The Daily Mail, and other propagandist rags who like to perpetuate the myth of "Banning Christmas", who ensure that these stories come up every year, are cynically exploiting an unpalatable, but very real truth:
The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.
From "War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler.
Over the 90+ years since the writing of this, it has been popularly condensed down to:
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.
The problem with this sort of manipulatively irresponsible..... malicious even?.....journalism is that people seldom challenge it. They simply read it and because it is printed in a newspaper, accept it as being true without question. They then set about blaming the target minority of their choice. Jews.... black people.... homosexuals.... muslims.... Take your pick.
These sort of stories become a stick to beat somebody with. And that's precisely what the papers-with-an-agenda want to happen.
We need to be more skeptical of what we read in newspapers.... or perhaps even stop reading them altogether. In the post Digital Revolution world we can get enough news from a multitude of other sources which are probably more reliable, and certainly more objective.
Really........ who needs the Daily Mail..?
I've seen it used in all sorts of contexts, it's a horrible word, usually says more about the person slinging it about. Most people seem to use it as a way of saying they think whoever it is isn't as good as they are (or they think they are). The UK version of 'white trash'.
