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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Certainly. But I tend to think of exaggerations as statements that are partly false.
"Democrats want to ban everything remotely religious from the public sphere" is an exaggeration because it's not completely true (far from it), and it can't be reasonably backed up, so it's a scare tactic.
I'm analyzing my idea of scare tactics as this goes along, to see if it makes complete sense, so I appreciate the criticism.
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As long as you are interested, for an example of an anti-gay scare tactic practiced by Falwell, Robertson, et al, on the 700 Club they would show excerpts of and sell copies of videotapes containing scenes from a Gay Pride event in San Francisco. The footage of almost naked men and women dressed up in outlandish costumes and hamming for the camera scared the bejeesus out of some segments of middle America. In reality, there is a huge measure of camp and the playing up of stereotypes at these events but Mr and Mrs Smith from Topeka might not understand this. By taking the event out of context and providing scary narration, Falwell gets to implant an image of that as the standard gay lifestyle and completely befuddle his audience..."Satan must be inspiring them....look at the men kissing and gyrating suggestively!"
So I guess that this is an illustration how you can amplify fear simply by showing someone or something different without providing any understanding of what they are viewing. This plays off of the base xenophobia that seems near universal in humans.