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The Stories Inciting Panic, Fear, and Violence Across the Nation
Brad and Dan begin with insight from Prof. Jason Stanley: “History shows that propaganda can make a dominant group mad with panic and fear about the threat of a small minority subjugating them, supposedly by seizing the institutions and doing things to their children.”
They use this idea to explore the myths that are inciting panic and fear in White Americans, including White Christian nationalists, across the nation: the Big Lie, the propaganda against Critical Race Theory, the GOP's Myth of the Real American, and so on.
The conclusion: If you tell the story a certain way, it becomes history. It becomes a factual record of the past in the minds of the people who tell the story over and over again.
The danger: when history becomes open to distortion by the will to power, it opens the door for authoritarian leaders to create the story of the past--and the projection of the future--in dangerous ways.
They finish by discussing the DOJ's approach to protecting LGBTQ+ students in a recent court case.
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