Are Americans really this stupid?
OK, OK, I guess we are.
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Anti anti-fascists scanning the ether for signs of dissent, disloyalty, and defeatism.
Occasional thoughts about political life in 21st century America
Anti anti-fascists scanning the ether for signs of dissent, disloyalty, and defeatism.
Premature Anti-Fascist
Returning to America from the Spanish Civil War, veterans of the International Brigades who fought against Franco in the republican cause were said to have been branded as Premature Anti-Fascists. That is, they opposed fascism before World War II, before everyone was supposed to oppose fascism, and therefore were likely to be communist subversives, presumptively disloyal because they fought the fascists too soon. Whether the US government actually used the term itself is now contested by anti-communist historians (although it would be difficult to deny the actual persecution of communists and dissidents in 20th century America). I use it for the name of my blog because, in my darker moments, I worry about the proto-fascist tendencies I see at work in America and because, whether the US government or the Brigadists themselves invented the term, it seems to me a bittersweet badge of honor. For more on the Lincolns, see Peter Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
What Price Empire?
PAF recommends for News:
PAF's Book List: Some Recommendations
- Walter Hixson, The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and US Foreign Policy
- James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the disastrous rise of American Power
- James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in post-Vietnam America
- H. Bruce Franklin, MIA: Mythmaking in America
- Jerry Lembke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam
- Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream
- Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism
- David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
- Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire
- Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow
- Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris
- Thomas Ricks, Fiasco
- Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis
- Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone
- Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs
- Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God
- Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack
- Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion
- Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America
Blog Archive
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2007
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June
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- anti-imperial sentiments
- Just because
- Drawdown is not withdrawal, it's the strategy for ...
- More on pre-war intelligence
- Thoughts on Kevorkian
- Is Cheney the font of all Evil?
- Permanent Bases would be Illegal
- Sayonara Scooter
- Global Military Supremacy ain't cheap
- Defending Freedom
- The Pentagon doesn't want you to see this
- Targeting Professors
- "Cosmic Top Secret"
- When is an occupation not an occupation?
- The Israel Lobby
- Franklin's challenge
- What every American should know
- And now for something completely different
- Postcard from PAF
- ma·lev·o·lent
- Another Postcard from PAF
- Another tragic legacy of the Iraq War
- If Chemical Ali is a war criminal
- JFC
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June
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2 comments:
I would love to see as part of the demographics they ask if the person is a regular fauxnews viewer and what percentage of them answer incorrectly.
I't's a bit dated now, but we do have some hard evidence on this:
"Standing out in the analysis are Fox and NPR/PBS--but for opposite reasons. Fox was the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions. NPR/PBS are notable because their viewers and listeners consistently held fewer misperceptions than respondents who obtained their information from other news sources.
The table below shows this clearly. Listed are the breakouts of the sample according to the frequency of the three key misperceptions (i.e. the beliefs that evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found, that WMD have been found in Iraq and that world public opinion approved of the US going to war with Iraq) and their primary news source. Fox News watchers were most likely to hold misperceptions—and were more than twice as likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three."
Here's the URL for the full report:
http://65.109.167.118/pipa/pdf/oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf
The part suggesting that FOX viewers are more likely than the rest of us to believe the administration's bullshit about Iraq starts on p. 14.
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