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Two Big Things
1) One unfortunate result of Trump's constant election denying is that Republicans, even two years after the 2020 election, remain skeptical about elections in the US. And while Kari Lake was unsuccessful in her challenge of the 2022 Arizona Governor election, it seems as if this will be a strategy for at least part of the GOP from now on when they lose. And, even with the current iteration of the Republican party being more show than substance, our political climate is better off when there are at least two competent political parties not shouting down every election they lose.
Which makes this study from Katherine Clayton and Robb Willer, published in Sage Journals, so compelling. Clayton and Willer find that "viewing real messages from Republican politicians defending the legitimacy of the 2020 election increased faith in the election's outcome and in the broader electoral process among Republican voters, compared to either a neutral control condition or to comparable messages from Democratic politicians." The study also indicates that there is no downside to admitting that "Republican politicians who endorse the 2020 election results might not face backlash from voters."
The study also notes a very positive potential truth: Republican voters rising trust in elections after hearing Republican elites confess faith in American elections points to the fact that the distrust of elections is not a deeply held belief. There is not a large group of Republican voters who fundamentally mistrust the election system in America; there are Republican voters who simply take cues from leaders who should know better than to cast doubt on free, fair, and safe elections.
2) On Sunday, January 8, almost two years to the day that the January 6 insurrection took place in America, Brazil faced its own insurrection with supporters of ousted President Bolsonaro ransacking the presidential palace, congress, and supreme court in Brazil. If all this sounds familiar, there's a good reason for that. The BBC reports that many Trump allies, including Steves Bannon and Miller, stoked the flames of Bolsonaro's cries of election fraud. And it seems that a similar playbook was used, as well as WaPo reports on the ways social media were used to cause problems and mayhem in Brazil. And if that is not enough, the similarities continue as Christian Nationalism also played a part in the Brazilian insurrection. Public Witness also notes that Bolsonaro, like Trump, is now residing in Florida after his failed election and failed insurrection, but it may be too much to look that far into things. The Brazilian insurrection shows that there will be copycats in other countries even with Trump's failure. Authoritarians and those who support them will not, cannot, accept that they have been defeated.
4 Other Things
1) Writing for his newsletter From the Depths, Marc-André Argentino explores how one ends up joining QAnon. What Argentino arrives at is that QAnon is not like your standard secretive clubs like the Masons or your usual White Supremacist gangs like the KKK. You do not sign up to join QAnon because QAnon is not a club, according to Argentino. Instead, QAnon is becoming, if not already, a new religion with all the trappings and rituals one would expect for religious practice.
2) To paraphrase Will Ferrell's character in Zoolander, "Christian Nationalism, so hot right now." And while it is understandable why more and more outlets are covering Christian Nationalism, it can be hard to understand who Christian Nationalists are and what they want. So we all owe a hearty thanks to Bob Smietana for his article at WaPo offering a taxonomy of Christian Nationalism.
3) Tim Starks reports for WaPo that Russian trolls on Twitter had very little influence in the 2016 election cycle. Starks notes that most of the Twitter accounts actively sharing Russian misinformation and disinformation were highly likely to support Trump. Twitter has always been under-used compared to how much press it gets from politicians and journalists, so this report should not be surprising. However, the study Starks reports on did not examine Facebook, does not address the Russian hack-and-leak operations, and does not suggest that Russian operations were not a threat overall.
4) Finally, YouGov notes that most Americans still disapprove of the January 6 insurrection. However, that number was lower than it was in 2021. And while Republicans are seeing the most significant gains in approving of the January 6 insurrection, Democrats have also crept up in their approval. In Jan 2021, 3% of Democrats approved of the insurrection; today, that number is 16%. In some respects, this should not be shocking news. If you are a Republican politician in 2023, carrying water for Trump, even ceremonially, is part of the job, which means you cannot attack the insurrection or those who participated in it. And there is likely a similar echo chamber regarding the insurrection as Clayton and Willer found with election denying. Still, for many of us, the images of January 6 are ingrained in our minds, and to see more Americans view that traitorous act with approval is a shock.
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