Greece, this week (Der Spiegel)
Yesterday, while browsing for books at Amazon, I came across the title of Ann Coulter’s newest book: Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.
I have long been a student of propaganda, but reading an Ann Coulter book is farther than I’ll go. Besides, ideologues like Coulter are easy to model because their ideologies are always so black and white, so cut and dried, and so predictable. Look at what the title alone tells us. The authoritarian right-wing mind demonizes what it fears, literally. And it always, always sees a threat.
But insofar as I understand the point Coulter is trying to make from reading a few reviews, she’s actually right — if you’re on the side of authority, the status quo, and ruling elites who won’t allow justice without a fight. As Voltaire said, “The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” Voltaire died in 1778 and so did not witness the French revolution, but he understood what the revolution was about. Coulter sees in the French revolution the roots of today’s “liberal mob.” What kind of knots of revisionism she ties herself in to make the American revolution sacred and the French revolution evil must be a thrilling and instructive piece of propaganda production, but I’m still not going to read the book.
In any case, Coulter reveals the deepest fears of the authoritarians who have now nearly completed their takeover of the American democracy. Having bought and captured the institutions of the American democracy, now all they have to fear is the mob.
I’m afraid they’re right.
Selma, Alabama, 1965
Berlin, 1989
Tianenmen Square, 1989
Poland, 1980
White Night, San Francisco, 1979
India, 1931
Kent State, 1970
Kent State
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