The Big Lie was always about racism

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Amanda Marcotte
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To really understand why the GOP base has taken on the Big Lie so whole-heartedly, it's important to recognize that it's about white supremacy. It was always about white supremacy.

salon.com
The Big Lie was always about racism
The Big Lie, like Trump's birtherism, reflects his refusal to accept that people of color are legitimate Americans
10:24 AM · Jun 22, 2022

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/22/shaye-mosss-ordeal-and-the-texas-platform-big-lie-was-always-about-supremacy/

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss's abuse at the hands of Donald Trump is terrifying for the same reason serial killers are terrifying: Because the victims feel so randomly selected. Ted Bundy roamed beaches and college campuses looking for any long-haired white girl he could torture and kill. Moss did not speculate, during her short but powerful testimony before the January 6 committee on Tuesday, on why Trump and his odious sidekick Rudy Giuliani picked her and her mother, Ruby Freeman, for a vicious smear campaign falsely accusing them of injecting fake ballots into counting machines. She didn't need to speculate, because it was painfully obvious. Trump and Giuliani wanted their victims to be Black women because their conspiracy theories about a "stolen" election are all about tickling the lizard brain racism of the GOP base.

Moss and Freeman were singled out for the same reason that Fox News runs endlessly ridiculous segments villainizing Vice President Kamala Harris for every sneeze or smile. She was targeted for the same reason Republicans turned the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson into a circus of white resentment. Trump zeroed in on these two women for the same reason he spent years hyping the ridiculous conspiracy that President Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen of the United States. It's all a head nod in the direction of the unspeakable but clearly animating belief of MAGA nation: People of color are not legitimate American citizens.

The conspiracy theory about Moss and Freeman was, in both its intent and effect, a hate crime.
With all the right-wing noise about Dominion voting machines and "dead people voting," it can be easy for some to lose sight of how the Big Lie was, from its inception, a white supremacist conspiracy theory. The Big Lie channels the white conservative belief that only they are real Americans and gives them the pretext to discredit voters of racially diverse cities like Philadelphia and Detroit as "frauds." There were endless numbers of photos and videos of election workers counting ballots that Trump and Giuliani could pretend to see illicit activity in. They clearly wanted Black women to be the face of their accusations about "fraud" voters, and unfortunately for Moss and Freeman, they were the unlucky names pulled out of the red baseball cap. The conspiracy theory about Moss and Freeman was, in both its intent and effect, a hate crime.

The background articles giving context to Moss' testimony were a brutal reminder of what unsubtle and noxious racists both Trump and Giuliani are. Falsely accusing Freeman of supposedly passing thumb drives to Moss (it was actually candy), Giuliani literally used the phrase "like they were vials of heroin or cocaine" during a hearing with Georgia lawmakers. He was leaving nothing to chance in trying to make this conspiracy theory go viral on the right. Trump referred to Freeman as a "hustler" in his infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The over-the-top racism worked, as the lie crashed through right-wing social media like a tsunami, resulting in the horrendous abuse and threats to her life that Moss recounted Tuesday.

*snip*