“The efforts to downplay and deny what happened are an attempt to brazenly recast reality itself.”
After twelve months of hard work debunking hundreds of misleading and false claims, the good folks at Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact take a moment out of their normal schedule to award the Lie of the Year, and for 2021 that dubious honor goes to, “the collective attempts to downplay and deny the Jan. 6 insurrection, the most serious attack on representative democracy in modern times.” As much as this one stands out as a doozy, we imagine PolitiFact had a hard time choosing just one to highlight in a year full of misinformation about COVID-19, vaccinations, elections, climate change and
the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. They cite two important factors that put this one at the top. The first is the historical significance of the event, which did truly shock the world. The second is of particular interest to those of us in the online Trust and Safety space, namely the degree to which the “efforts to downplay and deny what happened are an attempt to brazenly recast reality itself.” An attempt that, in fact, seems unimaginable given that the event was so widely broadcast and had so many first-person accounts. But that’s what separates your workaday casual lies from truly worthy award winners.
This year’s choice is somewhat unusual since it’s not just a single lie but a collection of falsehoods, albeit consistent in their theme and motivation. It also stands out in that the distortions continue. They started just seven days into the year and are far from over as more information comes out from the ongoing hearings by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack. Even as the evidence mounts, and with criminal charges filed against more than 700 people, there are several voices that continue to try to alter reality with claims that the assault was a peaceful political protest without violence or that the government itself was responsible.
The PolitiFact article is a great read to understand the actual events and the falsehoods that followed as well as the reasoning behind this year’s pick. The danger of lies that try to deny or downplay horrific events makes the work of combating disinformation so important. We at Checkstep are reminded that it was only last year and the lies of 2020 that prompted our own efforts to counter the damaging effects of online disinformation. What’s really struck us this year is how significant, real-world harms can result from online activity. How outright deception about voting and the mischaracterization of political opponents can be so effective at motivating so many people to respond with violence; how disinformation about the coronavirus and its treatments can prolong a devastating pandemic with serious health and economic damage, and how decades of energy and climate misinformation can hamper efforts to maintain a healthy environment — just to name a few examples.
We’re gearing up for the long-haul as we see a clear playbook to muddy the waters on important public and social issues. The counter defense requires lots of us to be involved, and it’s going to take time, but we need to build up the structures and systems that allow quality information to dominate. There will still be voices that peddle misinformation and hate, but as we make progress, hopefully those will retreat back to the fringes and become less effective weapons. It’s important that we all continue the work of helping reality push back against those voices.