Nobody likes losing. But rather than accepting failure, former President Donald Trump has preferred to tell a different story, one where he never lost at all. In the version of events told in the “big lie,” Trump was the victim of a massive voter fraud scheme, one that stole the election from him and handed it over to President Joe Biden.
Recent polling shows it’s a story that still sticks with a supermajority of Republicans. The University of Massachusetts Amherst found that 71 percent of GOP respondents believe Biden’s win was at least “probably” illegitimate. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found the exact same result: 71 percent of Republicans “sided with Trump's false claims that he was the rightful winner.”
What to make of this seemingly desperate rejection of reality? The fact is that Trump is not nearly as original or creative as he portrays himself to be. In this case, he’s merely slapped his name and branding onto a concept that predates him. The “big lie” is just the latest version of the myths that reactionaries have always told themselves.
Even before President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, rumors spread that he was a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya. These white “birthers,” who took comfort in the idea that it was only through subterfuge that America had elected its first Black president, were originally viewed as a fringe among Republicans. Trump didn’t originate birtherism, but he became its most prominent promoter. In 2011, as Obama prepared to run for...
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