Your observation is correct.
Through out history there have been examples of sub-sets in society that have been labeled as dangerous to the common good and these have become convenient scape goats.
There is a pattern to all of this:
1.) There is a group that seeks power. Raw, naked, unbridled power. Let’s call them would be tyrants.
2.) The tyrants cloak themselves and hide their lust for power, under the guise of higher motivations. They give themselves noble aspirations in the public arena.
3.) The noble aspirations hide their true goal->the quest for power (pick one or more to sell to the public): Nationalism, security, morality, religiosity, family values, right vs. wrong.
4.) Unite the masses behind the noble sounding banner.
5.) Nothing unites the masses like a scape goat who is portrayed as a threat to the common good and the sought after values.
6.) Portray the scape goat as a threat to the commonly accepted values espoused by the tyrants ( historically jews, or blacks, more recently liberals, feminists,
gays or in some parts of the world Sunni’s, Shiites, Muslims vs. Christians, etc. etc)
7.) Create a false climate of fear and over blown, manufactured threat to the good of the society or the nation or the way of life of a group of people.
8.) Dehumanize the scape goats: Use third person abstract terms: the radical left, or
“ the radical homosexual agenda.”
9.) Make sure that when the scape goated group cries out for fairness that you depict that act of self defense and natural protection and out-rage at blatant injustice, as more proof of the scape goats “radical agenda” and threat to society and the nation.
10.) Utilize all of the power of the persuasive media at your disposal to constantly harangue about the forth coming threat from the so called “radical” object of your hate,
( right wing radio, conservative news outlets both print and television, create think tanks, promote radical right wing pro-tyrant celebrities who go on speaking tours, publish articles and books).
11.) Depict the scape goat group as immoral.
12.) Depict the scape goat group as disease ridden. (Recall how in Mein Kampf would be tyrant Adolph Hitler was fixated on Jews and syphilis? Recall how some groups claim that the object of their scorn or hate are “unclean”?)
13.) Attribute conspiracies and a behind the scenes power to the group that they don’t actually possess. Remember the “Jews run the world,” and “Jews run all of the banks”
and the “Jews caused us to lose WWI and undermined the father land and forced us to sign an unfavorable treaty at Versailles”? Now, recall some members of the radical right
that got air time after the Foley scandal and claimed that it was the work of the homosexual mafia? Recall the more recent radio broadcasts by a certain right wing hate monger who claimed that the radical homosexual agenda is the single most greatest threat to our country at this time, November 2006?
14.) Count on the masses as being too busy, too over worked, too preoccupied with their own lives, families and their own well being, to have the time, interest, or education to delve into your rhetoric in depth. Good people can be swayed by evil people with clever sound bites. Howe else did pre-world war two Germans fall for the promises and hate speech of the Nazi regime? How else would devoutly religious, to the point of superstition, Russian working people and peasants accept the rule of a atheistic totalitarian leaders? How else would a good and basically fair nation of diverse immigrants accept with-out question the post civil war, post-emancipation proclamation,
concept of racial segregation and miscegenation laws?
15.) Portray the scape goats as a threat to the innocent and “helpless”: women and children. The leering Jew as a threat to Aryan women? The hyper-sexual black male as a threat to white women? Conflating gays with pedophiles, ex. The Mark Foley nightmare, where radical right wing tyrants continuously misinformed people on TV that Foley was a threat to pages because he was gay. As if, had Foley been hitting on 16 year old female pages THAT would have been acceptable? Of course not.
16.) Enlist the power of big organizations to support you. The church is always a good one, since most Americans are church goers, you have a ready made once a week bully pulpit.
17.) Rely on fake science and junk science reported by advocates and often times paid, supporters of the would be tyrants. For example: There is no global warming.
Gays are not suitable to raise children.
18.) Rely on non-reasoned sources that cannot be debated because they are as they are. Usually the “good book.” The big three all have one, the Torah, the Quaran and the New Testament.
19.) Quote the Good Book selectively. Leave out the parts in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that support stoning divorced couples who remarry or slavery.
20.) Mobilize fake out rage on a mass level in protest of the allegedly up coming
revolution by the feared and hated group at interest. Nuremberg rallies. Anti-choice rallies. Anti-fairness to gay rallies.
21.) Use 1-20 to distract the masses from real and dire issues: the assault on the middle class, the lack of affordable health insurance for families, the collapsing polar ice caps, the mess in Iraq, the development of nukes by N. Korea and Iran, fail to analyze why the nuclear family and most marriages are in trouble from with-in (divorce) and not from gays. In fact, blame “those gays” for the problems of today’s families.
...............
http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/christian_groups_seek_wal_mart_boycott/Conservative Christian organizations are contacting supporters to urge a Thanksgiving weekend boycott of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. because the company is paying a commission to a small gay organization for sending buyers its way
..............
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/is-a-gay-republican-purge_b_31681.htmlOn October 9, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wrote in FRC's newsletter : "Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and or staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have to wonder." Perkins continued: "Does the
party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?" Though a portrait of openly gay former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl appeared beside Perkins's missive, Perkins stopped just short of calling for a purge of gay GOP staffers.
..........................
http://tellthechildrenthetruth.com/blog/2006/02/13/anti-semitic-cartoons-under-hitlers-third-reich/
Throughout recorded history, the differences that Jewish people have had with their non-Jewish neighbors has led to difficult, and unfortunately, separate lives. Because of an imposed segregation from their non-Jewish neighbors, the Jews became the victims of suspicion, intolerance, and discrimination. Hatreds intensified inaccurate and distorted rhetoric, and produced vicious strains of anti-Semitism whose origins have been traced back to the ancient world.
.....................
http://www.rotten.com/library/imagery/propaganda/racist-propaganda/
After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. arrested thousands of ethnic Japanese, seized their property and placed them in internment camps. Although U.S. history was rife with racism of every stripe, the outpouring of hate toward the Japanese after the Pearl Harbor was unique for its sudden onset and its official sanction.
............
Hatred and bigotry are corrosive. They seep in through the cracks and fissures of society where there is poverty and affluence, because there is something either to fear or protect.
It seeps in where there is ignorance and fear, where there is moral certitude and over blown self-righteousness.
It seeps in where there judgmentalism and a sense of superiority, where narrow mindedness and discrimination close off the mind and heart to the words of the “other.”
It is a truly divisive and pernicious state for a nation.
It is not accepting it is rejecting.
It is not fair it is selfish.
It is not compassionate it is cruel.
It is not supportive it is destructive.
It is not kind it is callous.
It begins with small attacks and skirmishes and eventually, if left unchecked, blossoms into full blown virulent hatred. Witch hunts. Congressional investigations (McCarthyism). Mob action ( lynchings, krystal nacht). Dehumanization of one part of society occurs when your fellow man is now seen as an enemy, a liar, and a subversive threat to your way of life.
Victims of hatred are made to feel ashamed, ostracized and rights are curtailed, removed or denied.
Woe be to a society that gives way to such ideas and attitudes. History has not treated them kindly.
Woe be to a group that has experienced the collective hatred of bigotry and discrimination and who now hides behind convenient excuses from select readings of from religious tomes and who now fail to step up and fight for the human rights of the new scape goats.
Those who foolishly seek power by riding the back of a tiger often end up inside.
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