No, they'll need more than "The usual suspects, only harder"...
An effective deployment of blame propaganda needs to elicit a level of hatred and fear in the general population which is as frightening, and as capable of provoking violent anger, as a rational response to the real disaster and the real danger would be.
...And even more so, in 'street politics' among the foot soldiers of the regime: they will have a lot of work to do.
@hairyears "The untermenschen are unclean disease spreaders!" worked just fine in the 1930s/1940s at raising hatred/fear levels. Emphasis on "spreading disease"—that's been the Christian rallying cry for antisemitic pogroms going back a millennium.
@cstross @hairyears For a long time (since the 1990s) the rhetoric about memes has made me wonder if it would be used in a xenophobic way, as it's a disease metaphor.
(The original metaphor never got beyond being a metaphor and never became a way of analysing culture.)
@geoglyphentropy @hairyears The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Extended Phenotype" in the mid-70s, and as Dawkins has drifted to the right with age, so has his meta-meme.
