Don't Be a Sucker

June 25, 2020 5:50 AM

Don't Be a Sucker is a short film produced by the United States Department of War released in 1943, and adapted as a slightly shorter version in 1947. It has anti-racist and anti-fascist themes, and was made to educate viewers about prejudice and discrimination.
posted by adept256 (7 comments total)

The last time I saw someone with smallpox scars I was a little boy and my dad chided me for staring. Later he explained about smallpox and how it's not my problem because I'd had a shot. I remember asking if I could have another shot. When you see smallpox first-hand, you understand how important those shots are.

Now, we have people who don't think vaccines are all that important, at least until very recently. This film is 77 years old, a lifetime. There are very few remaining with memories of actual nazis. Most people don't remember how bad fascism can be, or even recognize it. It's outside of their experience. Just as with vaccines, their ignorance endangers us all.

Firefox's spellchecker underlines nazi as a mispelling unless you capitalize it. wtf man
posted by adept256 at 6:48 AM on June 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

That Mid-Atlantic Accent Is awesome. We should use it more.
posted by drivingmenuts at 6:53 AM on June 25, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've seen it before, and I watched the whole thing again. Makes me wonder if it'd be more or less effective for a modern audience if they spliced in video of modern examples.
posted by explosion at 7:15 AM on June 25, 2020

Wrestling was fake back then too, I see.

I love the completely unsubtle title of "Don't Be A Sucker." One of the flaws of modern movement conservatism is how willingly many of its adherents are to be just that.
posted by Gelatin at 9:18 AM on June 25, 2020 [5 favorites]

For all the sowing of discord that Trump and his crowd do, recall that in 2008, Sarah Palin called the Republican rural base "real Americans," and she was her party's vice presidential candidate, hailed by the right-wing media as their new star and standard-bearer.

More Americans live in cities than don't.
posted by Gelatin at 9:37 AM on June 25, 2020 [5 favorites]

Don't be a sucker, indeed. I wish someone could take over Fox News Max Headroom style and play this for all the brainwashed masses. I think it would have a better chance at getting through to them than most things being that it's very old school and reverent about America.

It's funny - I bet almost all Trump voters would say they admire those who fought in World War II and our country's role in that conflict but they've all totally forgotten what the whole thing was actually about. You can almost pinpoint where the U.S. is now on the Nazi trajectory - somewhere right before they begin pulling minority shopowners out of their stores.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 2:26 PM on June 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's funny - I bet almost all Trump voters would say they admire those who fought in World War II and our country's role in that conflict but they've all totally forgotten what the whole thing was actually about.

They admire what the US did in World War Two because we won. They attacked John Kerry for pointing out that the military was not being honest about Vietnam. One of Trump's first "surely this!" moments was attacking the family of someone who died in Iraq or Afghanistan for disagreeing with him. And Trump uses the military as a prop to decry Colin Kapernick's protest against systematic police racism because he doesn't otherwise have an answer for it other than "more."

It's long past time for the so-called "liberal media" to simply presume Republicans are "strong on defense." The record shows they have nothing but contempt for the military as anything other than a political prop.
posted by Gelatin at 6:47 AM on June 26, 2020 [1 favorite]