Those People Are Dangerous

In the 1920s and 30s, there was a special propaganda technique used in Germany to make people hate and fear Jews and other minorities. If a Jew committed a crime, the news headline would state, "Jew convicted of theft", or "Jew murders neighbor", or whatever it was. They would often include a very unflattering photo, intended to reinforce racist stereotypes. If questioned (which rarely happened), they could point out that it was a true story, the Jew really did do that crime. But they never published headlines like, "Lutheran man accused of rape", or "Blonde Aryan girl caught shoplifting". The goal was to use this kind of repetition to make people feel that Jews were a class of criminals, responsible for most bad things. It worked pretty well, along with other tactics, and few German gentiles complained much when their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and "deported".

We see something similar here. The news site that proclaims, "Illegal immigrant robs Quickie Mart", or "Transgender athlete beats up on girls" never tells us that "Natural-born citizen shoots 5 people" or "Biological female stabs classmate". They are building a narrative about how the Other is bad and dangerous, even though this isn't supported by statistics. ^@realrkwest



Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash