By Paul Krugman
Obama is a Kenyan-born Nazi Muslim planning to euthanize seniors while putting them in concentration camps. The Clintons were drug-runners who murdered Vince Foster. Why do people believe this stuff?
Yes, there’s a lavishly funded industry pushing these stories. But Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and all the others wouldn’t succeed without a receptive audience. So what makes that audience so receptive?
Here’s a thought: maybe we can learn something from Bernie Madoff.
How did Madoff pull off his scam? A lot of it probably involved affinity fraud: Madoff’s victims, largely affluent Jews, trusted him in large part because he seemed like one of them.
What I think is going on here, at least partly, is that the peddlers of anti-progressive lies are managing to convince a certain kind of American — white, socially conservative, etc. — that the hate-mongers are people like them; and, even more important, that progressives are Those People, people not like them.
Obama’s skin color makes this easy; but the Clintons faced the same kind of thing. Why? Well, the old line about Clinton being the first black president gets at something: even if Bill Clinton had a regular skin and name, he was obviously comfortable with people who didn’t, which made him one of Them.
And anti-intellectualism is also part of it.
In any case, it’s scary: you’ve got a good segment of the American population that is completely impervious to any kind of evidence, any rational argument. I mean, who collects statistics? People in black helicopters!
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