Acceptable Political Targets

You don't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference...

—Richard Nixon -- losing a race for governor in 1962, six years before becoming President

First rule of leadership: Everything is your fault.

—Hopper, A Bugs Life

A subset of Acceptable Targets. This one deals with demonized political groups. It's gonna be a Long List, because politics is one arena where (in a democratic society, at least) all groups not only have to compete against each other, but have to publicly compare themselves with each other. This too easily leads to making the other guy out to be a Strawman Political.

It is important to remember that your opinion on how (un)deserving of ridicule or hatred a given political group is has nothing to do with whether it should be listed here; this is merely an index of how the group is treated in popular culture. (So ideally examples shouldn't be "These guys suck lol" or "We deserve to be on here because we're so persecuted.")

This is not That Other Wiki, so we're not concerned with what groups actually believe. It's also not just about groups that are disagreed with or controversial -- the group has to be among the Acceptable Targets for mockery and derision.

See also Strawman Political. And do not forget the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment.

Examples:

Politicians as a group

Sleazy, corrupt, and willing to lie to their grandmother to get elected. Ultimately, politicians are about the easiest group to make into an acceptable target - just about any politician has a topic that they can be attacked on legitimately, and the profession as a whole tends to disproportionately attract sleazeballs only interested in power. It generally takes several years of cleanliness, honesty, and competence before a politician is truly respected by most people - and then, to paraphrase an old Disney song, you're not a politician anymore, but a statesman.

Video Games

Dragon Age 2 allows Hawke to make 'politicians' jokes at every turn, and at one point if you tell Varric that you are going to change the way Kirkwall works he tells you that entering politics is either "idealism or madness...so, either way, right up your alley."

The Nazis

Let's face it; being totalitarian fascists, starting World War II and being responsible for some of the most monstrous acts of brutality and genocide in human history isn't exactly going to endear you to the rest of the planet. In fact, the Nazis had to be very evil to give birth to a very common weapon on Internet debates: Godwins Law as well as destroying Fascism as a viable 1st world political leaning. Whilst debate may exist over in how cartoonish a fashion it is acceptable to portray the Nazis (do you make them as cartoonishly evil as possible, in an attempt to make them ridiculous and thus impossible to take seriously? Or do you take them perfectly seriously, because anything else would be disrespectful to their millions of victims?), no one outside of the particularly wrong-headed, psychotic and/or extreme far-right is going to complain if these guys are made the bad guys or the butt of the joke. Quite the reverse, in fact; start mocking their victims and you'd better be prepared for the inevitable fallout. Of course, a further unfortunate repercussion of their existence is that even today they continue to generate a rather unfortunate impression of Germany and its citizens.

Film

In "Blazing Saddles", we see Nazis in line to try out for Hedley's army of thugs, and a (heavily implied) Jewish actor playing the dictator appears briefly. He is also visible repeatedly giving Nazi salutes in the background of the Great Pie Fight, as well as during the swearing in scene.

Hedley: RIGHT hands!

This trope is the reason Inglourious Basterds was a hit.
- Even though its 'heroes' similarly believe All Germans Are Nazis.
You Nazty Spy was the first film to ever lampoon the Nazis.

Western Animation

In The Simpsons Sideshow Bob, who has tried to kill Bart many times, had a tattoo saying 'die Bart die'. To explain it to his parole board he says it means in German "the Bart the". A woman exclaims that it's not like anyone who speaks German could be evil.

Real Life

Public service announcements were directed at English fans traveling to the 2006 World Cup in Germany not to mention the war. Special attention was paid to the fact that the German authorities wouldn't take kindly to people doing Hitler impressions and the like.
- Imitating stereotypical Nazi behavior is usually understood by modern Germans that a person believes these behaviors are still common in Germany and that rules and standards of society are still the same. Which is probably the single most guaranteed way to piss about every German seriously off. And the English are particularly infamous for doing it. In fact, it is illegal in Germany to make the Nazi salute in public.
- Also, being Hitler. Seriously, there is a Eddie Izzard routine that goes like this:

Hitler ended up shot in the head, drowned in petrol, set on fire, buried in a ditch. So...that's fun. I mean, it's funny...Because he was a mass-murdering fuckhead...as many eminent historians have pointed out. And it was his honey-moon too!

The Ku Klux Klan

(Blazing Saddles and South Park both have excellent examples) because of the hoods, ostentatious rituals, and racist actions and beliefs.

Literature

Sherlock Holmes is a good example for how this trope changes over time. At the time people complained over how Arthur Conan Doyle demonized the KKK, but no one raised a eye-brow over how the Mormons were painted as a Church of Evil in the first Holmes-story.

Radio

Notably, they were featured as the villains in The Adventures of Superman... back in the '40s, when they were still considered kind of respectable. Well, the villains were called "The Clan of the Fiery Cross," but it's very clear who they meant. That show helped expose the truth about their racist agenda, which led to the organization as it was then being eventually completely disbanded. (Klansmen nowadays are pretty much all imitators) That's right, Superman defeated the Klan.

McCarthyism

After delivering a speech in which he claimed to have a list of prominent members of the U.S State Department who were also active members of the Communist Party, between 1950 and 1954 Senator Joe McCarthy led a crusade against communist infiltration in the U.S government and society. Although immensely popular during his heyday, these days McCarthy is used in fiction and other discourse to represent the absolute nadir of political mudslinging and opportunism, and he's often in some way connected with the dark Government Conspiracy that authors like to create. Quite an accomplishment (so to speak) for a man who's been dead for over half a century.

Film

The Manchurian Candidate makes that explicit by having its McCarthy analogue actually be a Soviet agent. They also have him pick the number of communists off a ketchup bottle.
George Clooney's film Good Night and Good Luck, telling the story of news reporter Edward R. Murrow's attacks on McCarthyism, featured actual footage of McCarthy speaking. When screened for test audiences, most of them thought that it was an actor hamming up McCarthy's lines.

Fascists

While Nazis are already a target, being a Fascist is also a subject of hate and anger since the Axis was wholly made of totalitarian governments who at best will turn certain races to second class citizens and at worst exterminate you on the basis of nation. With the end of WWII, the notion of a Fascist politician or leader went the way of the Dodo bird and is often portrayed as only second to Hitler and Nazism in terms of evil. This doesn't mean that fascist partisans no longer exist (they do, and are even politically competitive in some countries); it does mean, though, that they usually must perform all kinds of rhetorical gymnastics in order to present themselves to the public.

Talking Heads

Anyone who has no political qualifications but who talks about politics on TV. Everyone from Michael Moore on the left to Ann Coulter on the right. They have less protection from satire than actual politicians because of the "who do they think they are?" factor. They also have the drawback of being easily recognizable symbols of the causes/political positions that they support, and thus being easily-recognizable subjects for parody, satire and mockery.

Politically active celebrities

Being famous gives you a big audience that you can use to bring attention and influence to the political and social issues that interest you, but it also opens you up to plenty of mockery, mainly for hypocritical and / or cynically self-serving behavior or just plain not knowing what you're talking about.

Communists/Socialists

The first because they could reasonably be portrayed as out to overthrow the government, the latter because they look like the former, and essentially could be seen as the former with better public perception, and sometimes even fell into many of the excesses that made the former infamous. Note that this mainly applies to the US; in most of the rest of the world socialists are just another unremarkable type of politician (in Western Europe) or as only slightly more acceptable than other politicians (this is particularly true in former Communist states, where the socialist party tends to contain a lot of Former Regime Personnel). The overall stereotype has shifted over time, going gradually from one of Ax Crazy Terrorists Without a Cause a century ago to today's "Big Brother" portrayal (which invariably gets conflated with the Nazis).

Film

This paranoia was brilliantly mocked in Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove. Also, chillingly, portrayed in Fail-Safe was the dire consequences that many feared would be a result of the tensions between the USSR and the US.

Theatre

"A second flood, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake I'd accept with some despair, but no! You sent us Congress! Good God, sir, was that fair?"
- Also:

"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress!"

- - Bear in mind that this comes from the mouth of someone who is both a member of Congress and a lawyer.

Warlords

Forcing others to grow illegal drugs or join an illegal militia can't be right, can it?

Neoconservatives

The term refers to a specific subset of US conservatives, but the term is thrown around generously to refer to any US politician who belongs to a conservative party yet advocates uncautious action. By the end of the George W. Bush's second term "neoconservative" had come to mean "Republican I don't like."

The Tea Party

Springing up in the wake of the 2008 elections, the Tea Party is mostly made up of junior Republican Congressmen and Senators. The term is ill-defined and usually self-applied, though liberals use it as an insult. According to the Left they're a bunch of theocratic fascists hate women and who worship the super-rich.

Occupy Wall Street

A protest movement of liberals and left-libertarians, working through "sit-in" demonstrations in financial districts across the US. Their stated goal is to force criminal investigation and tighter regulation of the investment banking industry. Like the Tea Party, you become a member by publicly declaring sympathy with them, but conservatives also use it as an insult. According to the Right they're shiftless, lazy, and entitled, and their demonstrations are hotbeds of crime.

Category Traitors

American political culture is full of stereotypes, and failure to fit a stereotype can open someone up to mockery just as much as adhering to it too closely. Wealthy individuals who vote progressively and poor individuals who vote conservatively are clueless and have no idea where their own interests lie. Men who vote liberal are sensitive wimps or naive hippies, and women who vote conservative are prudish shrews or submissive doormats. And everyone apparently knows that African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities are fools to vote conservatively, regardless of their personal beliefs; whites, on the other hand, always vote for whichever party is popularly perceived as more racist.

Nationalists

Film

To a large extent they've replaced the USSR as the Communist Big Bad (see, for example, Tomorrow Never Dies). Interestingly, for a few years after the fall of the USSR the new Russian Federation (often incorrectly called things like the "Russian Republic") became a brief stand-in for the USSR due to the common misconception that it remained as powerful. Crimson Tide and Goldeneye were good examples of this.
This was very much a Cold War era trope. Consider the James Bond films: the Red Chinese are Goldfinger's backers (1964), and in they tolerate Scaramanga operating out of their country (1974).
And then there's The Manchurian Candidate...

The government of Myanmar (Burma)

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Imagine a cheap knock-off of the USSR under Stalin, as performed by a junior high drama club. Then give them constant food shortages, an insane cult of personality around their leader, and enough missiles to wipe the capital of South Korea off the map.

Live-Action TV

How bad is North Korea? It's like this: Jon Stewart had on a guy who wrote about his experiences helping North Koreans escape to the Freedom-Loving paradise that is...The People's Republic of China.

Video Games

Crysis and Home Front both originally planned to have Chinese enemies, but later changed them to North Koreans in order to avoid being Banned in China and losing a large part of the international market.

Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF

Feminists

Tend to be characterised as shrill misandrist harpies who twist any kind of male / female interaction, no matter how innocent, into a warped representation of male domination and violence against women and who, at the furthest extreme, actively wish to see men eradicated. They're also often presented as utterly humourless, absurdly politically correct and hypocritical lesbians who actively hate sex, especially if it involves a man. For such characters, feminism is a kind of reverse-chauvinism, rather than a movement for equality.

Real Life

This was helped in the U.S. by the backlash against feminism in the 1980s. Oh, and Rush Limbaugh helped cement this view by coining the term "feminazi."
It also doesn't help that this is Truth in Television for a very very small and ridiculously angry minority who most actual feminists are ashamed to be associated with.
In This Wiki, the Double Standard and The Chick articles had to be locked as they were huge magnets for real-life feminism soapboxing and debates. Luckily, other articles that seem like Flame Bait for critics of Feminism like the Straw Feminist and Does Not Like Men articles have avoided this fate so far but the former article no longer allows Real Life examples...if they were allowed to begin with.

The Canadian Senate

Held in particularly low regard because Senators are appointed by the party in power and there is no input from the voting population. Since Senators also have very little actual power, they are generally perceived as useless party cronies with no redeeming traits. People outside of Canada may notice this stereotype echoed in Canadian-made shows.

Real Life

Similarly the British House of Lords, largely made up of political appointees but formerly with many hereditary aristocrats, is generally portrayed as full of incredibly ancient out-of-touch people who're either permanently asleep or actually dead.
- To some extent, this reputation was even brought to American awareness when Saturday Night Live did a sketch about it (or was it the House of Commons?) where, among other things, Will Ferrell's character kept pushing a resolution to declare Oasis the greatest band ever. The other points of order were equally trivial and/or outright rude.
- Recently the opinion of the House of Lords seems to be improving, because they're spending most of their time opposing nearly everything the government passes to them. The fights between the two are referred to as Parliamentary ping-pong, as both houses have to agree on something before it becomes law. (However the Commons can invoke the Parliament Acts to push laws through. There is also the Salisbury Convention which states that if something is in the ruling party's manifesto, it should eventually be allowed to pass.)

People who vote for major parties

Characterized as broken down or unable to think for themselves. Obviously these people are brainwashed, there's no other reason they wouldn't vote for the right party.

People who don't vote for major parties

Characterized as stupid, naive or college students who only do it because they want to be different. Frequently overlaps with Communist and Libertarian stereotypes.

Moral Guardians

Let's face it, trying to get media censored, often for sometimes trivial reasons, won't ever endear anyone to you. Especially nowadays.

Orly Taitz

Liberals and Conservatives in general

Due to The War On Straw, people perceived as being, or who defend even a single position that is, far to the left or right of center politically are often portrayed as crazy or evil.

Real Life

Both are often portrayed as spoiled, wealthy folk who don't understand the value the working poor place on hard work (if liberal) or the hardships others face (if conservative). Both can be libertarian idealists who believe Rousseau Was Right or Ludd Was Right (liberals want to return to nature to save the Earth from man's machines, conservatives want to go back to a time before modern civil rights). Alternately, they are closet communists, nazis, elitists, etc. who believe Hobbes Was Right, because common folk can't be trusted.
- Liberals and conservatives who aren't rich aren't immune, either. Working class liberals are hippies who think that abandoning all the technological progress made over the past 100 years will save the world, while working class conservatives blame anything bigger and/or different from them for all their problems.
Liberals also get portrayed as Cloud Cuckoolanders who don't see why others object to the Animal Wrongs Group or the You Fail Economics Forever politician. Or trying to make friends with people who very obviously will never be your friends.
Conservatives are often portrayed as not really believing the positions they take; they are in it for the money. Alternately they are mindlessly devoted to outdated political, cultural, and religious beliefs and do not consider the consequences. Or they're sociopaths who vote against rape victims.
Both ideologies are actually split between elitist and "common-man" factions, with a different set of stereotypes for each.
- Elitist liberals are crypto-Orwellian dogmatists insidiously transfoming this country bit by bit into a totalitarian state. They think that everything should be illegal. "Common-man" liberals are scruffy New Age Retro Hippie hedonists who all have the mental capacity of a twelve-year-old girl. They think that nothing should be illegal. Naturally, the two groups hate each other - but they'll always join forces when it comes to bashing conservatives.
- Elitist conservatives are snooty rich country-clubbers who drink cognac and smoke improbably long cigars. "Common-man" conservatives are rabidly fundamentalist trailer-trash losers with no social skills and very few language skills. Naturally, the two groups hate each other - but they'll always join forces when it comes to bashing liberals.
The fact that a small minority of both groups (far more on the internet, due to GIFT) actually are like the above doesn't help matters.
Liberals get attacked by socialists, left-anarchists and other people on the "hard left" for only wanting to reform the system, not create a new one through revolution and being in their view Not So Different from the conservatives.

Greens (as in the U.S. political party once represented by Ralph Nader)

Single Issue Wonks who don't care about anything but their overly naive brand of environmentalism. Their platform is actually a lot broader than that. In fact, the word "green" in their case might be said to stand for reform or renewal rather than the "woodsman-spare-that-tree" cliche.

Ralph Nader himself is also frequently made fun of as a politically irrelevant miscreant who gave the 2000 election to George W. Bush. (Although technically he was was unaffiliated with the Green Party after the 2000 election.) One joke told by Conan O'Brien: "Ralph Nader announced he's running for president again. Immediately after the announcement, the guy sitting next to Nader on the park bench told him to shut up."

The Australian federal government

Subject to the usual vitriol, but state and local governments in particular are often seen as incredibly corrupt and/or comically inept, and either way painfully underfunded and of questionable use.

Real Life

Former South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, the sole reason Australia doesn't have an R rating for video games. Unfortunately, his seat was pretty secure thanks to the votes of other old people who think video games are all Pac-Man. After he resigned, much progress was made on moving toward getting that R rating in place.
Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband and the Digital Economy, is rapidly becoming a target of scorn and laughter from virtually the entire internet, and even the American government, among others, got in on the scorning action! It's not just because he is pushing a plan to instate a mandatory internet filter across Australia. It's not just said filter has been proven in tests to be ineffective and detrimental to internet performance. It's more to do with the fact that he's still pushing the filter plan at every opportunity even though it's overwhelmingly unpopular and at this point has no chance of becoming a reality.
John Howard, who somehow managed to be the second longest-serving Prime Minister in history (possibly because his opponents were either devoid of charisma or Mark Latham). Considered a toady to George W Bush (who was an Acceptable Target overseas long before he was in the US), racist, miserly and looking kinda weird. It was a moment of glorious schadenfreude for a large part of the Australian public when not only did his party lose the election, but he lost his actual seat in the House of Representatives -- becoming only the second Prime Minister in Australian history to suffer this (the first being in 1929).
Speaking of hated Australian political figures, Pauline Hanson and One Nation are considered the national mascots of racist, xenophobic, idiotic, trashy bogans led by a fish-and-chip shop owner and 'celebrity'. Even long after the One Nation furore blew over, Hanson was still pretty much everywhere milking the "celebrity" for all it was worth, memorably leaving Australia to emigrate to England... because she didn't like Australia's welcoming attitude to immigration... and then returning to Australia within a matter of months...
The Family First party have a rather deserved reputation for being fundamentalist, homophobic, heavy-handed and a large part of its leadership coming mostly from the congregation of a church that is very exclusive and selective of its members. They're also known for issuing contradicting statements and flip-flopping between sides on an issue depending on whether being deeply conservative is fashionable with the public. Their press conferences are very much a case of Think of the Children personified.
- Though not a political party, the Australian Christian Lobby is derided for similar reasons, and also for its support for the internet filter and opposition to the R rating for games, again both cases of Think of the Children. More than that is their audacity in claiming and acting like they represent the interests of all Australian Christians, which they kind of don't. Their leader also gained some infamy for using ANZAC Day as an opportunity to denounce immigration and the legalisation of gay marriage as "unAustralian".
Julia Gillard, the current Prime Minister, is susceptible to this owing to the circumstances which led to her taking the role; she's widely seen as The Starscream to her predecessor Kevin Rudd. The federal election which soon followed didn't help - her campaign was widely poked fun at for being inconsistent and unfocused, to the point that partway through she declared everything so far to be a mistake and said she'd change that and start being the "real Julia" (cue every Australian comedian trying to figure out who the "old Julia" was and what the "new Julia" did to her).
- Her opponent, opposition leader Tony Abbott, doesn't fare much better for almost the exact same reasons. That, and how the most publicised event of his election campaign was, for some reason, him burning a pair of his speedos on live morning radio.

Convicted Criminals

The general attitude is "screw them, they gave up all right to be a part of society"...and in many cases it doesn't matter what they're in prison for.
Scarier still is what certain people state they wouldd do to the worst criminals.People you would never believe capable of wishing such a fate on another human being.But still, it's mostly in words only...

Political Muslims

Can end up being painted as people who want everyone to be Muslim and take us back to The Dark Ages, or are all considered to be in league with Osama Bin Laden (no Sunni/Shia divide here!) who is mentioned on Godwins Law for this very reason. The fact there are a number of political parties opposed to Islamic immigration that paint a view very similar to this doesn't help much.

Real Life

They are quite infamous for imposing Sharia Law. "Strictly". Immigrants in other countries rally to impose it. While they say they're doing it peacefully, they're quite mean to those who think differently.

The Fox News Channel , or any news organization for that matter

Despite its slogan being "fair and balanced", its reporting on political events is often accused of leaning in favor of the Republicans and conservatives and it often gets hit hard with examples of the Strawman News Media, which is why it is frequently subject to the Ban On Politics. Other reasons, both concerning political coverage and otherwise, involve its rather sloppy journalistic practices, and quite a few people have noted that many of the stories presented are often seen as Face Palm-invoking or a Tear Jerker. Of course in fairness news organizations in general are also subjected to this in that pretty much every news organization (and for that matter, every news journalist) has often have issues showing their biases and preferences when it comes to presenting the news. The sayings that "No News...is Good News" and "If it bleeds, it leads" pretty much sums it up.

Film

The film Network is all about satirizing these organizations.

Live-Action TV

Fox News Channel's political leanings are at a complete disjoint to its sister entertainment network. For example, an episode of House in 2010 heavily criticizes the health insurance industry that Fox News is advocating to leave alone.
Much of the political satire and lampooning that both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart do tends to be around this.

Web Original

The Onion is pretty much a satire of news in general.

Western Animation

The Simpsons mocked Fox News about their political leanings a few times which was so acrimonious that Fox nearly sued itself over it.
- For example, Not racist, but #1 with racists.
- We're unbalanced and it's unfair!
Family Guy had an entire episode mocking Fox News.

Government itself

To a large degree. Virtually every type of government has been presented as the villain at least once; some that come in for a larger share are autocracies, corrupt democracies (democratic in appearance, but really plutocratic or dynastic), empires and monarchies.

Monarchies

Usually treated as lazy, greedy and exploitative people who take advantage of their people. The luxury of their facilities doesn't help that much, also.

The Lib Dems

In Britain, the Lib Dem stereotype has recently changed drastically. Up until the first TV debate of the 2010 General Election, they were considered a party with no chance of ever getting any power, and the usual candidate for protest votes. Several months, a coalition, and a lot of broken promises later, they have become a by-word for spineless, power-grabbing hypocrites.

Anything political in general

You name it, you can always find a way/reason to hate/bash it.

Comic Books

This Sluggy Freelance strip demonstrates that sometimes you don't even need to specify what political group you think is living excrement.

Meta