How Did So Many Republicans End Up Believing Falsehoods About Obama?

[Emit]

Run time: 03:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP0AY4PNVlg   Posted on YouTube: March 30, 2010 By YouTube Member: mediamatters4america Views on YouTube: 312   Posted on DU: March 30, 2010 By DU Member: Emit Views on DU: 3258

 
Media Matters shows us how we got to the results of the recent poll that showed many Americans believe the president is a Muslim/socialist/Nazi etc.

http://mediamatters.org/

[midnight]

1. That's their job, and they get paid to do this.

[doc03]

2. Just got home and was listening to Glenn Beck for a couple

minutes on the radio. You know according to BecKKK Obama put a racist tax in the HCR bill, the tanning bed tax directly targets white people. Here I was thinking the tax was targeting Rep.Boner.

[Cosmocat]

5. that was cute ...

leave it to the propogandists to make the tanning bed tax about race, and nice quip about Boehner ...

[perdita9]

16. Senator Man Tan himself!

Yeah, I don't think too much of people in Ohio today. I can't believe a rational person would elect someone like John Boehner into office.

[doc03]

24. Believe me Ohio has plenty of irrational

people to go around. I have a old high school buddy that lives up in his District, he was always a Republican, but since Obama he has turned into as Teabagger nut job. His brother also lives in that area and is running for Charlie Wilson's seat (District 6) in the House, he has always been the worst kind of racist I have ever known, he is the worst of the two and the "N" word is just common everyday vocabulary to him. I wouldn't vote for the guy for any kind of government position. I could tell you some stories about that one that would shock you, I sure hope he doesn't win the primary. That would put me in an awkward position if it looked like he could win since I have known his family all my life. Needless to say I have as little contact with them as possible anymore.

[szatmar666]

19. that tax if anything is going to protect their white ass

tanning beds are a well known cause of skin cancer if used excessively which is exactly what a tax is designed to curb.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Because he looks "different than they do" (fear!)...and because they want to. (belief system)

[demwing]

30. That's my father's view. it's all about how Obama "looks"

Q. "Dad, why do you think Obama is a crook?"
A. "Well, just look at him!"

Q. "Dad, why do you think Obama is a Muslim?"
A. "Well, just look at him!"

Q. "Dad, why do you think Obama is a socialist?"
A. "Well, just look at him!"

Q. "Dad, why do you think Obama hates America?"
A. "Well, just look at him!"

Q. "Demwing, why do you think your father is a racist?"
A. "Well, just listen to him!"

[unpossibles]

4. it's been painfully obvious for decades

Step one: get people to distrust information. Remember right before FOX news started and right before then when Rush started his whole "liberal media" meme? He and others like him were laying the groundwork for FOX, getting people to distrust the media so that FOX could lay claim to being the only "fair and balanced" source of information. Furthermore, I've heard them lambasting universities and public schools under a variety of reasons: too secular, liberal brainwashing, etc. This works toward the same goal: getting people to not trust information, and also set up the climate for wedge issues like ID.

Replace information sources with propaganda. Once people don't believe the "experts" (scientists, teachers, professors, news) then they are an empty vessel to fill with their propaganda nonsense. And to most of us it's obviously nonsense, but to those who have forsworn other sources of info, then it makes perfect sense, and is repeated so often that "everybody knows it."

The other side benefit of this marketing strategy - which is what it is, a creative way to sell bullshit - is that it makes our political opponents difficult if not impossible to sway and convince that they have been fooled into believing a lie. I've tried with a variety of people, and when I've tried to point to relatively objective sources, statistics, and other things which debunk the right's idiotic claims, it's met with anger and disbelief. They've been told that all of those sources I cite are biased, flawed, etc., so why should they listen to them? They've been told that there are always two sides to every story (which is not necessarily untrue) and that each should be given equal credence, except that they never give equal consideration to the many sources which show that they're wrong.

It's frustrating as hell, honestly. You can't even point this out to people without them getting defensive and angry, even if you try to do so in a way that is not inflammatory.

[veganlush]

6. excellent..n/t

[A wise Man]

10. What's amazing is....

all of this is coming from fox noise,rush limp balls,sorry ass Palin,Michelle BARK loud and the most ignorant of our society that let these lies infiltrate their small small brains. Under the bush administration many of these talking points would be claimed as TREASONOUS to the USA...and many of them would be jailed. Why isn't Sara Palin in jail for inciting people to riot...and why isn't Beck and limpballs jailed for hate speech??????? Double standards for this country..."mmmmmmmm".

[unpossibles]

12. I don't want them jailed - if anything it would make them martyrs

and justify their paranoid delusions. But I also don't think there should be no consequences, such as Rush/FOX losing a license or being fined, or Palin called out on her hatespeech.

[florida08]

13. sounds an awful lot

like communism. With Fox news and Gop as the state. Tokoyo Rose comes to mind.

[unpossibles]

15. I think "totalitarianism" works better than "communism"

mainly because there are already too many people who mistakenly confuse the two.

EDIT: what I mean by "works" is as a definition of what's happening, not as a successful political philosophy.

[florida08]

23. yes

I would agree. I used communism because they're against any raise in minimum wage and unions. They promote profits to only go up as in CEO salaries..etc.

[Martin Eden]

29. Those "empty vessels" have become teabaggers

What those idiots believe ... I was going to say you just can't make that shit up, but that's what it is -- a bunch of made-up shit.

When Dim Son was president I often thought that maybe it all was some wierd and terrible dream and that I'd wake up in the real America where presidents don't get re-selected after lying our country into an illegal war and mismanaging it into a tragic & costly fiasco.

Now, seeing how ludicrous propagandists like Glenn Beck are hugely popular and influential, I see that the nightmare is real with no apparent end in sight.

[izquierdista]

32. When the lie is revealed

They believe the propaganda to the very end. The only thing that wakes them up to reality is when they hear the guns of the Red Army shelling them. Then, when their lives are reduced to digging around in rubble, do they get a clue that they were set up.

[GTurck]

7. It doesn't matter......

what THEY say. It matters how these assertions are dealt with by the media and leading Democrats. If the stupidity wasn't repeated ad infinitum without challenge then we would be seeing a fringe imploding. As it is there is no challenge or support for the President from the grassroots and others who still believe in the Constitution. It would be highly ethical to use whatever means to call them on any of their lies.:kick:

[progressoid]

8. That could easily be extended to

The Reason So Many Republicans End Up Believing Falsehoods About Lots of Things.

[whatsthebuzz]

9. Says it all

A friend of mine watches only FoxNews and proudly says so. She says it's the only real news on TV and that everything else is run by liberals who always bashed GWB but will say nothing bad about Obama. She challenged me to watch only FoxNews for a whole week, and I did. I felt dumber, but I felt sorrow for those who think that it's real news. If I'm talking to this person and say that I like Obama, she tells me to stop smoking weed and watch FoxNews some more! I have told her to watch world news to get a world view of the US (I've been doing that for years), but she refuses, saying it's all liberal-biased. I just laugh. This person is a friend, and political discussion won't get in the way of that.

[CLANG]

11. Don't look at the man behind the curtain!

and drink this Kool-Aid!!

[Action]

21. Started 30 years ago

This started 30 years ago:

Take over the media, take over the government, take over education (ala Texas textbook companies), take over the courts.

You're lucky she is still your friend. I lost my brother because he is a hard core hateful fox news watching rightie. It makes me very sad.

[Turborama]

14. K&R More excellent work by Media Matters

I'd like to know how so many of them have been convinced he's the anti-christ, too.

[xocet]

20. Ask and ye shall receive...data and a link.

"Even more remarkable perhaps, fully 24% of Republicans believe that 'he may be the Anti-Christ' and 22% believe 'he wants the terrorists to win.' "

Here is the link to the relevant Harris Interactive Poll : please see the poll results near the bottom of the linked page.

[Enthusiast]

17. And these claims are not

being adequately challenged by non-Fox segments of the media. While these wild claims about Obama sound absurd to us, Republicans have heard nothing else.

I think your average Tea Party member or Republican would actually be shocked to learn that Obama is a citizen, non-Muslim and capitalist just like they are.

[The Wizard]

22. Most of them aren't capitalists

They're rubes and unwitting dupes who believe people with darker skin are the reason there's no money in the system for them. They live under the false assumption that they will be fabulously wealthy one day and when that day comes they don't want their money going to help the least among us. And it's all under Christ's watchful eye.
Their allegiance to keeping minorities in their place is what prevents them from getting out of their self inflicted mental prisons.

[dybbuk]

18. I think its simply the fact that they aren't very smart

Most of them lack any type of logic or common sense.

[butterfly77]

25. So what if he was Muslim?

is everyone born in this country suppose to be a christian?

I can't wait for the immigration debate,that should be fun.

I can wait to see what tricks they have in their bags for that issue..

[Vermontgrown]

26. Here is our job here On the Du...

Beck is certifiably insane. He is close to suicidal everyday. Limbaugh is A drug addict. That's a fact. A little known fact is that he likes young boys. Why do you think he can't keep a woman?. Savage is a serial killer. Shaun Hannity didn't even graduate from high school. He barely got through graded school. The fact is someone always did his homework. He was a good talker, that's it. O'reilly has killed. His temper has got him so mad at times he's killed people. Should I go on. McCain and Palin are shakin' up as I right this. Should I go on. Give me a show like the insane Beck I'll make those people defend themselves everyday. Should I go on. I think I should.

[certainot]

27. got a slow connect but if they don't give major credit to limbaugh and hannity

it ain't no good.

fox and the RW blogs can't do the uncontested repetition needed to make the absurdities acceptable.

only those 1000 radio stations working together laundering think tank talking points can create the crap that made it into the mainstream and it only works because the blowhards are protected by call screeners and the left collectively ignores this problem

we wouldn't have had bush and we wouldn't be in iraq and we wouldn't have had the economic deregulation or the corporatist supremes if the left had figured this out and had picketed the radio stations that are GOP and teabagger HQs and power centers instead of everywhere else.

it is the party of limbaugh and the sooner the left figured that out the better.

[HuckleB]

28. Kick.

[neobeetle]

31. Just wow.....