Populism is about identity not power. Wielding authority is much less important for ordinary adherents of populist movements than distinguishing and distancing one’s own group from others. Thus, the difference between truths and lies is subordinate to the difference between friends and enemies or between those who support and those who reject the populist leader and cause. Every statement of
fact, for populist zealots, dissolves into a declaration of membership. This is why their self-evident lies cannot be corrected by fact-checkers. To retract such untruths in the face of counter-evidence would require sacrificing one’s group affiliation. Such theoretical generalizations help explain the Republican Party’s bizarre radicalization in 2021 after Trump lost power and especially its embrace of the Big Lie that Democrats «stole» the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. For the GOP leadership, the «rigged election» myth, by intensifying the turnout of Trump loyalists, provides a possible pathway back to power in 2022. For GOP voters, by contrast, saying that the 2020 election was rigged is to draw a line in the sand. It is to say, first, that Trump was defeated by «the other», namely those non-white residents of big Democratic cities who voted for Biden and who are allegedly not real Americans. But the true populist hate object is the college-educated liberal who has monopolized all chances for upward mobility in the new knowledge economy, who allegedly pays more attention to disadvantaged minorities than to disadvantaged whites and who is also secretly plotting to «replace» the country’s traditional white majority with non-white immigrants who do not share American values. By purportedly losing an election rigged by liberal advocates of voting rights for minorities, Trump has come to symbolize the perceived victimization of rural whites with only a high-school education who feel «canceled» by deindustrialization, automation and the off-shoring of middle-class jobs. As for the GOP leadership in Congress, they know that the 2020 election was not stolen. But their cynicism and hunger for power has led them to echo the Big Lie, even at the risk of destroying America’s 220-year experiment with multiparty democracy.