This is a huge gift
Newsmax just formally confessed that the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election is indeed a big lie, and that there was no conspiracy to rig the election against Donald Trump. It now seems likely that other major right wing propaganda outlets will end up having to issue similar confessions. Here’s the thing.
We can sit back and lament about how the “damage” has already been done. We can lament about how extreme right wingers still aren’t going to believe it, even now that their favorite propaganda outlets are confessing they made it up. But none of that helps us in any way, shape, or form.
Instead, we can recognize that Newsmax just handed us a huge gift, and we can use it to our advantage. While the extreme right wingers who bathe themselves in these lies may not ever change their minds, we can use the Newsmax confession to make sure that voters in the middle don’t fall prey to the lies being told by extreme right wingers.
Modern elections tend to be decided by whether or not voters in the middle fall for whatever big lie the right wingers (and the worst of major media outlets) are pushing in any given news cycle. In 2016, voters in the middle fell for the lies about Clinton’s emails. In 2020, voters in the middle didn’t fall for the lies about Hunter Biden. It’s a big part of why those two elections had such different results.
So as we head into the 2022 and 2024 elections, let’s put this huge gift from Newsmax (and presumably other upcoming right wing propaganda outlets) to good use. We can use it to educate voters in the middle, so they end up voting wisely. This is how elections are won and progress is delivered – not by lamenting about “damage.”
