THE WISDOM FUND: News & Views
ABCNews.com
January 30, 2003

Inhuman Enemy: Demonizing Opponents

by Michael S. James

Recently, an American political cartoon asked the question, "What Would Mohammed Drive?" and answered it with a drawing of a man dressed in Muslim garb driving a rental truck with a missile hanging out the back. . . .

"The secret in propaganda is that when you demonize, you dehumanize," said James Forsher, a film historian and documentary filmmaker who has studied propaganda films, and who is an assistant professor of mass communications at California State University, Hayward. . . .

Tales of atrocities also can dehumanize, as readers of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers learned when they got whipped up for the Spanish-American war with fake stories and sketches of Spanish atrocities that probably never happened. Arguably, it set a pattern for phony or embellished American wartime propaganda that would last at least through the Gulf War. . . .

"I think the demonization of Islam and the Arab world is identical to what happened 100 years ago," Winter said. "The Arab is now a stock figure, a caricature, a symbol of fanaticism, of infinite cruelty and no regard for human rights." . . .

FULL TEXT

back button