The New Big Lie
Trump is alleging a coordinated left-wing campaign to justify an authoritarian transition
In 2020, Donald Trump propagated the lie that the election was stolen from him. This big lie -- a gross falsification of reality for propaganda purposes -- animated his campaign to try to overturn a free and fair election, culminating in the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021. Now, Trump is propagating a second big lie.
The second big lie is this: left-wing groups are orchestrating a campaign of violence and intimidation to try to silence their opponents and overthrow the United States government. In a September 25 executive order, Trump listed the 2022 assassination plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the two assassination attempts against him, the killing of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk as the “culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence.”
Like most propaganda lies, there is a kernel of truth here: according to researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2025 is the first time in over 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumbered those from the far right. The decline of right-wing violence, CSIS wrote, can likely be explained by Trump’s 2024 election: “At least some extremists do not feel the need to act violently if their concerns are being addressed.” However, there is no evidence that these attacks are part of a coordinated campaign. Many of the perpetrators of left-wing violence seem to have been extremely online loners with incoherent ideas, rather than motivated by the Democratic Party, whose top officials denounce political violence against conservatives.
Trump’s reading of recent political violence is selective. Left out of this executive order were threats and acts of violence against politicians from the Democratic Party and their families, like the 2020 kidnapping plot of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the 2022 attack on the husband of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the 2024 arson of the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the 2025 shooting of two Minnesota legislators. Trump has ignored and even ridiculed these incidents: he mocked Pelosi’s husband in 2024 and didn’t lower the flags to half-mast for the victims of the Minnesota shooting.
Trump’s new big lie is justifying a broader crackdown on left-wing groups. The September 25 executive order directs law enforcement to “disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society.” This order followed a September 22 order that designated antifa -- a left-wing group with no official membership or headquarters -- as a domestic terrorist organization, which has no force of law.
However, the crackdown against left-leaning groups, who often advocate for pro-democracy causes like expanding voting rights, is real. The New York Times reported on September 25 that “a senior Justice Department official has instructed more than a half dozen U.S. attorney’s offices to draft plans to investigate a group funded by George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor whom President Trump has demanded be thrown in jail.” The Justice Department’s prosecution of former FBI director James Comey demonstrates that the administration is determined to go after Trump’s perceived enemies, no matter how thin the charges are.
On his first day of his second term in office, Trump unconditionally pardoned 1,500 rioters arrested or convicted in connection with the January 6 riots, the most coordinated and largest scale incident of political violence in modern U.S. history. Now, he is using a highly selective reading of political violence to justify a broader authoritarian crackdown. On September 27, Trump said he is sending troops to Portland, Oregon, part of his campaign of using the military to patrol the streets of majority Democratic cities like Memphis, Los Angeles, and Washington. Past presidents have broken out of cycles of political violence by calling for unity; Trump has no interest in this playbook. Instead, he is using every instance of political violence perpetrated by delusional loners to accelerate an authoritarian consolidation of power.
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