Fascist regimes use propaganda and misinformation to promote their ideology. As Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Vice President Henry Wallace pointed out in a 1944 New York Times article, fascism is “most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact.”
The political right uses misinformation to make its dangerous policy decisions and baseless claims seem grounded in fact. As the Trump administration continues to take actions against institutions such as the Department of Education, students face uncertainty about funding their education, safely voicing their opinions or affording groceries.
For MAGA to promote and sustain its flawed ideas, it must convince its followers to buy into conspiracy theories and lies through the means of social media.
Though misinformation pervades both sides of the political spectrum, it holds a powerful place on the political right. According to a study published this year, “When Do Parties Lie Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries,” radical-right populism is the strongest determinant for the tendency to spread misinformation.
The political left often creates oversimplified institutional narratives that do not fully align with reality. The political right, however, more frequently relies on factually incorrect claims, conspiracy theories and science denial. This makes right-wing misinformation uniquely dangerous. Whereas the left often exaggerates the truth, the right often fabricates it.
Beyond the rhetorical suggestion that America wastes too much money, the political right has no justification for the gutting of government departments and mass firing of federal workers. It propagates these lies as a way to create outrage that it then uses to justify its actions.
The Trump administration’s lies regarding USAID funding allocations effectively exemplify how the political right uses misinformation to fuel their rhetoric.
According to the Associated Press, President Donald Trump claimed his administration “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas” at the signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act. While USAID did award a large grant to the International Medical Corps to provide medical services to Gaza, “the only family planning programs funded by the agency in the Middle East were in Jordan and Yemen.”
FactCheck.org says that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed USAID spent “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces, $70,000 for production of a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.” In actuality, the money sent to all but one of these programs came from the State Department, not USAID.
Readers should note how the claim in this case is only partially false. FactCheck.org indicates that USAID did commit to funding an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in Serbia, but the rest of the Leavitt’s statement is not true.
Musk, Trump and other right-wing figures claimed USAID gave Politico millions of dollars, according to Forbes. Rather, the government paid Politico for subscriptions, not USAID grants. It is merely a service allowing users to track legislation, policy and news. Trump’s officials have no evidence of fraud.
Even if the claims surrounding USAID are true, that still does not justify the gutting of entire government departments. It would at least indicate that these federal institutions need to change how they allocate their funds.
The idea that we should fix our federal waste problems by shutting down whole government departments shares the same train of thought as burning down your house to get rid of a wasp infestation. It is an oversimplistic way of solving the government’s waste problems.
Unfortunately, the media environment conservatives surround themselves with repeatedly regurgitates the same misinformation. This echo chamber makes it difficult for MAGA supporters to recognize the harm that these ideas create.
This distortion of fact leads to dire real-world consequences. Misinformation fuels the rhetoric about climate-change denial, vaccine skepticism, voter fraud and more.
Despite the simple process of fact-checking, right-wing misinformation spreads too fast. The lies make their way up to the people running the country. It appears that none of the top officials in the Trump administration have the due diligence nor the care to check if anything they say is true
