Scapegoating tactics have familiar odor

It’s no great surprise that the right-fringe* would try to turn an innocuous matter of siting a Muslim community center in Manhattan into the latest National-Freakout-of-the-Month, but it’s a little surprising and embarrassing how successful this non-story was at becoming the Story-We-Couldn’t-Stop-Talking-About.

Creating scary stories about the Other has long been standard fare for the Right, but they’ve certainly been ramping up the rhetoric during the time we’ve had a president more easily Other-ized than usual. The PR dept. has been busy churning out stories of un-American enemies — from Van Jones, to ACORN, to unscrupulous climate scientists, to Muslims establishing a terrorist base at Ground Zero. In every instance, upon closer scrutiny, the factual basis for such stories is proven false, but the controversy succeeds in its desired effect — sowing seeds of fear and doubt into the populace. Always, of course, enabled by mainstream corporate media, which gleefully follows every fake controversy, no matter how unsubstantiated, until it becomes a real controversy.

We’re like a country that keeps falling for the same “pull-my-finger” gag over and over again….

As these scare stories become more familiar and less surprising with each new iteration, they should also be more alarming. Such virulent appeals to prejudice have familiar and disturbing historical parallels.

I don’t often recommend “educational films” made by the US military. But this one — “Don’t Be a Sucker,” from 1947 — is brilliant, and essential viewing for all Americans in 2010. (Only 17 minutes long!) Its purpose was to warn Americans against falling prey to simplistic appeals to prejudice.

Having just defeated fascism in Europe, the US government wanted to warn its citizens how to identify deceptive, proto-fascist propaganda tactics as they might appear in America. The primary strategy consists of dividing the country into various minority groups for purposes of vilification and creating hatred and conflict, separating “Real Americans” from Those People who pose a threat to the Real Americans.

Hmmm… Sound at all familiar?

Many of us are inclined to dismiss the superheated vitriol of Beck, Palin, the Teabaggers, et al., as merely the idiot ravings of fringe fanatics.

But as this lunatic fringe increasingly becomes the mainstream of a re-ascendant Republican Party, we would do well to heed the words of the Hungarian-immigrant-turned-American-citizen in this film who once worked as a professor in Berlin in the 1930s:

[As a professor in Berlin] I heard the same words we have heard today [from a soapbox speaker denouncing various minorities in America]. But I was a fool then. I thought Nazis were crazy people — stupid fanatics.

But unfortunately, it was not so. You see, they knew they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so they split Germany into small groups. They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation.

As citizens of a nation increasingly crippled by prejudice and division, maybe it’s time to stand up and take notice?

I have this recurring fantasy that one day all the common folk duped by the retrograde rhetoric of right-wing demagogues will discover how they’ve been conned, and then take all the anger they had once directed toward Muslims, immigrants, gays, socialists, and other enemies du jour and redirect that anger toward the con-men who appeal to those prejudices to further their own interests. Nobody likes getting conned. Imagine if many among the duped masses came to realize that the people duping them were a much greater threat to their well-being than those they’d been fooled into hating. Hell hath no fury…! (Hey, a fella can dream, right?)

Again, it’s instructive to listen to the words of our film’s wise professor:

We human beings are not born with prejudices. Always they are made for us — made by someone who wants something.

Remember that when you hear this kind of talk. Somebody’s going to get something out of it, and it isn’t going to be you.

Demagogic rhetoric takes hold when people are frightened and insecure, as many Americans are today in this difficult and rapidly shifting economy. An increasing number of Americans seem to be getting “suckered” by (neo)con-men (and women — I’m looking at you Sarah! And you, Ann! And Gretchen, and Michelle …).

I’m surprised that amid the escalating hatefest being fomented by the right-fringe* lately, this video has not already gone viral. Let’s fix that. Let’s make it the talk of the town, the talk of the nation.

I especially encourage everyone to share this instructive film with any  friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers who may be getting suckered by FOX Noise, the Teabaggers, and other demagogues. Perhaps the impeccably patriotic pedigree of this film can get their attention. Don’t let them be suckered.

It’s for their own good. And for the good of us all.

* “Right-fringe”: I’ve decided I will use the term “right-fringe” instead of “right-wing” in my writing so long as what was once considered a lunatic fringe continues to dominate the right wing and Republican Party.