The Big Lie has so captured our attention that we even refer to it in Capital Letters and precede it with a definite article. It is the Big Lie. We all know what a lie is: “A false statement intended to deceive.” And we all know what the truth is: “The true or actual state of a matter.” The true (and actual) state of the 2020 election is that Joe Biden won the popular vote and won the Electoral College. trump claims the opposite — that there was wide-spread fraud and that he actually won the popular vote and the Electoral College vote.
None of what trump claims is true. Hence, it is referred to as a lie — and not just any lie, it is the Big Lie.
But is it actually a lie? Is he making a false statement intended to deceive? I claim it is something else — in fact, it is something worse (and perhaps more deranged). And I don’t mean he isn’t lying in the sense of George Costanza — “It isn’t a lie if you believe it.” I don’t think trump believes the Big Lie — but I also don’t think he disbelieves the Big Lie. Rather, he is attempting to make something philosophers and linguists refer to as a “performative utterance.”
A performative utterance is a statement that is neither true nor false, but rather one that actually causes something to be. An example is “this meeting is adjourned.” The meeting becomes adjourned because of the statement. As a standalone statement, it is neither true nor false. Or maybe it's both. Before the statement, the meeting was not adjourned. After the statement, it was adjourned. The statement by its very nature, changes reality, it changes the meeting from being not adjourned, to being adjourned.
Or suppose you pick up a new to you dog from the animal shelter. When you say “Your name is Spot,” the dog’s name is Spot. You can probably think of many other examples.
Now, to us, the Big Lie is, of course, absurd and it is contrary to the true and actual state of the 2020 election. But to trump and to his followers, it was performative. For them, reality changed simply because of his statement. Because he said so, he went from decisively losing the election to being cheated out of it by massive voter fraud.
Performative utterance is a concept I only recently learned about, but it suddenly crystallized some things for me. For a long time I have been trying to wrap my head around trump’s constant spewing of BS. There has always been something about some of his statements that struck me as being different from an actual lie (though he does a lot of that too). He isn’t (necessarily) trying to deceive — he is trying to make things so simply by saying they are so. And he by and large succeeds, at least in the “minds” of his followers.
That trump’s statements can be performative is one reason it is so difficult to convince republicans that the Big Lie is not true. We can present clear evidence that it is not true. But it is impossible to use truth to refute the Big Lie (and many many other untrue things they believe), because it isn’t a lie. The difficulty isn’t that these people are particularly stupid, or gullible, or brainwashed (though some are, but this is a too easy brush to paint the right wing with). The difficulty is that these people actually live in a different reality — one created by trump, one created by his very words. A lie can be refuted — reality is much harder to refute.
trump makes these (attempted) performative statements out of some combination of psychopathy and narcissism — but mostly because it has worked for him all of his life. It is surely working for him now. Not with us, but certainly with 70 million voters. It has worked well enough that residents of some states are talking about secession. He may not be able to identify what he does as “performative,” but he is a master at making such statements. His performative success is one reason for his messianic complex (and why his followers buy into it): he can create reality.
I wish I could conclude this diary with some way of countering trump’s performative statements. I don’t have an immediate antidote, but, again, performative utterance is a new concept to me. However, being able to name something is one step towards finding an actual solution. There may be one thing. Thinking about performative statements does give me some hope that trump is anomaly and won’t have any successors with anywhere near the same control over his followers. We worry about the “next trump,” one that is as evil as trump, but who is not as inept. But trump isn’t inept at all at the one thing that has made him successful — performative statements. As far as I can tell, neither desantis nor any of the others, despite being evil and (perhaps) clever, have the power of performative utterance. I hope I am right.