Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America

the book is informative and captures the attention of a reality, that we can stop paying attention..

Pfeiffer expertly traces the history of conservative attacks on truth and offers practical strategies on how to confront and overcome the Big Lie that continues to mislead millions of Americans.

Such an important read for our current moment. This book gives an interesting summary of how we got to where things are today and what needs to happen to change it. It’s also an enjoyable read and funny (love the footnotes!)

One of the most intellectually lazy comments or observations you could possibly make is the following: “The Republican Party is biased, but so is the Democratic Party. They both occupy their own independent realities.” Let’s call this the neutrality bias, which is one of the most annoying forms of relativism you can find. Not everything is by default equivalent; sometimes, one group is more biased or manipulative or delusional than another. But since we love to overcorrect problems, we’ve replaced extreme ideological bias with a pathological need to appear objective even when doing so sacrifices accuracy and honesty. Obviously, there is plenty of bias with the Democrats (and plenty to complain about regarding their overall strategy). But only one party is the party of disinformation, conspiracy theories, religious fundamentalism, anti-science, and voter suppression. Only one party uses disinformation as a clear political strategy, and has admitted as much to those paying any attention. And it’s clear why. Here’s everything you need to know about the Republican Party in one paragraph. As Pfeiffer wrote: “One of the primary purposes of this disinformation strategy is to paper over a potentially fatal contradiction. The Republicans depend on a populist working-class base, but their policy agenda asks those very same working-class voters to pay for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. This tension is simply irreconcilable. If elections were centered on the contrasting economic positions of the party, the Republicans would get clobbered. So, they obfuscate and distract. They move the conversation to the cultural issues that unite their base and divide ours.” Pfeiffer continues: “If there is a fair hearing on the issues, Republicans will lose. They must defame Democrats, hide their own positions, and keep their shrinking white base fired up with a steady dose of racist agitprop.” We need to remember that objectivity and civility only apply to interlocutors of good faith. If someone honestly and genuinely disagrees with you, they deserve to be heard. Conservative media plays off this good faith from reasonable people. But bad faith actors, who are intentionally lying or manipulating the truth for their own benefit, do not deserve such niceties. And we don’t need to bend over backwards to create the impression that we’re covering “all sides of an issue” when one side is not intellectually respectable. It would be like a history professor devoting equal time to holocaust denial or a biology professor spending half the semester on creationism in her evolutionary biology course. I sincerely hope that this book shakes people out of their need to prioritize appearing objective when doing so forces them to spend equal time considering BS ideas. The left has allowed the right to dictate the conv...

Dan Pfeiffer has a way with words. This book was entertaining and easy to read, but most all, informative.