'Stop the Steal' Is a Metaphor

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/08/stop-the-steal-trumpism-tea-party-connection/671115/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/1z7qW


Starting in 2008, a widely circulated conspiracy theory was that Barack Obama was not actually born in America. Strivers on the political right scrounged around to try to produce a Kenyan birth certificate for him; they filed state and federal legal complaints alleging that Obama was not eligible to be president. But proof of this theory was never a requirement for subscribing to it; you could simply choose to believe that a Black liberal with a Muslim-sounding middle name was not one of us. And at several points during Obama’s presidency, almost a quarter of Americans did.

The country has not changed much. Theda Skocpol, a Harvard sociologist and political scientist who has studied the Tea Party movement and right-wing grievances of the Obama years, draws a straight line from that era to today’s “Stop the Steal” efforts. I talked with Skocpol on Wednesday morning about that connection, and the roots of resentment in America.

Now, as then, you can take the right’s scramble for evidence of fraud with a grain of salt, she told me. The election deniers who say they are perturbed by late-night ballot dumps or dead people voting are actually concerned with something else.

“‘Stop the Steal’ is a metaphor,” Skocpol said, “for the country being taken away from the people who think they should rightfully be setting the tone.” More than a decade later, evidence remains secondary when what you’re really doing is questioning whose vote counts—and who counts as an American.


*snip*

[TheRealNorth]

1. Yup

The MAGATS want to take away our civil rights and rule over us.

[Meadowoak]

2. I thought it was just projection/deflection as they were actively

Trying to steal the 2020 election, just accuse the other side of what your doing. Easy peasy.