Conspiratorial lies about immigrants to justify voter suppression and intimidation while building the foundation to violently contest the election results are core to the GOP’s ‘24 campaign.
After losing the election in 2020, Donald Trump and his allies cultivated the Big Lie that the election had been stolen as they sought to overturn the legitimate results of a fair and secure election, culminating with an assault of the core democratic principle of a peaceful transfer of power as they rallied their converts and believers to violently storm the U.S. Capitol.
After a brief moment of consideration, the Republican Party continued to barrel down the path of mass radicalization, purging nonbelievers from their ranks and continuing to spread the Big Lie. Their cadre of prominent 2020 election deniers helped deliver a pitiful performance at the ballot box in 2022 but the Republican Party decided to continue towards authoritarian nationalism and thus would need a new way to sell the Big Lie.
The GOP’s increasing adoption of the white nationalist replacement theory was the natural fit for shaping the Big Lie 2.0. The familiar bigoted lie about noncitizens polluting the ballot box with fraudulent votes was not entirely new to their ranks, but the American right has spent the last year elevating the lie, developing its conspiratorial nativism to make it the centerpiece of the GOP’s 2024 election strategy.
Before the disinformation about noncitizen voting, led by anti-immigrant zealots like Kris Kobach (who is now the Attorney General of Kansas), was their cheap disguise for voter suppression tactics like purging voter rolls and erecting barriers to accessing the ballot box. These tactics are in full swing with the Big Lie 2.0; see the recent voter purges being attempted by Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Ohio or the efforts in Congress around the SAVE Act and state legislatures all backed by the nativist lies. However, this year, the lies have a more conspiratorial framework, adopting the white nationalist replacement theory to falsely assert a nefarious intent behind the increase in migrants seeking safety in the United States.
The New York Times reported on the centrality of the white nationalist replacement theory to the GOP campaigns, recently writing:
“Mr. Vance has made the conspiracy claim a staple of his stump speech, and in interviews has gone so far as to suggest that Democrats believe they can altogether “replace” native-born Americans, language that has been used by perpetrators of several mass shootings. At recent rallies in Arizona and Nevada, he said Ms. Harris would give every undocumented immigrant the right to vote and ‘destroy’ Americans’ say in their own country. ‘When she let in millions of illegal aliens, it made our communities less safe — but it did give the Democrats a lot of voters,’ he said Wednesday in Byron Center, Mich.”
And it is the New York Times reporting that has repeatedly made the connection between the lies about fraudulent immigrant voting and the white nationalist replacement theory.
“More recently, claims about noncitizens’ voting have connected to a broader conspiracy theory, started by white supremacist groups, about immigrants arriving to ‘replace’ U.S. citizens. Prominent Republican politicians, including Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, and right-wing media figures have suggested that Democrats are deliberately allowing an ‘invasion’ of immigrants and helping them vote in a bid to win elections.”
Donald Trump repeatedly illustrated this point during the presidential debate on Tuesday. After again refusing to admit he lost his last election in 2020, Trump trotted out the new version of the Big Lie. “They are destroying the fabric of the nation,” he claimed.
The Republican House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing did that same thing earlier that day, seeking to use their slim majority to use Congress to launder the white nationalist Big Lie 2.0 conspiracies. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) began the hearing by making the false assertion that Biden/Harris immigration policy is “fundamentally remaking America,” referencing his report titled “America Invaded,” echoing deadly racist terrorists and connecting it all to a lie about threat from noncitizen voting. Later in the hearing, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX), was a bit more explicit with the replacement theory message, claiming “Democrats on the left aren’t just focused on replacing American voters. They are focused on replacing American jobs as well.”
Democratic Rep. Mary Scanlon (PA) was quite clear about the goal of the hearing, saying: “Trump and his allies are once again using the same old playbook spreading a noncitizen voter lie as part of a cynical campaign to undermine faith in our election systems.”
Ranking Member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) also pointed out the decision by House Republicans to call leading election denialist Cleta Mitchell – who spearheaded the effort to overturn the election in 2020 – as the key witness to advance the Big Lie 2.0. “In other words, Cleta Mitchell participated in the plot to steal the 2020 presidential election, and the Republicans have the nerve to call her as a witness in front of this committee today,” said Rep. Nadler.
Mitchell’s opening remarks did not fail to deliver, submitting a wild version of the white nationalist Big Lie 2.0 conspiracy into the congressional record. “The Democrats’ plan for 2024 is to change the electorate. If they cannot persuade the American people to want their Marxist policies for America, just import voters,” Mitchell said, parroting ideas that just a decade ago were largely confined to neo-Nazi forums.
The not-so-subtle bigotry of Mitchell’s organized assault on American democracy was reported on by the Times ahead of the hearing. They characterized the call organized by Mitchell:
“One woman, a local party chair from Georgia, recommended scouring school enrollment figures to find neighborhoods with large numbers of migrants. Another, Darlene Hennessy, an activist from the Detroit area, recommended hanging up signs in ‘ethnic’ neighborhoods warning people not to vote if they were not eligible. She also suggested searching voter rolls for certain types of surnames. ‘I think it’s unfortunate, but sometimes the only way you can find out is to look for ethnic names,’ Ms. Hennessy said.”
Mitchell’s coalition is also having a week of action next week to continue to push the Big Lie 2.0, empowering local radicals to take action around this baseless and bigoted fiction. But she is far from the only operator outside of the official GOP campaigns pushing the lie. The Times also recently did an in-depth report of the replacement theory operations from the Heritage Foundation, which we have repeatedly documented as well. They write:
“Few groups have done more to propel the false, but snowballing, theory that noncitizens are preparing to vote in droves in November, threatening the integrity of the election.”
The efforts by the Trump campaign, Congressional Republicans, Mitchell, and Heritage are not separate from the other voter intimidation and suppression efforts that we have been highlighting over the past several months, like that of the raid from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. All of which powers right wing radicals or grifters to take it upon themselves to combat the conspiratorial threat, their political leaders have assured them is real. And we tragically know all too well the deadly downstream consequences of that fact.
Whether it’s lies about noncitizens voting or conspiracy theories about importing voters, the American right is encasing a significant segment of the American public in a 360-degree surround sound amplification of the replacement theory. They are using fears and lies about immigrants to normalize an assault on American democracy. Plan A is to use the lies to justify voter suppression and intimidation tactics ahead of the election. Plan B, if they lose, is to use the nativist lies to mobilize a segment of the MAGA base to wage another violent assault to overturn winning results.
This is not a problem we can afford to ignore. The nativist election denial that is the Big Lie 2.0 courts more political violence like we saw on Jan. 6, is actively being used as a means to suppress the vote of U.S. citizens, and is building towards authoritarianism. This is their plan and we must directly confront it.
