The Big Lie Both Is and Is Not About Election Fraud

As the Republican Party coalesces around a new cult initiation ritual, in which anyone who desires to win the party’s nomination for any level of elected office must recite the magic words—The Election Was Stolen From Mr. Trump—it’s important to keep in mind that this both is and is not about fraud in the 2020 election, of which there is zero actual evidence. On the one hand, all Republicans must now claim there were, at the very least, some sort of shadowy “irregularities” around the election. Depending on what state you’re in, this might focus on mail-in ballots, say, or the overall record turnout that saw Joe Biden secure 80 million citizens’ votes. The explanations of the supposed fraud are rarely specific, though, and sometimes the believers don’t even focus on a particular issue like those above. There was just something fishy going on.

This is because, while it is about the “fraud,” it’s also not. Like Donald Trump himself, the ranks of the faithful were always going to claim the election was illegitimate if it did not produce their desired outcome. Trump telegraphed this for months and months before the election, making clear he would sow paranoia and distrust if he lost. Just like in 2016, he started saying the election was rigged before it even happened. (In this formulation, the President of the United States knew the upcoming election would be manipulated with fraud and did nothing, in all his power, to stop it from happening.) The root of this is that the conservative base sees the result itself, as much as the process that produced it, as illegitimate. Biden’s election was fraudulent because Biden was elected instead of their guy, whom they consider, as Real Americans, to be the totem of power as exercised by Real Americans. The people they imagine in their mind’s eye as having voted for Biden had no right to choose the president, therefore the election was illegitimate.

Another way you can tell this is via the larger apocalyptic tone with which The Leader chooses to communicate. He issued a press release imitation of a tweet Monday morning in which he shamelessly tried to co-opt the term “Big Lie” just as he once did “fake news.”

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But you might also note the header—”SAVE AMERICA”—and the political action committee—”Save America PAC”—that paid for this. The not-even-really-subtext is that it was not just the election, but The Nation Itself that was stolen from Trump and his supporters. Because he was the expression of Real America’s will, and thus an assertion of their power over the country, his defeat represents the hijacking of America by fake citizens with illegitimate claims to determining how this place ought to be run. This is the conclusion that the faithful began with. Everything else is window dressing—shards of evidence or paranoid fantasy, gathered or summoned to support that original, inevitable conclusion. If it wasn’t the mail-in ballots, there would have been something else darkly referenced as shady and fraudulent. The Wrong People are choosing the president, you see, and The America You Know and Love is set to be stolen away. That’s also why some Conservative Intellectuals are now arguing outright that not all citizens are worthy of the vote. They truly believe the country only belongs to some, and everyone else should just be happy they’re allowed to be here.

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