Believing lies about political violence isn’t just a problem for the right
MINOT — “Less than half of GOP say 1/6 was very violent,” reads a somewhat misleading Associated Press headline . Though technically accurate, a more nuanced description of the results is less distressing. The poll, commissioned by the AP, indicates that 71% of Republicans admit that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was at least somewhat violent.
That nit-picking aside, there’s no question that vast swaths of Republicans have, thanks to the phony punditry of Fox News and other conservative media and the self-serving bluster of disgraced former President Donald Trump and his various sycophants, a completely distorted view of the Jan. 6 riots.
Just as many of them bought into the byzantine maze of zany conspiracies that is Qanon and Trump World’s many lies about the 2020 election, they’ve also come to believe that Jan. 6 wasn’t the violent act of political extremism countless photos and videos and social media posts demonstrate that it was.
These people are living in a political bubble.
But this isn’t just a problem on the right.
