-
Scapegoat Country
- Dissent
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 66, Number 4, Fall 2019
- pp. 23-29
- 10.1353/dss.2019.0085
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
In the rural town of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, there is one movie theater, and it played American Sniper for two years. Locals hated Mexican immigrants and prayed for Trump on Sundays; their town manager was a virgin who thought Hillary Clinton wanted to steal his guns. With anecdotes like these, the German journalist Claas Relotius painted the scene of a regressive and even frightening place in a 2017 article for Der Spiegel. At a "Western evening," the townsfolk dressed up in cowboy gear and danced to country music. After all, what else is there to do in a small, scary town deep inside a lonely forest?