The devil, the father of lies, was defeated yesterday when America became great again

At noon local time on January 20 2021, America became great again. The moment that Donald Trump flew into virtual exile on his island off the coast of Florida and Joe Biden took the oath as his successor to the Presidency on the steps of the Capitol, is when the United States taught a huge moral lesson to the world. America demonstrated as dramatically as possible that even in the most extreme circumstances, it was possible to depose an authoritarian government, held up by a tissue of lies, by democratic means, lawfully and without violence.

Given the option to do so, the compass needle of human nature gravitated towards democracy and away from its opposite, tyranny. This is true even of Donald Trump's vast army of supporters, whose grievance was that victory in a democratic election had been denied them by fraud. They were not against democracy as such; they were not opting to live under a tyranny but what they thought was the opposite. The flaw in their case, of course, is that it was based on lies. Not their own lies – they believed the lies they had been fed. And the best hope for America now is that the compass needle of human nature will naturally swing back towards the truth – an instinct for truth.

Trump's basic tactic for holding on to power was to undermine faith in the democratic process by insisting it had been deliberately and massively corrupted. To achieve this he had first to neutralise faith in those sources of information which might contradict his core proposition, namely the mainstream media. They had to be branded as purveyors of fake news.

This is a close parallel to the techniques used by religious cults. Potential recruits, when first targeted, are sceptical towards the cult's self-narrative and the story of its origins and beliefs. It sounds implausible, contrary to the rational worldview and beliefs they acquired from school or college, from their parents, siblings and peer groups.

The cult has to substitute a new normal, by undermining the belief structures that upheld the old one. One technique is to sever all relationships with those still operating within the old normal, who are branded not just as wrong and unenlightened but also – a key factor here – as immoral. In the case of cults this leads to bitter rifts within families. Such domestic rifts have also happened among Trump supporters, and – likely to be increasingly significant in the future – within the Republican Party itself, where there are now two realities, two claims to normality, fighting for dominance.

Paranoia is usually thought of as a mental illness, but with the right tricks and techniques, as horrifically described in Orwell's 1984, it can be induced in otherwise perfectly sane people. They can be made to believe the opposite of the truth. Along with induced paranoia goes conspiracy theory syndrome, a belief that what appears to be reality is being manipulated for dark ends by unseen forces. This is the common mind set of cult members once they have been indoctrinated. Again it is similar to mental illness like schizophrenia, but again it can be induced in usually sane people.

This makes the recovery of normal reality difficult and tortuous. Entering a cult is like going through a one-way trap door which closes behind you, blocking your way back. The same will apply to those Trump supporters who have been through the trap-door he made for them, where everything contrary to the Trumpian belief system is automatically dismissed as “fake news”. He used the expression in public nearly 2,000 times, it has been calculated, and at least once a day during his term in office. This is part of the playbook followed by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels: if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one; and repeat it as often as possible. Eventually the “big lie” becomes plausible, and those who deny it are themselves liars.

When the New York Times reported that he had paid only $750 in tax, he responded: “It’s fake news. It’s totally fake news. Made up. Fake. We went through the same stories. You could have asked me the same questions four years ago. I had to litigate this and talk about it. Totally fake news. No.”

Which leads perfectly sane people to tweet things in response like this typical example: “Can't wait for the despicable anti-news propaganda machines – NYT, WaPo, CNN, MCNBS and all the rest – to meet their end, drowning with all their sickening anti-truth ‘journalists’ in the swamp they have been defending to their last breath.’

So attempts by journalists to hold the President to account for his unusual and possibly illegal tax arrangements are countered not by verifiable evidence from reputable sources, but by attacking the messenger as a “despicable anti-news propaganda machine”. Thus voters who might not want to support a President who had only paid $750 tax are deceived and reassured.

And then the same technique was used for the election itself. Those purveying the “fake news” that the election was not rigged but fair are not just “NYT, WaPo, CNN, MCNBS and all the rest” but most of the American political establishment including the FBI, the Attorney General, and a substantial section of the Republican Party, not to mention a string of federal judges and the US Supreme Court itself. They are all liars too?

So what happened in Washington on January 20 was a victory for all those, American or not, who belief truth is possible and that it matters. Organised lying on issues of importance, on the other hand, has been called the work of the devil. “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44 (NIV).