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“Fascists lie. – Of the 725 people arrested so far for the January 6 insurrection incited by Donald Trump, perhaps one of the most telling stories is that of the very first person sentenced, Anna Morgan-Lloyd. On Facebook, Morgan-Lloyd’s attitude about participating in a violent attempt to overthrow democracy was jubilant, declaring it the “best day ever.” But, when faced with the possibility of prison time, she masterfully escaped punishment by pretending to be reformed. After talking up all of the studying she did in jail about the importance of democracy and evils of fascism — she even claimed to have watched “Schindler’s List” — Morgan-Lloyd turned on the waterworks.

The act worked. Morgan-Lloyd was let off with a slap on the wrist, getting probation with no prison time. The judge seemed to sincerely believe her tale of being fooled into fascism and finding redemption through the magic of learning. This is why he was furious later to learn that Morgan-Lloyd’s gut-wrenching show of remorse was all nonsense. Indeed, it was only a day after she was handed her light sentence that Morgan-Lloyd was telling lies on Fox News, saying “we see nobody damage anything” and the rioters were “actually very polite.”
That is the nature of the authoritarian ideology, which doesn’t value good faith discourse in a democracy. Indeed, they spit on democracy, or, as rioters in the Capitol reportedly did, they shit on it. All that the fascist respects is power and domination. Lying, if anything, is valorized in the authoritarian ideology because lying is an expression of power. To lie to someone else — a judge, a journalist, randos on social media — is a display of dominance over them and contempt for their petty attachment to Enlightenment values.
That bad faith is the lingua franca of fascism is not a new observation. Jean-Paul Sartre famously noted that fascists see lying as a delicious troll “for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.” All of which is why it’s important not to take it at face value when Republicans claim to “believe” various lies around Trump’s attempted coup, from the claim that the election was “stolen” to the justifications rolled out for the rioters’ behavior that day. None of it.

Tucker Carlson, the most adamant rewriter of the coup’s history, switches seamlessly between denying that the riot was an insurrection, claiming that the insurrection was a “false flag” orchestrated by the FBI and antifa, and claiming that the insurrectionists were justified. That each of these claims contradicts the other is of no matter because Carlson believes none of it, and neither do his viewers. They are engaged in a collective act of dissembling and gaslighting, deliberately filling the discourse with noise so they never have to actually defend what their true beliefs about the insurrection actually are.

That’s why it’s so critical to abandon the hope that Republicans are merely delusional when they parrot the Big Lie… authoritarians will say whatever they feel they need to in order to evade accountability, whether consequences come in the form of a prison sentence or merely having someone point out that they are racist. Fascists lie, especially to pollsters, who are viewed as part of the “elite” class of pro-democracy forces they are trying to destroy. Seeing them for who they are is the first step of fighting back effectively.”

Read it. salon dot com /2022/01/04/dont-actually-believe-the-big-lie-about-january-6–theyre-in-on-the-con/