English

They Got The Blame: The Story of Scapegoats in History

FOREWORD This is a total war; which means considerably more than fighting with planes and tanks and battleships. The enemy has even deadlier weapons— weapons which he used in France, in the Low Countries, in Scandinavia, in the Balkans, to undermine the people's will to resist; weapons which he is using here. Propaganda is a great deal more than persuading people to believe something that isn't true; it is a technique that works below the surface of the mind, warping men's emotions with fantasies and fears, diverting their thinking toward economic conflicts, political dissension, religious prejudice, until the nation as a whole is disintegrated, incapable of the concerted action which alone will lead to victory. Propaganda has plenty of devices; but perhaps the most useful tactic of the dictators was nothing devised in Berlin or Rome or Tokyo. It is a borrowed trick, as old as tyranny itself— a trick which depends for its success on that all too common inclination of the human race to blame all its troubles on somebody else. We have seen how the dictators have worked up unreasoning prejudice against innocent scapegoats to provide an outlet for the grievances of their peoples— griev

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