From Canada: Populists (Santorum in this instance) who speak the (relative) truth
Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has been saying some very strange things about the Netherlands. Ten per cent of all deaths in that country are from euthanasia, he recently claimed, half of them forced on helpless patients. Old people are so frightened of being killed by homicidal doctors that they wear bracelets that read: “Do not euthanize me.”
In the United States, Mr. Santorum’s fantasies were swiftly refuted. The Washington Post concluded there was “not a shred of evidence” to back up Mr. Santorum’s claims, and found it “telling” that his campaign managers didn’t even bother to defend them. One U.S. television station even apologized to a Dutch reporter in the name of the American people.
But does this matter to Mr. Santorum’s followers? Probably not. Corrections from the “elitist” mainstream media are dismissed as enemy propaganda. As a blogger sympathetic to Mr. Santorum put it: “The Washington Post, as one would expect, attempted to discredit Santorum.”
After all, a democracy can’t function without a public that’s properly informed. Populist demagogues in politics and the mass media are doing everything they can to discredit the quality press as propaganda organs for left-wing elites who sneer at the views of ordinary Americans. Mr. Santorum pretends to speak for these people – that is, for a minority of Americans who are mostly white, provincial, highly religious, deeply conservative on cultural and social issues, and convinced that Barack Obama and all Europeans are dangerous godless socialists.
The point is not whether Mr. Santorum is right or wrong factually. What he says “feels” right to his followers, because it conforms to their prejudices. And the Internet feeds and reinforces those prejudices, making it more difficult to distinguish the truth from lies.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/us-election/populists-who-speak-the-relative-truth/article2364593/
= new reply since forum marked as read
