Borat was a very popular movie in America. I do not agree that this is because the majority of those audiences enjoy it as a commentary on their own ignorance of world affairs. I believe most people who went to see Borat in America laughed because he says: "my sister is number one prostitute", not because he says this and they think 'ha! look perfectly this sends up my lack of awareness of this country by saying things that are not true." You have a very elevated opinion of popular American entertainment if you think the latter is the default assumption with a movie that mocks the people of another country.
As you may have guessed, I'm not from the US, I'm German. Hence, I mentioned, why _I_ thought the movie was funny. I wasn't even thinking about if or why the movie may have been popular in the US. I agree, that the reasons may be different.
And the comparison with modern Germans being Nazis is off. And the reason is rather unfortunate: Extreme right political ideas have actually been on the rise in Germany. So, there would be a kernel of truth in a movie making fun of that by exaggeration.
Borat, however, isn't really about Kazakhstan at all. Imho, Sacha Baron Cohen just picked it because next to nothing was known about Kazakhstan. He could have picked a number of different countries without having to change anything about the movie.
Do you know the movie
Wag the Dog? In the movie they're staging a fake war in Albania to distract from the US president being involved in a sex scandal. Why did they pick Albania, you may wonder? Here's the quote from the movie:
Winifred: "Why Albania?"
Conrad: "Why not?"
Winifred: "What have they done to us?"
Conrad: "What have they done for us? What do you know about them?"
Winifred: "Nothing."
Conrad: "See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable."
And according to
the wikipedia entry about Borat, I'm not alone with my opinion:
The Kazakh tabloid Karavan declared Borat to be the best film of the year, having had a reviewer see the film at a screening in Vienna. The paper said that it was "...certainly not an anti-Kazakh, anti-Romanian or anti-Semitic" film, but rather "cruelly anti-American ... amazingly funny and sad at the same time
But as you say, this is rather off-topic, and I'm fine to drop it.