ABSTRACT
The pandemic has brought home that we are not dealing with just one Big Lie, but with many Big Lies—that COVID-19 is not a threat, or even is a hoax, that climate change is similar and that vaccines are dangerous. An open question in the literature is whether, and to what extent, people who repeat these falsehoods really believe them or are using them to just express their partisan loyalties. I argue that these views illustrate a common tendency to flit back and forth between two overly simple models of political conviction. When we are in the grip of one model, we are tempted to think of convictions as beliefs; when we are in the grip of the other, we see convictions as partisan emotions and attachments, and thus the judgments we make is an expression of emotion—the verbal equivalent of wearing certain hats, driving certain kinds of cars and eating certain types of food. After reviewing these different views, I argue for a more pragmatist account of political conviction according to which convictions are commitments to action that reflect our self-identity.
