Right-wing authoritarians are having a rough year. Some are having an even rougher time accepting that their popularity has evaporated — and that their people want fundamental, dramatic change. Put differently, it’s a banner year for right-wing election denial.
Last week, Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, refused to acknowledge that he lost, then fled to the cozy confines of Florida, thanks to the intervention of his right-wing pal and fellow grifter Donald Trump. Trump proclaimed that an election (he surely knew nothing about) was “very strange,” as if that were grounds for refusing to accept the results or justification for allowing the loser to escape the victorious government pursuing serious financial criminal charges. The plot thickened when we learned that a “Brazilian Supreme Court justice had ordered federal police to open a separate probe into possible illegal foreign financing of Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, including alleged ties to U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s donor network,” as Time magazine reported. “Lula’s government had previously accused the Trump Administration of interfering in Brazil’s election, an allegation the U.S. denies.”
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost 25 percent of his support in last week’s elections, plummeting from 68 coalition seats to 53 seats in the Knesset, but still lacked a clear majority. He immediately hollered “Fraud!”
This was a double whammy: racism and election denial. Axios reported that Netanyahu leapt to “discredit the results by claiming there was mass voting fraud in Arab communities.” Beyond trying to discredit opposition parties from forming a government with Arab parties that won 19 seats, he may be up to something far more dangerous: trying to prevent the results from being certified, therefore preventing the new parliament’s seating, where he would be in the minority.
There is zero evidence of fraud, specifically of his claim that a foreign power, Qatar, orchestrated the result by aiding Get Out the Vote efforts in Arab communities. To be clear: The Israeli police said there was no evidence to support Likud’s claims. In addition, “The chairman of Israel’s Central Elections Committee, Justice Noam Sohlberg, reiterated in a video message on Sunday that last week’s national election was ‘conducted properly,’ in a bid to quell claims of widespread voter fraud amid an ongoing investigation into reported allegations of a Qatari or Turkish interference scheme,” the Times of Israel reported.
But “stolen,” as we have learned from Netanyahu’s BFF Trump and his penchant for violent, malicious election denial, is what fascist movements say when they lose in free and fair elections, even those that are run while they are in power (!).
Sure enough, Trump is poised to repeat his own election-denial shenanigans as he awaits a blue wave election that likely will sweep his cult out of power in Congress and in numerous state and local offices.
Trump has tried a variety of transparent, ridiculous gambits, ranging from spurious claims of mass noncitizen voting (rejected over and over again in the days leading up to the election) and a desperate, incoherent fit over a run-of-the-mill ballot “stacking” effort in Alaska (which is neither uncommon, illegal, nor — thanks to a state court ruling and ranked-choice voting — going to confuse any sentient voter who understands the meaning of “incumbent,” the label affixed beside Sen. Dan. Sullivan’s name on the ballot).
Just Security’s election litigation tracker cites that the Justice Department has failed in every single one of its spurious gambits — from trying to intervene in Alaska to trying to disenfranchise 20,000 California voters to threatening local and state officials with criminal prosecution. Ironically, their utter incompetence and the litigation prowess of voting and civil rights groups and state and local officials have only served to reinforce the reliability and security of our decentralized election system. That has not slowed down Trump from making his bizarre claims, but they sound increasingly desperate and unhinged to all but his cult followers.
In recent examples, when authoritarians lose overwhelmingly, they simply haven’t managed to pull off the “stolen” gambit. That happened in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s combination of corruption and economic mismanagement led to a landslide defeat that he was compelled to recognize. Likewise, Serbia’s strongman, Aleksandar Vučić, was crushed by student- and labor-driven opposition under the banner “Serbia or mafia,” fueled by a deadly railway overhang collapse that opened up Pandora’s box of corruption and misrule. He, too, begrudgingly conceded defeat.
That should remind voters, who have mounted a historic early-vote turnout of over 58.6 million votes, that the best antidote for the predictable Trump election-denying temper tantrum is a coast-to-coast landslide that sweeps in races not only in blue districts and states but also in red districts and states Republicans never imagined would be competitive.
Even in the wake of a blue tsunami, Trump will likely keep beating the “stolen” drum. He is frantic about the prospect of a Democratic Congress that would have the will and votes to — among other things — rigorously investigate allegations in the Epstein pedophile files (including rape allegations the legacy media has studiously ignored), blow the whistle on unprecedented graft and corruption, end funds for Trump’s illegal war, and hold his unfit nominees accountable to the greatest extent of the law.
When he does, as we expect, begin ranting and raving, calling for vote-counting to stop, concocting lies about illegal votes, egging on state officials not to certify results, and trying to enlist his battled, defeated party in his antics, the broad pro-democracy movement should be unified and unequivocal. This is loser talk, and any effort to deny the will of the voters is grounds for removal from office and criminal prosecution. Peaceful mass protest and precise, unrelenting independent media coverage of Trump’s election denial will be essential.
The billionaire-owned media will face a make-or-break moment as well. It can call out Trump’s inevitable allegations as lies, make clear that his administration’s court filings are not valid simply because they come from the Justice Department (recent events suggest exactly the opposite), debunk rather than elevate specious claims (the New York Times, reprehensibly, has done the latter in Alaska), and explain the gross constitutional violations Trump and his DOJ flunkies are committing. Treating assaults on the sanctity of free and fair elections as even remotely legitimate would make corporate media party to a second attempted authoritarian coup.
“Stolen” is nothing more than the go-to cry of authoritarian losers trying to cling to power and defeat the will of the voters. Such rhetoric must be treated as nothing short of an unconstitutional attempted coup. It will be up to all elected officials, candidates, responsible journalists, and ordinary Americans to refuse to tolerate a Jan. 6 rerun.
Not to mention the shenanigans pulled by the administration to prevent voters from going to the polls, such as ICE officers patrolling cities. Today will indeed be an IQ test for Americans.
The bloated buffoon’s act is wearing thin. He cries foul while simultaneously trying to rig the election, and he’s too stupid to do that discretely. So the courts are on to him. He got slapped back twice yesterday in the Alaska and California cases. That put a spring in my step as I await today’s blue bloodbath.