Right wingers make up fake rules, then accuse us of violating them
They count on Americans not to know the difference. Point it out
Imagine someone claiming the Superbowl is a scam because only top-ranked football teams are allowed to play. Sports page reporters would treat that claim as an absurdity and point out the deception. Now let’s imagine that story were being reported by another journalist who knew nothing about football, its traditions or rules and never bothered to learn more. What would they do? They would do the same thing mediocre journalists always do when get out of their depth in a specialized subject about which scam artists are making bogus claims. They would “report both sides,” granting equal time and credulity to rational claims and ridiculous ones. And the result would be a win for Superbowl disinformation.
Steve Bannon recently leveraged this unthinking both-side-ism to deflect from the . contempt of congress charges he now faces, and will probably lose. Bannon’s suit demands that his accusers release all legal documents from the case to the public. (He pinky-swears that he’ll release his side’s too. And why wouldn’t we trust him?)
If you know anything about legal disclosure, you will know it has never, ever worked this way. You would know that nobody broadcasts disclosure documents to the general public because it would prejudice the pool of potential jurors and thereby prevent the case from being properly litigated, which is exactly what Bannon wants. He’s just banking on the likelyhood that we don’t to gain sympathy he hasn’t earned, scam money he doesn’t deserve and soil an information ecosystem he’s fouled too much already.
Bannon’s imaginary win under make-believe will not improve his legal prospects at all, but he hopes it will cause a lot of not-very-bright people to become indignant at the make-believe injustice he has not suffered.
That will probably happen.
It will probably happen because right-wing disinformation peddlers always leveraged people’s ignorance to push claims that hard evidence and professional best practices do not support. Creationists have pretended for years that scientific theories are just dressed-up conjectures and scientific questions are settled by whoever gives the best performance in public debates. Second Amendment absolutists have worked nonstop for decades to erase any distinction between a random assortment of untrained, gun-owning strangers and what the founders meant by a “well-regulated militia.” And lately, right wingers have managed to redefine “rights” to mean…well, just about whatever they feel like doing at the moment.
Here’s how someone like Steve Bannon works the fake rulebook scam:
They focus on some arcane procedure, like legal disclosure, that not many people understand.
They ignore the very sensible rules that allow the process to exist, and instead insist that the other side has violated some other, imaginary set of rules.
They use this imaginary violation of nonexistent rules to claim that the other side has rigged the outcome against them.
How to combat the phony rulebook scam
Regular journalists don’t know how to handle this scam, but we don’t need to wait for them to get a clue. This is a case where we do need to explain—not why the disinformation peddler is wrong, (remember: never play defense!) but how the con game they’re operating actually works.
By refusing to engage the lie while pointing out the gimmick behind it, you diminish its power, just as revealing a magician’s hidden moves renders their effects far less magical. So the next time you see a right wing con operator like Bannon working this trick, explain how this individual is working the fake rulebook scam.