Word of the Year: “Big Lie”
Throughout the U.S. and around the world, dictionaries, publications, and linguistic societies are announcing their word-of-the-year choices, from vaccine to NFT to allyship. I have a nomination, too: Big Lie, a two-word phrase that has dominated our national conversation in 2021 in ways both obvious and insidious.
A big lie is a gross distortion of the truth, often used for political propaganda. The Big Lie, capitalized, now has a specific and ominous meaning: former President Donald Trump’s false claim of a “stolen” 2020 election victory. The Big Lie was what spurred hundreds of protestors to storm the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021. It continues to cast a threatening shadow over our democracy.
“Trump’s Big Lie is changing the face of American politics” reads the headline on a September 16, 2021, analysis by CNN’s Stephen Collinson, who cites a poll showing that “tens of millions of Americans were seduced by Trump’s lies about election fraud.”
“In recent history,” wrote Anthony Essaye and Ralph Neas for the Century Foundation on December 1, 2021, “the use of a ‘big lie’ as a propaganda technique is associated with dictatorial regimes — such as the former Soviet Union in the past, and Russia, China, and North Korea today . … But now, Donald Trump and his surrogates have introduced this phenomenon into our democratic system, and it has already…
