Republicans Have Mastered the Art of False Equivalency

Even so-called 'sensible Republicans' use both-sides-ism to misinform their base. And most of the time, the media goes along.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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A few years before the Trump era, I found myself drinking a beer and watching television with an older male relative who happens to be white. Everyone else was gone shopping, so it was just the two of us. We’ve always had a cordial relationship, so we engaged in the usual small talk as we watched cable news. 

At some point, a news story popped up that mentioned the southern border and immigration. As soon as I heard it, I tensed up. I had a pretty strong suspicion my television companion was a Republican. I noticed his reaction to the story and could tell he had something to say. After a few seconds, he could no longer hold his thoughts. 

“I just don’t want them coming here voting illegally,” he said to no one in particular. 

When I saw the immigration story on television, I mentally began the ‘what if’ scenarios common in family settings when politics or religion arises. In this case, I decided it was safe to respond.

“How would they be able to come here and vote?” I asked, trying to make my comment as non-threatening as possible. As he thought about my question, I decided to continue. 

“What I mean is, they’d have to register to vote, and to do that, they’d need a fake birth certificate and maybe a fake social security card. Why would somebody that is here illegally want to do all that?”

My relative pondered for a few seconds before saying, “Huh. I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

This story illustrates the way folks with conservative leanings buy into misleading narratives.

For example, according to a University of Oxford study, 55 percent of all junk or ‘fake news traffic on Twitter can be linked to Trump supporters. For three months in 2018, researchers with the university’s Computational Propaganda Research Project scrutinized the habits of 13,477 politically active US Twitter users and 47,719 public Facebook pages. This is what the study found, as reported in the Huffington Post:

The study linked a full 55 percent of all junk news traffic on Twitter to the “Trump Support” group. “On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters shares the widest range of known junk news sources and circulates more junk news than all the other groups put together,” the authors noted. 

For comparison, the “Democratic Party” and “Progressive Movement” groups together accounted for 1 percent of junk news traffic on Twitter, according to the study.

And on Facebook, the study found that “extreme hard right pages — distinct from Republican pages — share the widest range of known junk news sources and circulate more junk news than all the other audiences put together.” The “Hard Conservative” group accounted for 58 percent of junk news traffic on Facebook. (The “Democratic Party” group accounted for 12 percent.)

One reason the flood of misinformation targeting the Republican base succeeds is the way it’s constantly regurgitated and amplified, not just by extremists such as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar but by so-called ‘sensible’ Republicans.

One example of Republican false equivalency is their skilled use of both sides-ism. 

Earlier this month, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle interviewed Republican House member Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of the few Republicans brave enough to venture beyond the safety of Fox News, OANN, and NewsMax. 

The interview was relatively uneventful until Ruhle brought up the January 6th insurrection. Rather than acknowledge the GOP’s role in instigating the event, Mace immediately responded with a false equivalency, comparing Antifa ideology to the Capital attack:

MACE: “We had a hearing a couple weeks ago with the FBI and I learned that we don’t track cases of violence of Antifa, right? I mean, there’s lots of violence, domestic terrorism and foreign terrorism in this country.”

RUHLE: “But Antifa is this sort of abstract boogeyman word that we keep hearing on the other side. You can clearly see…”

MACE: “I don’t think it is.”

RUHLE: “What specific event are you talking about that you believe Antifa committed that should be investigated? Because I can tell you January 6th, we all saw it. We know it. What event you are talking about?”

Instead of providing a specific incident of Antifa-related violence to back up her claim, Mace makes a shopworn both-sides argument, comparing the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 to the attack on the US Capital, which was responsible for a disruption of the peaceful transfer of power (emphasis mine).

MACE: “Yeah, 100 percent. But we’ve all seen the cities that have been destroyed by violence and by rioting in my own district in Charleston, South Carolina, in May of 2020. We had riots that destroyed millions of dollars of businesses down King Street in Charleston. We’ve seen it in cities across the country. We want to make sure that all violence is held to the same standard…

I’ve read about Antifa and them organizing these kind of events, so I don’t want to say it’s a boogeyman. I mean, there were, I guess, symbolism that they use. That symbolism was used on my house when it was spray-painted this summer. This is the thing that, you know, violence in this country shouldn’t be partisan, shouldn’t be Left or Right.”

There is so much to unpack here. When pressed to discuss the January 6th insurrection, Mace immediately raises the specter of Antifa, which, while a concern, is not a defined group or an organization, according to FBI Director Chris Wray.