10 Things You Need to Know About the Big Lie That Threatens to Tear Apart Our Democracy

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1. The claim that Trump won the election is a Big Lie.
2. A Big Lie changes reality. To believe it, people must disbelieve their senses, distrust their fellow citizens, and live in a world of faith.
3. A Big Lie demands conspiracy thinking, since all who doubt it are seen as traitors.
4. A Big Lie undoes a society, since it divides citizens into believers and unbelievers.
5. A Big Lie destroys democracy, since people who are convinced that nothing is true except the utterances of their leader ignore voting and its results.
6. A Big Lie must bring violence, as it has.
7. A Big Lie can never be told by just one person. Trump is the originator of this Big Lie, but it never could have flourished without his allies on Capitol Hill.
8. Political futures now depend on this Big Lie. Senators Hawley and Cruz are running for president on the basis of this Big Lie.
9. There is a cure for the Big Lie. Our elected representatives should tell the truth, without dissimulation, about the results of the 2020 election.
10. Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the Big Lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021.

Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University and the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century and, most recently, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary. This text has been adapted from a Twitter thread originally published on January 12, 2021.