The “Stab-In-The-Back Myth” was an antisemitic conspiracy theory in Germany Post-World War I. The theory was that Germany didn’t lose the war from the battlefield, but rather by the treachery of its own citizens by specifically targeting Jewish citizens. This refusal to accept the loss of the war transformed into the “Stab-In-The-Back” myth pursued by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. The myth gained a ginormous following and backing, that it affected German politics, and heavily influenced German society for years to come. The myth draws a parallel to another that recently took place in American politics, called “Stop the Steal”. Of course, not to make any comparisons of Hitler to former President Trump, but the “Stab-in-The-Back ” conspiracy fits the same dynamic of “Stop the Steal”. “Stop the Steal” was an effort made by Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the Presidential 2020 Election results. Proven by CNN Politics, He had lost the election and popular vote to current president Joe Biden (CNN Politics). His denial of the loss is what can be compared to the “Stab-In-The-Back Myth” and is shown in a video from “Sky News”. In the video, his response to the election results were false accusations and claims made by Donald Trump himself, and we will take a look at the significant claims intending to overturn the election, in doubt of the way of the American Democracy.  

“Expert” Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump was the 45th President of the United States. During his campaign and during the 2020 election he made multiple false claims to help birth the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy.  Donald Trump in general has no credentials to say that the election was rigged, and make the claims he did. He has one degree in science of economics which gives him no authority over election expertise or in a position to get the information on the election background. According to election officials, the biggest challenge of the election was denying the false claims being brought up, including Trump. According to this article by USA Today, constant lawsuits and false accusations made the process more difficult than usual (Cox). 

Claim 1: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win.” (0:15)

Trump immediately opens up (after saying this was his update to the American people on how they were protecting the integrity of the 2020 election) with a false claim. Once the election results were verified and finalized, it showed that Joe Biden was in fact the victor of the 2020 Election. In electoral votes, according to CNN’s election results, Joe Biden had 306, while Donald Trump had 232 (CNN Politics).  All votes are technically legal votes, otherwise, they wouldn’t be counted. What he is insinuating is that there were false votes or fraud within the election that was counted against him. Another claim he had relates to the first one, and both can be proven false together. 

Claim 2: “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” (0:19)

By stating these claims, he is saying that there is in fact voter fraud and that there were illegal votes trying to sway the results. This is just not true because election officials have stated and continued throughout the whole process that there was no evidence of voter fraud (Cox). Trump filed lawsuits against many states that were considered battleground states in the election, but the lawsuits did not follow through, because there was simply no evidence of fraudulent activity (Cox). As far as illegal votes go, according to a 2014 study by Old Dominican University, it shows that there is very little to no evidence that non-US citizens actually vote in United States elections (Cox). Donald Trump used fear tactics to tear Americans apart, in an already divided country. Donald Trump’s claims only cause more panic, distrust, and fear in American politics at a time when the country needs a strong and stable government.

Claim 3: “The phony polls, fake polls, were created to keep our voters at home…suppression polls” (3:24)

 In this statement, Trump claims that the polls were created to suppress his voters to stop them from exercising their right to vote. The irony of this statement is almost humorous, because the voter suppression that was happening, was happening for people of color, who did not necessarily identify with, or not with voting for trump according to USA Today (Ellis). This means that the real voter suppression of the election couldn’t have benefited just Joe Biden, because you can’t tell who a person would vote for just by what they are wearing or looking at them. So the fact that the voters who were wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, or are citizens from communities of color were the ones turned away, cannot be considered voter suppression of a specific political party (Ellis). That is voter suppression, but not of one political party. It’s voter suppression of a group of people, of the voters themselves. It’s not fueling the Democrats of the election, it’s literally only suppressing voters themselves. According to the same article from USA Today, some voters were told they would have to take off their Black Lives Matter t-shirt to vote or were just turned away in general in Memphis Tennessee (Ellis). These are the real reasons the voters may have been kept at home. To say they were just to one political group is incorrect and false. Voter suppression harms the very foundation of American democracy. Voters being scared and staying home creates a larger disconnect between Americans and our politicians. Instead of our government officials truly representing the entire country, they only represent the people who felt comfortable enough to vote.

Claim 4: “We were winning in all key locations, then our numbers miraculously started whittling away.” (4:47)

Donald Trump makes this claim with no evidence and states that his sudden number of votes in key areas were suddenly going away. He is referring to the idea that voter fraud was committed in key locations to make a significant number of votes go to his opponent. Again, this has to do with mail-in ballots and how more voters voting for Joe Biden did so by mail. These statistics are proven by an article called “Democrats Took A Risk to Push Mail-In Voting” by The Guardian. Democrats started to increase their votes in counties that had more people voting by mail. This is why in key locations once the mail-in votes were counted, more were faced in Joe Biden’s direction (Levine). Another problem with this claim is that he intends to paint the picture that his numbers started to disappear. In elections, votes get counted over time, and the more votes counted, the numbers started to increase for Joe Biden. Trump never lost any votes, he just started losing to Biden. These numbers are proven by CNN (CNN Politics). The reason the votes started to increase for Joe Biden as the election counting went on, is again because more people who voted for Biden utilized mail-in ballots. So it is already expected that the numbers for him would have gone up as the election continued anyways. Especially because Trump was already telling his voters and supporters to not use mail-in ballots according to USA Today (Cox). Therefore more people who voted for Trump did so in person, and more people who voted for Biden did so by ballots. So logically, once the mail-in ballots were counted, Biden’s numbers started to go up, proven by the same article by The Guardian (Chang). 

Conclusion

The video by “Sky News” reporting Donald Trump’s speech about his “Stop The Steal” Conspiracy in response to the election results implies fraudulent activity, which is completely false. His claims lacked evidence and had no proof followed by any either. It’s important to fact-check not only his claims this one time but also any person making significant claims. Even political leaders, because although it may seem obvious what is a joke to one person, can be taken completely literally by another. This is what can fuel conspiracy theories and myths like “Stop the Steal” to be taken to actual consequential levels. Donald Trump’s claims are breaking the very foundation of our democracy, by inciting more panic, fear, and distrust into American politics. In the current age of “fake news” and other conspiracy theories having a president blur the lines between facts and lies only harms American citizens.

Featured image taken from video

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oLFDfEAXa0