Political Lies as Tribal Signaling

Noam Smith: “Why have so many Republicans and right-wing media figures embraced Donald Trump’s obviously made-up claims of voter fraud? Rationally, they must know that all of the allegations are lies. Court after court, recount after recount, investigation after investigation has shown zero evidence of fraud. Yet the more the evidence against Trump’s lies piles up, the more figures on the right line up to publicly embrace the fiction.”

“The obvious reason would be to curry favor with right-wing voters and audiences, who express strong sympathy with the idea that Biden was not the election’s rightful winner. Trump will probably (hopefully) be out of the White House in a few weeks, but he will likely remain a powerful and influential figure in a Republican party that he has come to dominate…”

“But if this were all that was happening, one might expect people to find some less expensive fiction. Pushing an obviously false claim of a stolen election is probably a doomed cause — and even if Trump succeeded in holding onto power, that would require these same right-wing figures to tie themselves to an autocratic regime that would have a reasonable likelihood of being violently overthrown, and its apparatchiks punished.”

“Instead, I offer another possibility — that lies of this sort are uttered precisely because they come with costs. I propose that political lies are a costly signal of tribal loyalty.