It’s always tempting to dismiss the reality-inverting rants of right-wing ideologues like Tucker Carlson—even as they furiously scramble to dismiss culpability for the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol from the right-wing extremists who attempted to prevent the certification of the 2020 Electoral College ballots—as so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. Then when the November 2021 election results end up with eight people who participated in those events elevated to public office as Republicans, the cold reality hits: Disinformation works. The Jan. 6 gaslighting campaign’s toxic effects extend far beyond their ability to persuade voters that the attempted coup was merely, in Carlson’s words, a political protest that “got out of hand.” Carlson’s latest enterprise—a flashy “documentary” titled Patriot Purge, which posits that the Capitol insurrection actually was a “false flag” operation by the “Deep State” intended to ensnare and imprison American “patriots” simply for “disagreeing with Joe Biden”—is also, as fascism scholar Jason Stanley explained in Rolling Stone, “profoundly dangerous … because it follows a classic template of propaganda that has brought down democracies before.” Read more