Don't Be a Sucker
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters bring it up in political threads as a classic warning about divisive agitators and fascism, and suggest it be remade for each generation.
What it is
A 1945 US Army educational film that dramatizes how demagogues use prejudice and scapegoating to divide people. It opens with fake wrestling matches and crooked gambling games to show how con artists work, then applies the lesson to racial and religious bigotry.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends sergeykish · 2020-06 · on “Zero-sum thinking on immigration will make America poorer”
I've recently stumbled on United States Department of War film from 1943 > We must guard everyone's liberty or we can lose our own. If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution or by prejudice we are threatening our own freedom [this video]
Recommends jenkinsj · 2020-08 · on “Don't Be a Sucker”
A classic. The part when the agitator-clown-carnival barker yells "Folks I'm just an average American but I'm an American American! {{insert-ad-libbed-racist-tirade}}". Good thing we defeated nonsense like this long ago. [this video]
Recommends Kim_Bruning · 2021-09 · on “Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)”
I'm not sure people can't grasp it. But it certainly can't be taken for granted. Perhaps we need to continuously keep making versions of this? [this video] ("Don't be a sucker" 1945)
Recommends neilv · 2026-01 · on “East Germany balloon escape”
Yes, IIUC, that was one of the things that mobilized a lot of IMHO positive education/propaganda. It may not have always been for the most noble of reasons (e.g., a very wealthy person not wanting to be disrupted), but the fascism-is-bad messages are still great messages. For example, "Don't Be a Sucker" (long, but worth a watch sometime for anyone who hasn't seen it): [this video]
Cites 082349872349872 · 2020-08 · on “Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood”
We agree that the Nazi plan was intended only to benefit (a subset of) themselves. We also agree that Nazis intended to treat slavs as prior empires had treated their Worthy Oriental Gentlemen (wogs, in the vernacular). I'd like to make the distinction on the first point that they marketed[1] their intentions differently. I should have said "sold" instead of "viewed", sorry. And my "benevolently" had not been meant to be taken in a positive light. (If someone tells you they are benevolent, keep a hand on your wallet.) To me it is clear that Goebbels said that the Nazis must protect 2'000 years of Western Civilisation from the Communists (who, you correctly note, were severely conflated with
Cites IncRnd · 2020-08 · on “Don't Be a Sucker”
It wasn't a racist tirade. It was a tirade against everyone who the fictional person felt was different from him as a method of identifying who he believed to be taking away his opportunities - just by those people existing. See the consequent side-conversation here, [this video] . The crowd rejected him, the more he spoke. Today's news is full of exactly the same attitude displayed by this person. Why are people not rejecting this today?
Cites PaulHoule · 2021-06 · on “An announcement about the comment section”
The gangs who are promoting coronavirus comment spam create two kinds of victims. (1) are the people whose free speech is impaired by relentless toxic comments (2) are the posters themselves who will be increasingly isolated by their behavior and feeling persecuted. It is like the cult member who is driven into evangelism not to recruit new members but to become convinced that the outside world is corrupt. These will become increasingly radicalized and over the next few years will be recruited into more violent attacks and other forms of exploitation such as spending their income on scam alt-health supplements. The most difficult problem in all of this is the the type (2) victims and many ob
Cites wutbrodo · 2021-09 · on “Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)”
Yea, I hear you, that's certainly possible. But I'm not reasoning top-down from liberalism's unpopularity, but rather bottom-up from the inability most people have to grasp the components I mentioned. Some of them are much simpler concepts than liberalism, and are applicable in many cases that people have more direct stakes in. And yet, in my experience, vanishingly few people are capable of grasping them to any reasonable degree. > Perhaps we need to continuously keep making versions of this? [this video] ("Don't be a sucker" 1945) We're drowning in anti-racist and anti-fascist material. I don't think it's particularly relevant: clearly it's not difficult to nominally support these beliefs while