The Reactionary, Conservative Right power structure has figured it out -- fear works. They've run the numbers and the numbers don't lie. There appears to be a slight majority of Americans that already are or can be influenced to vote against their own best self interest. The Right is using tactical fear based propaganda employing radio, television, movies, books and music to dramatize and promulgate the danger inherent in the various scapegoats. It does work. An examination of history proves this out. Nazi Germany had Jews, Bolsheviks, Communists, Degenerates (homosexuals and, artists) Poles and Slavs as scapegoats and foils.
Republican Conservative America has Muslims, Socialists, Homosexuals, Women, African Americans, Illegal Aliens, Intellectuals, Progressives and Globalists as scapegoats and foils.
It appears that when a political movement or party cannot or can no longer manifest sufficient popular support based on the tenets of its foundation, it resorts to thuggery, propaganda, and the manipulation of consent.
There is absolutely no tactical difference between what the Nazis did in Weimar Germany and what Conservative Republicans are doing today. The Tea Partiers are, in spirit, the Brown Shirts of today. And they are being used and manipulated as surely as the members of the Sturmabteilung were in the 1920's.
It proved very hard for the average unemployed, underemployed, financially strapped nationalistic, patriotic German to resist the pull of Nazism and the National Socialists.
Jews became the primary scapegoats.
Check-out the links below:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/1920s/Econ20s.htm
