To all the right wing 'visitors' - why do you keep talking about the New Black Panthers???

[JHB]

53. Charlatan Tactics 101: Tell them what, deep down, they REALLY want to hear

Psychic version: Tell people you can contact their dead loved ones... and give cold readings so that you can glean just enough information from them that they'll believe it's a miracle when you use it to make whatever else you tell them convincing. After all, they want to believe they can have some contact with their loved ones again.

Neocon in the 70s and 80s version: give dire warnings of Soviet capabilities and intentions, leavened with analysis that none of your audience is really in a position to fact-check (after all, you are the "Soviet expert" and it's not as if the Roooskies are going to cooperate (and wouldn't be believed if they did)). After all, the "hawks", "hardliners", and "anti-communists" who make up your audience want to believe their worst fears are true! That "I was right! and those wheedling softies are selling us to our doom!" It gets a lot more attention (and room for advancement) than telling them that their fears are overblown and the Soviets are moribund and decaying.

"Do you want another Santo Domingo?" version: Blacks (except for a handful of OK ones) are just raring to rampage and kill everyone, except that they're too shiftless to do it unless some one riles them up. After all, it's not racist to think like that, it's just telling it like it is. And there! There are (you know whos) just hankering to do it! If they stir the rest up, well, that's why you should stock up on guns and ammo.

NBPP gets airtime (especially on FOX) because it lets some people tell themselves that their worst, nastiest fears and opinions are right, that they are not bad people for thinking it and saying it, and it's all those other people who are wrong, and dangerous because they are so wrong and blind.

Validation sells.