What Lurks Beneath the Surface

Over at Orcinus, Dave Neiwert kicks off an eight-part seires on eliminationism with an anecdote from the wake of last week's Dennis Prager nonsense. Briefly, a DC-area talk radio host proposed "requiring all Muslims wear crescent-moon armbands, or perhaps even tattooing or branding them." The call-in response was, to use Neiwert's term, "disturbing." Callers were ready to and willing to help with the round ups, internments, and such.

It was all an experiment on the host's part, to see exactly how frothing at the mouth people would get if such ideas were proposed. Sadly, several people raised to the bait (as did several people in the Borat movie, Neiwert points out). It's depressing to see how easily it is to get people to riled up to act against outsiders based on ignorance, prejudice, and fear.