Within a few weeks of the Jan. 6 insurrection, it became crystal clear that the Republican Party, by openly embracing both Donald Trump’s Big Lie that fueled the violent attack on democracy and the mob of far-right “Patriots” who undertook it, had ceased to be a viable partner in American democracy. That reality has become fully manifest now, 22 months later on the brink of the midterm elections, as the majority of GOP candidates around the nation—nearly 300 of them—have declared themselves unapologetic election denialists.
Democracy itself is plainly under assault from these denialists (and by extension, the Republican Party). But few of its defenders have a clear view of the larger strategy, involving a menu of varying tactics, being deployed in this attack. A recent report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, fortunately, provides an outline for us, identifying a set of eight specific tactics being deployed by election denialists and their enablers this year.
The report, which identifies what it calls eight “trends during the 2022 US primary elections that are likely to persist or escalate during general elections this fall,” explains that “online audiences of election-denialist content have blossomed to sustain a lucrative media circuit that traffics almost exclusively in conspiracy theories and misinformation about elections in the United States.”
These include operations like Michael Flynn’s roadshow tour promoting denialism to large crowds with a decidedly...
Kolkata: Kolkata Police has been grappling with a fresh challenge since the past week — controlling fake news. While it initially started with fake circulars, beginning with "restrictions" on cert...