I carry a heavy skepticism of Gallup polling, but if their finding is true that Americans would sooner vote for an atheist presidential candidate than a socialist one, I think the brainwashing has gone further than I ever imagined. I wonder what the most effective means of creating this impression of socialism have been?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I think it’s just the firmly held conviction that a socialist would take all of their stuff and give it away to folks who don’t deserve it. An atheist wouldn’t take their stuff.
An atheist wouldn’t take their stuff.
No, in their minds an atheist will kidnap and sacrifice their babies and use puppies to make kabobs on the grill. My conservative friends and my family are simply puzzled at my liberalism. But they are stunned, totally disbelieving and probably a little fearful at my atheism.
The part of the question that is key is: “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for President….” Democrats are more likely than Republicans to look at a socialist as someone who would be the leader/standard bearer for their party. Democrats tend to have more beliefs in common with Socialists. If they didn’t, that number would be even lower. I don’t think it has anything to do with brainwashing.
Socialist = anti-American
Atheist = evil/confused/deceived American
The later is still American while the former is foreign.
Game
Set
Match
Okay, but how do you think this message is most effectively transmitted so that Americans internalize it?
I think it started during the Cold War, if not before. Then came the decades-long drumbeat. The USSR as the enemy, combined with a conflation of socialism with communism. To a significant number of folks, there’s no difference.
I agree with Kris. I’m from a generation that was trained to hate Communism, and Socialism was conflated with Communism. It goes back beyond the Cold War to WWII. Anything that wasn’t Democracy or Capitalism was bad. Period.
It’s a century old, at least.
The original Palmer-era Red Scare was 30 years before McCarthy.
Yes, socialists and anarchists were conflated even though they are almost opposites. The Tea Party are more like anarchists in rhetoric, fascists in policy.
I think it goes back to anti-immigrant feeling in the late nineteenth century. It was called anarchism then. Leon Czogolz based his assassination of McKinley on the socialistic ideas in the anarchist program. There was a large Marxist component in the anarchist movement. The anarchists of the time said he didn’t understand what they were about, but the public at large never heard those protestations. Then after the Russian Revolution of 1905 Americans began to become more aware of socialist ideas as a revolutionary force. That was about the time when people started arguing that we needed to limit the number of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia because they were inferior stock and, by the way, had dangerous ideas. The October Revolution in Russia blew the lid off, followed by the Palmer Raids and Red Scare. I’ve never understood why Americans are so terrified of socialism that they dare not even talk about it. When I was in high school during the McCarthy years my high school library had two copies of Mein Kampf but not one book that described socialism or communism or explained what the leaders of the U.S.S.R. actually said about anything.
Other posters are making valid points here, but it would be flawed analysis to neglect the easiest way to draw the internal, emotional connection: racism. Socialists take stuff from Real Americans (aka white people) and give all the stuff to inferior, lazy, stupid, violent, immoral people, easily recognized by their, ahem, “culture”.
To quote from one of the greatest movies of all time, Sweet Smell Of Success, “Are we kids, or what?”
Bingo. Yeah, the scary communists is a factor, but the beating heart of it is white supremacy.
That conclusion has a very large assumption embedded in it that shows the impossibility of that conclusion – it requires your average American to think critically about an abstract concept and how it actually works in practice.
Oscar, I’m not sure what you are referring to here in mentioning an “abstract concept.” Please name the concept from my conclusion you have in mind there. I’m interested in engaging, but want to make certain we’re not talking past each other.
The public doesn’t think deeply or broadly about anything, so anything more abstract than “football” or “evil doer” is going to be beyond most people’s grasp. Not because they’re incapable of understanding, but because they have so many other concerns with just surviving that they don’t have time to stop and think on these things.
And public schools.
But yeah, most people couldn’t tell you the difference between socialism and communism and capitalism – just “Capitalism = USA!” and the others are evil.
The downgrading of any government socialist program which doesn’t provide benefits to everyone has been propagandistically attached to the image of “LAZY, IMMORAL PEOPLE STEALING OUR MONEY!” by the right-wing movement, though. It’s an extremely simple explanation which evokes an emotional reaction which is not abstract at all, and it requires almost no processing for this technique to spur the persuaded person into action (voting, calling politicians, etc.).
Every government benefit I get is deserved, but everyone outside my circle is suspect and their laziness and inability to keep their pants on threatens my benefits. Human nature- it’s a helluva drug.
I think that’s part of it too – it’s a multi-faceted attack on the concept of Power to the People but I think all of these things dovetail into the “approved solution” of private enterprise over governmental solutions.
And yet Alabama put a famous socialist on their state quarter. Go figure.
There’s a feeling in the US that the rich, and upper class professionals never have their stuff redistributed to the poor. Be it money, sharing their schools, competition for schools, competition for jobs, whatever.
The sense is that the top 10% never pay for this and instead they just keep diving up what the 90% have over and over. And that the top 10% do this to brag and tout their social values and progressiveness. Socialism sounds like “the middle class pays and sacrifices for it, the people at the top never do and then get to brag about how enlightened they are”.
It’s not that people don’t trust a more fair society. They just don’t trust the upper class urban elite in the most expensive zip codes to pay their share of the bargain.
And if they are more inclined to vote for a socialist than an atheist? Would that be evidence of more or of less brainwashing. Gallup is the brainwasher-in-chief reminding us that we have to remain vigilant of the horrid options breathing down our necks. ‘The American people are…’ just ask Gallup. Of course Mr Gallup has/had a house in Switzerland.
Poll also says 10% more would vote for a Muslim than a Soc8ialist. I don’t think so. How was the question worded? Did they define socialist?
the question is in the link, none of the terms was defined
The second “S” in “USSR” didn’t help. Gotta admit that.
Would they vote for a Muslim before a socialist or athiest?
According to that poll, which is why I don’t believe it.
Given two “ists” social is a word Americans might understand.
Asses like George Will, who was just sniveling about Greece in a column a few days ago, saying Greece is proof socialism doesn’t work. No mention of Iceland, however.
Asses like George Will, who was just sniveling about Greece in a column a few days ago, saying Greece is proof socialism doesn’t work.
George Will is indeed an ass. The Greek people want an end to austerity but to keep the Euro. Those two aren’t compatible. George Will wouldn’t know Socialism if it hit him upside the head.
Socialism is a political ideology. It makes sense people who don’t agree with socialism wouldn’t consider voting for a socialist.
Atheism is a belief about the lack of a deity. You can share the same political ideology as an atheist and not share their religious view. See, for example, the popularity of an atheist (Ayn Rand) among many on the religious right.
I don’t share your surprise.
There is actually more to say about the meaning about socialism, and the difference between socialism and social democracy, but I am surprised it is as high as it is.
It’s now clear to me that something happened to our country between 40-30 years ago. People say, “Reagan” but he didn’t make it happen on his own.
During this time the notion of public welfare and public goods seems to have been almost utterly discredited in our national discourse. Like, these concepts simply vanished from the public mind, replaced by a cult of individualism and a religious belief in the magical goodness of “free markets”.
Yes many of the factors were much older. But something happened about 35 years ago. I believe it basically comes down to the massive success of tarnishing all public goods or welfare with the taint of benefiting “the wrong people”. That’s the key. Everything flows from that.
Bernie has a snowball’s chance in hell?
Sounds about right.
Too easy:
What, you’ve never read Gingrich’s GOPAC memo “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, the Rosetta Stone for translating what’s so deeply broken about our politics and public discourse, who broke it, and why? Required reading.
It works (for their evil purposes)! Why would they change anything?
Conservative/Teahadi GOP wingnuts are very, very good at one thing, and one thing only: Reality-Denying propaganda. Rational, Reality-Based policy and governance? Not so much!