‘Waving the bloody shirt’: Conservatives resort to a time-worn tactic to gaslight the public
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If you watched Republicans on the Sunday news talk programs this weekend, you could be forgiven if you experienced a surreal, out-of-body feeling seeing every Republican official invited on for interviews claim, without a scintilla of evidence, that the Novem‘Waving the bloody shirt’: Conservatives resort to a time-worn tactic to gaslight the public
If you watched Republicans on the Sunday news talk programs this weekend, you could be forgiven if you experienced a surreal, out-of-body feeling seeing every Republican official invited on for interviews claim, without a scintilla of evidence, that the November presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden. Even worse, they did so with zero pushback from their network hosts. In those moments, you could see the various strands of right-wing narrative regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol coming together into a cohesive, up-is-down gaslighting narrative, building an alternative universe that is likely to form the core of Republican politics for the next four years and more. It’s an old rhetorical sleight of hand that has a long history of use by American conservatives: they call it “waving the bloody shirt.” Read more