social media quirks, institutions’ failings and individuals’ gullibility. While those explanations have validity, they miss the more immediate threat: For years, Americans have been targeted with epistemic warfare — that is, with attacks on the credibility of the mainstream media, academia, government agencies, and other institutions and professionals we rely on to keep us collectively moored to facts. Those doing the targeting are nameable individuals and organizations, including Trump, conservative media outlets, Republican politicians, anti-vaccine groups and Russia’s Internet Research Agency.
Since epistemic warfare has proved its mettle so spectacularly in U.S. politics, it is likely here for good. Measures may allow us to fight back, such as revamping social media and teaching media literacy. But our primary means of defense is to be awake to the scope and origin of the threat. The first step toward winning the war on truth is to accept that we are in one.
