When right wingers make up bizarre lies about the democrats or the left or the government, people often accuse them of projection: those are things they wanted to do and often end up doing. And while that’s true, I don’t think it’s the full story. It’s also a tactic for normalizing their horrible agenda, especially among their less rabid supporters.
For 4 years Trump complained about Biden weaponizing the department of Justice against his political opponents: specifically him. This obviously wasn’t true, in fact it was very lenient on him, but he complained about it anyway. This constant lie however normalized the idea that the justice department wasn’t neutral: that it couldn’t be. That it was merely a weapon to be wielded by a party. And so, when Trump won again, he promised to wield that weapon against the enemies of the republicans. Through this process, more moderate followers who may value a neutral justice system became willing to accept an openly partisan one as necessary.
We can see something similar on our side right now with gerrymandering. Most democratic voters are against gerrymandering, but are asking the democrats to gerrymander as much as possible now in response to Texas’ new map. We’ve accepted gerrymandering as a political tool to be wielded. Now in this case it’s a response to a very real threat rather than dumbass lies, but you can see how this logic works.
You can see this over and over again in Republican politics. Attacks on free speech on college campuses? Now republican policy. FEMA camps? They exist now with more enthusiastically being built. The government chipping everyone? RFK wants to do that within 5 years. Made up Republican lies become real policy because that’s how they normalize it, and any and all platforming of those lies helps to do so, even if you’re debunking them. I’m not sure how to deal with this tactic, but I think knowing it exists is useful at least, and can show us where republicans want to go in the future.
Originally Posted By u/LineOfInquiry At 2025-08-07 01:22:17 PM | Source