The Politics Of Fear And The Crisis Of Motivation
We live in an era where scaremongering has become omnipresent.
We live in an era where scaremongering has become omnipresent. Everything is an emergency or a time-bomb ticking away. This morning I am told that a British Cabinet document states that there is one in four chance of a ‘catastrophic pandemic in five years[i]. Its scenario ‘assumes 50 per cent of the UK’s population fall ill during the whole course of the pandemic, with about 1.34 million people estimated to require hospital treatment, possibly resulting in up to 840,000 deaths’.
Last week we were warned by the Head of the World Meteorological Organization that the ‘era of global boiling has arrived’[ii].
Given the eruption of a new era of scaremongering, I though it would be useful to publish an essay I penned a few years ago on the topic of The Crisis of Motivation And The Politics Of Fear.
The Politics of Fear
That fear has become politicised is widely recognised. Commentators and politicians frequently accuse their opponents of practicing the politics of fear. Those who use the idiom politics of fear assume that the meaning of the term is self-evident. It is a term that does not require explanation. Yet it is not simply a term of description; it is also used as a statement of condemnation. In the midst of political conflicts and controversies opponents habitually condemn one another for ‘using’ the politics of fear.
President Donald Trump has been rightly criticised for his instrumental use of the politics of fear. As Fear: Trump in the White House, the title of Robert Woodward’s recently published book illustrates, opponents of this President portray him as the personification of the politics of fear. But paradoxically, denunciations of Trump’s politics of fear are often conveyed in an alarmist rhetoric that more than matches the intemperate language of this President. As some commentators pointed out, during the 2016 American Presidential Election campaign, the central focus of Hillary Clinton’s message was the call to fear Trump[i]. And since Trump was perceived as such fearsome threat, he could be portrayed as a legitimate target to be neutralised. This sentiment was vividly captured by the title of an article by Dean Obeidallah in the Daily Beast: ‘Donald Trump Can’t Merely Be Defeated – He and His Deplorables Must Be Crushed’.12
Barack Obama’s July 2018, ‘politics of fear and resentment speech’, illustrates the way that denunciations of the politicisation of fear mirror the target of their criticism. After noting the ‘devastating impact of the 2008 financial crisis’ Obama observed that;
‘a politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment began to appear, and that kind of politics is now on the move. It's on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. I am not being alarmist, I am simply stating the facts’[ii]
Yet the very words ‘I am not being alarmist’ hinted a sense of foreboding and fear about the future.
In Europe, fear has become a weapon of choice of both sides of the political divide. Condemnations of the use of fear by populist parties are swiftly followed by warnings about the threat they pose to democratic societies. As one commentator pointed out, in Europe, ‘populist movements and technocracies may simply represent, albeit in an extremely polarised fashion, two sides of the same coin’. They both base their strategy ‘on generating fear’[iii].
An analysis of Sweden politics claims that the ‘successes of many of the anti-immigrant and nationalistic political forces in Europe are based on manufacturing a politics of fear for the electorate’. It also contends that in Sweden anti-immigrant movement do not have a monopoly over the politics of fear. Bo Rothstein, the author of this article, noted that ‘the strange thing in the current political situation is that even most of the left and progressive political forces construct much of their politics on fear’[iv].
The embrace of the politics of fear by movements across the conventional ideological divide raises the question of why its pursuit has acquired such a commanding influence over the public life throughout the western world. What follows is an exploration of the politicisation of fear and its impact on society.
The perspective of fear
Commentaries on the politics of fear tend to treat it as a stand-alone trend, and therefore overlook the fact that this phenomenon is underpinned by a pervasive cultural mood of insecurity and anxiety. As I argued more than two decades ago in my book Culture of Fear: Risk Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation (1997), fear has become a powerful force that dominates the public imagination in relation to all dimensions of human experience. That this point is now widely recognised is shown by the frequent and everyday usage of the term ‘Culture of Fear’[v].
One of the distinct features of twenty-first century society’s orientation towards uncertainty, is the transformation of fear into a cultural perspective through which society makes sense of itself. Fear is rarely about anything specific - it is about every dimension of life. Fear has become detached from any specific object of threat to the point that it is frequently experienced as problem in its own right. Often fear acquires its own dynamic to the point that it directs attention to itself as something to be feared. As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman explained:
‘Fear is at its most fearsome when it is diffuse, scattered, unclear, unattached, unanchored, free floating, with no clear address or cause….when the menace we should be afraid of can be glimpsed everywhere but nowhere to be seen. “Fear” is the name we give to our uncertainty, to our ignorance of the threat and of what is to be done’.[vi]
The condition described by this assessment, highlights an important feature of the working of the culture of fear. It is what I described elsewhere as the autonomisation of fear or the objectification of fear[vii]. Unattached and free-floating anxieties that almost appear as if they are searching for a threat to dwell on, seem as if they are driven by their own inner imperative. That is why the focus of such apprehensions can so effortlessly shift in one day, from concern with one’s physical appearance to unease about a child’s safety to a sense of disquiet about mass immigration and crime.
With the autonomisation of fear, public anxieties can exist prior and independent of any specific threat. The politics of fear mirrors this trend and conveys a sensibility of foreboding towards life in general. The statement 'I am frightened' is rarely focused on something specific, but tends to express a diffuse sense of powerlessness. So the politics of fear is both a symptom of the sense of powerlessness that pervades public life as well as a contributing factor to it.
Commentators often communicate their concern towards the workings of the politics of fear in a language that is characteristically alarmist, expansive and diffuse. In the course of discussing her book, The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis, University of Chicago Professor ,Martha C. Nussbaum remarked, that ‘as I examined my own fear, it gradually dawned on me that fear was an issue, a nebulous and multiform fear suffusing US society’[viii]. The communication of this ‘nebulous’ and unrestrained sense of fear often fuels a disposition oriented towards adopting an alarmist and doom-laden rhetorical style.
The corrosive impact of the alarmist rhetoric of fear would not be so troubling if it was contained by a more positive future oriented political vision and style. However, public life is rarely exposed to a positive future oriented politics of hope. In our so-called post-ideological era, politics has adopted a risk-averse and technocratic turn that fails to capture the imagination of the public. Unable to inspire the electorate, political parties often opt to draw on the cultural resources of fear to promote their policies. Often what divides parties is not ideology but the fears they opt to promote. Debate is often focused on what constitutes the greater threat, for example, immigrants and terrorists or global warming[ix]. Consequently political debate often resembles a performance of competitive scaremongering.
Competitive scaremongering in public life is often expressed through a vocabulary that aims to polarise and caricature. The promiscuous use of the word fascist and the unfortunate tendency to issue the warning that ‘he is just like Hitler’ or ‘it is just like the 1930s in Germany’ serve as a mirror image of the hysterical political language that they decry. Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, is paradigmatic in this respect. According to Stanley, though Trump is not a signed up member of a fascist party, he ‘uses many fascist tactics’[x]! Another commentator warns that contemporary ‘America is Weimar Germany’ before adding that ‘the 1930s are repeating themselves’[xi].
The politics of fear is always a practice conducted by ‘them’. Many commentators, who deride and criticise others for ‘playing the fear card’, would be surprised to learn, that they too are fully involved in this practice. An interesting illustration of the selective approach, which many adopt in their deliberation of the politics of fear was provided by a conference on Fear, held at the New School in New York in February 2004. The different papers discussed at the conference, transmitted the sentiment of frustration and anger towards the institutionalisation of the politics of fear by the Bush administration in the immediate post 9/11 era. The editor of a special issue of Social Research, which published the conference proceedings, was in no doubt that fear was ‘encouraged by our government and exacerbated by our media’[xii].
That the journal’s editor, Arien Mack, did not have any principled objections to the use of fear as a political instrument, was made clear, when he stated:
‘Fear, of course, also has its positive side, which can be seen when we are asked to be afraid of not only terrorism but also second-hand smoke, bioengineered food, or even diseases, such as SARS or AIDS’[xiii].
In this naïve and simplistic account, the characteristic double standard applied to the politics of fear was laid bare. For Mack there are two types of fears – positive and negative ones. The ‘positive side’ of fear relates to causes that the editor supports and the negative side pertain to policies that he opposes.
In his conference paper, ‘A Life of Fear’, Professor of Politics, George Kateb, explicitly endorsed the instrumental use of fear against governments and causes that he opposed. He stated that he did not want ‘to direct fear away from terrorists, but to expand the scope of fear to include the American government and its close collaborator Israel’. Calling for ‘suspicion and vigilance’ against the Bush and Sharon administrations, Kateb conceded that he has no problems with accepting conspiracy theories. ‘I would never rule out a priori the existence of conspiracy in political life’, he stated[xiv]. Needlessly to say, from his standpoint, expanding ‘the scope of fear’ was a legitimate tactic used to support a good cause. No doubt, from Kateb’s point of view, his ‘expansion of the scope of fear’ had nothing to do with the politics of fear.
A sublimated expression of the distrust of the people
In numerous discussions, the politics of fear is associated with alarmist right-wing rhetoric warning about the break down of law and order. Donald Trump’s frequently repeated promise to make ‘America safe again’ serves as a paradigmatic example of the politicisation of fear. However the politics of fear transcends the political divide. One of is its main drivers is belief that the public is much more likely to respond to fear appeals than to rational argument.
A loss of faith in public life and in people’s decision-making capacity, is one source of the current practices associated with the politics of fear. The belief that appeals to people’s insecurity and yearning for safety is essential for political success is not simply a response to the prevailing sensibility of the ‘suffusing fear’ discussed by Nussbaum. It is also underpinned by a loss of faith in public life and in the wisdom of the electorate.
It is widely acknowledged that the public does not trust politicians. What is far less often discussed is that the problem of trust also works in reverse. The political classes do not trust the electorate. They believe that argument and appeals to reason is pointless and that it is far better to rely on spin and appeals to emotions such as fear. This conviction has gained widespread influence during the years following the tragic destruction of the World Trade Center in September 2011.
During and after the 2004 American Presidential election, some Democratic Party supporters reacted to the loss of their candidate by concluding that the ‘fear factor’ was the key to gaining the support of the electorate. For example, Don Hazen the executive editor of on-line publication, AlterNet warned that the ‘fear factor is often overlooked by progressives, who frequently make appeals to logic on the assumption that if people know all the facts they will act accordingly’. Hazen asserted that ‘intellectual arguments’ are ‘not at their most potent at this juncture’ and therefore ‘facts and analysis must be accompanied by a vision that addresses safety’.[xv] In other words ‘progressives’ too, must learn to make the fear factor work for them. They too must embrace a rhetoric that underlines the importance of ‘keeping America safe’.
The call for the liberal-left to connect with public through the promotion of fear was also advocated by Michael Walzer, co-editor of the periodical Dissent. He stated that ‘fear has to be our starting point, even though it is a passion most easily exploited by the right’. Echoing the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, Walzer argued that protecting people from the fear of death is a ‘legitimate and necessary task’ and he proposed a version of the politics of fear that was apparently more ‘progressive’ then that practised by ex-President Bush. ‘The Bush administration exploits our fear, but it is not interested in a collective effort to cope with them-that is, to provide the necessary forms of protection and to stimulate the necessary forms of mutual assistance’, wrote Walzer. From this standpoint, a synthesis of the politics of fear with an enlightened social agenda represented the way forward for the liberal-left.[xvi]
Some advocates of a leftist version of a politics of fear, have sought to endow this perspective with enlightened and positive qualities. From this standpoint, scaring the public can be represented as an act of civic responsibility. For example the American political scientist, George Marcus asserted that anxiety assists individuals to be more informed citizens. ‘Most Americans do not know very much about politics in general or where candidates for office stand on the sundry issues of the day’ he argued. But ‘anxious citizens are well informed because the emotional incentives have caused them to grasp the importance of issues in uncertain times’ he added.[xvii]
Marcus’ idealisation of the benefits of anxiety is a sentiment that is widely shared. The management of public anxiety is now systematically pursued by public officials and campaigns dedicated to the task of ‘raising awareness’. In a cultural climate where fear has become both politicised and normalised, campaigners committed to raising awareness do not simply exaggerate, they are self consciously promoting what they consider to be ‘noble lies’.
In the 21st century, fear promotion and its politicisation is often justified on the grounds that, that people need to be made afraid of the risks they face in order to get them to act against future threat. Sections of the ecologist movement have justified this approach on the grounds, that since the activity of people today threatens the future of the planet, the use of fear to restrain their greed and consumption is ethically justified.
An ethical justification for the use of fear is eloquently advanced in the works of the German philosopher Hans Jonas. Jonas’s influential text, The Imperative of Responsibility (1979), advocated the instrumental use of fear – what he calls the ‘heuristic of fear’ to promote the public’s acceptance of a dreadful view of the future. Jonas offers, what he perceives as an ethical justification for promoting fear, which is that through its application, this emotion ought to be used to avoid humankind’s infliction of an ecological catastrophe on the planet.
Jonas takes a dim view of the human specie. According to Jonas, utilising the power of science, people have set in motion a chain of events, whose destructive consequences cannot be calculated or known. He claims that in these circumstances, the restraint of human activity is the only prudent course of action. But how can human ambition be restrained and held back? Jonas’ answer is straightforward : the moralisation of fear.
Jonas, offered an early version of the Thatcherite doctrine of TINA- there is no alternative. According to this version, there is no alternative to a dark future ecological catastrophe, unless humanity fundamentally alters its ways and adopts a culture of austerity and restraint. To realise this objective, humankind must abandon its faith in the principle of hope and learn to wholeheartedly to embrace the principle of fear. Jonas argued:
‘Consequently, an imaginative “heuristics of fear,” replacing the former projections of hope, must tell us what is possibly at stake and what we must beware of. The magnitude of those stakes, taken together with the insufficiency of our predictive knowledge, leads to the pragmatic rule to give the prophecy of doom priority over the prophecy of bliss’[xviii].
Jonas’ pessimistic dismissal of the politics of hope is underpinned by an
epistemology, that is both elitist and fatalistic
The claim that people are more likely to be inspired by fear than hope has led to an emergence of a political style that regards scaremongering as the only realistic instrument of political mobilisation. Jonas had no doubts on this point. He stated that people are much more likely to be moved by the evils that threaten them than by their hopes in a virtuous future. He wrote;
‘We know much sooner what we do not want than what we want. Therefore, moral philosophy must consult our fears prior to our wishes to learn what we really cherish[xix].
The call to first consult our fears, highlights the foundational status that Jonas ascribes to this perspective. The logical priority that Jonas attaches to fear is linked to his assertion that what is at stake, is nothing less than human survival. He believes that fear must be deployed by any means available and the duty of ecologically aware individuals like himself is to construct through both ‘reason and imagination’, future scenarios that can ‘instil in us the fear whose guidance we need’[xx].
For Jonas, the elevation of ecological survival into an immediate pressing issue has profound implication for public life. He took the view that ecological problems are far too important to be left to the unpredictable outcome of democratic decision-making. His sceptical attitude towards democracy and popular sovereignty was informed by an elitist disdain towards the people. He rejected liberal democracy because he was convinced that in such a society people would resist attempts to restrain their ambition or accept the lowering of their living standard through the imposition of a regime of austerity.
To realise his project of institutionalising a regime of austerity, Jonas opted for the rule of a benevolent elite; one that he saw as akin to an ecologically aware Marxist tyranny. But his tyranny would be only Marxist in name since Marxism is classically associated with developing science and production and consumption. Jonas understood that Marxism is alien to his project but nevertheless hoped, that a non-accountable enlightened elite could enforce its will on the public through appealing to Marxist ideology. He wanted to maintain a Marxist façade, while keeping secret the noble elite’s commitment to a world of austerity and restraint. In his advocacy of the promotion of deception by an enlightened elite, Jonas’s dystopia comes across as a caricature of Plato’s Republic.
At times Jonas’ is aware of the utterly depressing and dehumanising qualities of his embrace of dishonesty and deception. But he is convinced that this is the best course available for survival. As he explained:
‘perhaps this dangerous game of mass deception (Plato’s Noble lie) is all that politics eventually have to offer to give effect to the principle of fear under the mask of the principle of hope’[xxi]
In this teleology of evil, lying acquires the quality of a virtue and promoting the principle of fear under ‘the mask of the principle of hope’ is represented as an exercise in ethical responsibility. Jonas actually argued that in twisting the truth, his noble liars had conjured up a higher truth. As he put it; ‘we are also saying that in special circumstances the useful opinion may be the false one; meaning that, if the truth is too hard to bear, than the good lie must do service’[xxii]. No doubt Plato would have approved this latter day version of the noble lie.
The acceptance of the proposition that the use of fear is a legitimate option for raising awareness of a noble cause is even noticeable in academic circles. Some academics, who perceive themselves as critical intellectuals are prepared to openly advocate a double standard in relation to the politicisation of fear. Stanley Cohen, a British based criminologist, who elaborated the concept of moral panic to expose the tendency to promote anxiety towards so-called ‘folk-devils’, personifies the trend towards the embrace of a double standard. Towards the end of his career he explored the possibility of using moral panics for positive ends. He believed that moral panics could help the project of bringing to the attention of public, wrongs denied by the powerful. Moral panics directed at those who deny torture and injustice or climate change or act of abuse are deemed to be an acceptable approach towards motivating people to fear the right problems. Hence, ‘good moral panic’ is a welcome help for putting right moral wrongs[xxiii].
Crisis of Motivation
In a complex post-traditional setting, motivation constitutes a constant challenge for society. At different times and contexts, a wide range of motivational factors such as fear, hope, greed, loyalty and ideology influence the action of people. People contribute to society because they identify with their community or nation. They are also motivated by a variety of impulses; such as an aspiration for financial gain, religious convictions or ideological affiliations. Society relies on these motivational influences to realise its objectives and maintain stability and order.
Since the 1960s, it has been widely recognised that western capitalist societies suffer from a motivational deficit. Values that have inspired citizens in previous times – patriotism, loyalty, religion, ideology etc. -appear to have lost much of their import. More significantly, values that touch on everyday behaviour are themselves a focus of constant debate and contestation. The absence of the commanding influence of moral authority has created a condition where traditional values lost much of their influence over the outlook and behaviour of the younger generations. During the 1960s, this development was diagnosed as a temporary problem. More than a half a century later the problem has continued to endure and there has been little progress in establishing a system of values to replace the ones that have lost their influence.
Since the 1960s and especially since the 1980s, western societies have found it difficult to generate values with which to motivate people to identify with the social order[xxiv]. The scale of this problem was recognised by the German social theorist Jurgen Habermas, who in his essay, The Legitimation Crisis (1973) characterised it as a motivational crisis. Habermas explained that the problem facing post 1960s societies was the question of how to legitimate the social order. He argued, that the problem of legitimacy was underpinned by a ‘motivation crisis’- which was the outcome of the failure of the ‘socio-cultural system’ to supply the values required for the maintenance of the social order.
The implication of Habermas’ thesis was that society lacked the spiritual or cultural resources necessary for maintaining its authority. His analysis suggested that western capitalist institutions, which have historically relied on traditional values to legitimate themselves, were now forced to find new sources of validation[xxv]. Since the late 1960s the crisis of legitimation has become increasingly expansive and governments are continually in search of a ‘new narrative’ or a ‘big idea’.
From the 1970s onwards, the problem of motivation has expanded into all dimensions of social life. The motivational influences of communist, socialist and liberal ideology, or of identification with the nation and of the belief in the efficiency of capitalism have significantly diminished. The authority of science has also lost some of its lustre and consequently the formidable hopes invested in its potential to benefit humankind, now compete with pessimism about its future trajectory. In this cultural landscape, the perspective of harnessing people’s beliefs and hopes to motivate their loyalty and gain their commitment has lost much of its weight. By default, the motivational influence of fear has gained momentum and influence. One symptom of its growing appeal as a motivational force, is the readiness with which fear has been absorbed into the narratives of competing movements and campaigns. In this context fear is not simply a motivational influence but offers a wider perspective that touches on the different dimension of people’s lives.
The emergence of the perspective of fear is intimately linked to the motivational crisis that stems from the feeble status of moral authority. As I noted elsewhere, ‘the shift from positive affirmation to a negative conception of authority is one of the most significant developments in the cultural history of modernity’[xxvi]. A negative conception of authority does not communicate nor rely on upbeat and confident ideals about the future. Instead it depends on motivating people through appealing to their sense of vulnerability, existential insecurity and anxiety about the future. This is a form of authority that relies almost exclusively in protecting people from the negative influences that threaten their lives. It is precisely the absence of positive ideals and objectives, which could constitute a focus for unity and legitimacy, that has led to the emergence of a fear based negative conception of authority.
Outwardly, the contemporary perspective of fear resembles the outlook of the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who saw people’s fear of death as the foundation for establishing the authority of the sovereign ruler and for maintaining social order. For Hobbes, fear helped restrain people’s passions and served as an instrument for taming society and reinforcing order. Yet, Hobbes’s embrace of the fear of death as a sentiment that could underpin the stability of political authority, has little in common with the working of the perspective of fear in the 21st century. This perspective is detached and freed from the Hobbsian fear of death or of the momentous struggle for human survival that pre-occupied Hobbes. Hobbes offered a big picture that depicted the fear of death as a motive for converting individual aspirations onto a single unifying force- ultimately the secular state. In the 21st century, warnings about death touch on the minutiae of existence and possess a mater of fact, banal quality. They have little to do with the affairs of the state or with providing legitimacy for authority of a political ruler. In contemporary culture, fear is harnessed to the project of regulating the petty details of everyday life.
Not a force for unity
Although the politics of fear reflects a wider cultural mood it did not emerge spontaneously on its own accord. Fear has been consciously politicised. Throughout history fear has been deployed as a political weapon by the ruling elites. Machiavelli’s advice to rulers that they will find ‘greater security in being feared than in being loved’ has been heeded by successive generations of authoritarian governments. Fear can be employed to coerce, terrorise and maintain public order. Through provoking a common reaction to a perceived threat it can also provide focus for gaining consensus and unity. Today, the objective of the politics of fear is to gain consensus and to forge a measure of unity around an otherwise disconnected elite. But whatever the intentions of its authors, its main effect is to enforce the idea that there is no alternative
Thomas Hobbes and others hoped that fear can be harnessed to project of gaining of establishing social order and providing a focus of for solidarity and unity. Whatever the effects of the politicisation of fear in the past its rarely succeeds in realising its objective today. Despite the numerous claims that social solidarity can be forged through fear appeals directed at avoiding evil, there is little evidence that this approach constitutes an effective strategy. Nevertheless, the scare campaigns advocating the targeting people’s existential insecurity have had an impact on public life.
The steady flow of fear appeals, have had a noticeable effect on the conduct of daily life. However, it has certainly not led to the crystallisation of social bonds and of solidarity. Its main achievements are periodic outburst of fear directed towards specific threats. Short lived mobilisations in response to an act pollution, compete with campaigns inspired by the fear of fracking. Explosion of anger targeting immigrants vies for attention with displays of outrage directed at criminals and paedophiles. In the current climate, evils come in many shapes and sizes and people’s reaction them does not follow the same pattern. People’s responses to these evils tend to be at variance with one another. We do not always fear the same threats and we certainly react to them with varying degrees of intensity. There are a few notable exceptions to this trend- such as the universal fear of the child predator – but by historical standards, the consensus on the meaning of evil is conspicuously fragile.
The capacity of the politics of fear to unify people is assumed to be self-evident by its critics. Those who condemn the politics of fear, frequently articulate the concern that it represents a powerful force that can both intimidate the public and also unify it around its objective. The idea that the politics of fear is a formidable weapon for mobilising support and gaining unity often draws on the historical achievements of strong dictators and totalitarian regimes in the past. The claim that fear consolidates social bonds are so frequently repeated that its validity is rarely tested.
In fact, there is little evidence that governments, who ‘play the fear card’ are able to realise their goal and foster a mood of common purpose and solidarity. President Bush and his administration were often accused by their critics of playing the fear card after the destruction of the World Trade Centre. Both the Administration and its critics anticipated an enduring phase of public solidarity. As it turned, unity proved to be short lived. Within a few years, a ferocious debate erupted about the conduct of the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq. . A significant section of the American public even questioned who bore responsibility for 9/11. In August 2006, a survey of 1,010 adults found that 36 per cent of the American public suspected that federal officials assisted the 9/11 attacks, or took no action to stop them, so that the US could justify going to war in the Middle East. According to this Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, a significant number of respondents refuse to believe the official version of events[xxvii].
Whatever the effect of the politics of fear, it does not provide a durable foundation for social solidarity. Its one-dimensional emphasis on avoiding evil can foster a climate of risk aversion but it lacks the motivating force necessary to encourage people to come together. Though the perspective of fear is widely shared its main effect is to render people passive rather than to activate them. Although we all share the perspective of fear, we attach different meanings to it and therefore our fears are as likely to divide as to unify. What characterises the culture of fear is not solidarity and unity around a common concern but competing claims about what to fear. Hobbes’s argument about the unifying force of fear has little relevance in our time. Indeed it is the divisive legacy of the perspective of fear that ought to worry those concerned with the problem of social solidarity. The impact of this perspective is to reinforce pre-existing social and cultural patterns. It encourages the privatisation and the segmentation of social experience.
Conclusion
Fear has turned into a perspective that citizens share across the political divide. Indeed the main distinguishing feature of different parties and movements is what they ought to fear the most: the degradation of the environment, irresponsible corporates, immigrants, paedophiles, crimes, global warming of weapons of mass destruction.
In one sense the term politics of fear is a misnomer. Although promoted by parties and advocacy groups it expresses the renunciation of politics. Unlike the politics of fear pursued by authoritarian regimes and dictatorships in the inter-war era, it has no clearly focused objective other than to express claims in a language that enjoys a wider cultural resonance. Possibly one of the distinct feature of our time is not the cultivation of fear but the cultivation of our sense of vulnerability. Whilst it lacks a clearly formulated objective the cumulative impact of the politics of fear is to reinforce society’s consciousness of vulnerability. And the more powerless we feel the more we are likely to find it difficult to resist the siren’s call of fear.
The precondition for effectively countering the politics of fear is to challenge its principal message, which is that ‘There Is No Alternative’. There is always an alternative and whether or not we are prepared to act on the choices confronting us depends on whether we regard ourselves as defined by our vulnerability or our capacity to be resilient.
Check out my book, How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century
[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-fear/498116/
[ii] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/17/politics/barack-obama-mandela-speech-transcript/index.html .
[iii] V.A. Bruno,’The Production Of Fear. European Democracies In The Age Of Populisms And Technocracies’, Social Europe; 13 June 2018, https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-production-of-fear-european-democracies-in-the-age-of-populisms-and-technocracies .
[iv] Bo Rothstein, ‘Politics Of Fear Versus Politics Of Hope’, Social Europe: 12 June 2018, https://www.socialeurope.eu/politics-of-fear-versus-politics-of-hope .
[v] For a development of this point, see Furedi, Frank. How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018, pp.1-6
[vi] Bauman, Zygmunt ( 2006) Liquid Fear, Polity Polity Press, 2006 .p.2.
[vii] See Furedi, Frank. "The objectification of fear and the grammar of morality." In Moral Panic and the Politics of Anxiety, pp. 103-116. Routledge, 2012.
[viii] See Tim Balk, Q&A: ‘Martha Nussbaum on fear, protest, and Donald Trump’, http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/July-2018/Q-A-Martha-Nussbaum-on-Fear-Protest-and-Donald-Trump/ .
[ix] These points are further developed Furedi, Frank, (2005) Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, , Continuum, Chapters 3 and 7.
[x] Noah Berlatsky ‘Is Trump a fascist? Learning how fascism works can help prevent its spread in America’, 3 September 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-fascist-learning-about-how-fascism-works-can-help-prevent-ncna905886 .
[xi] See https://eand.co/why-havent-we-learned-anything-from-the-1930s-1dce6ef9b918 .
[xii] Mack , A. ( 2004 ), ‘Editorial’ , Social Research 71 , winter 2004) p.v.
[xiii] Mack (2004) p.vi.
[xiv] Kateb , G. ( 2004 ), ‘ A Life of Fear’ , Social Research 71 , winter 2004.pp.891 & 896.
[xv] Don Hazen ‘Grappling With the Politics of Fear’, AlterNet; 9 March 2005
[xvi] Michael Walzer ‘All God’s Children Got Values’, Dissent Magazine; Spring 2005, pp.3-6.
[xvii] Marcus (2002) pp.103-104.
[xviii] Jonas, Hans. The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age. University of Chicago press, 1985.
p.x.
[xix] Jonas (1985) p.27.
[xx] Jonas (1985) p.27.
[xxi] Jonas (1985) p.149.
[xxii] Jonas (1985) p.151.
[xxiii] See the discussion in Panchev, D. (2013). ’Good Moral Panics’ and the Late Modern Condition. London: LASALA Foundation.
[xxiv] For a discussion of the motivational crisis, see Furedi, Frank, The First World War: Still No End In Sight, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, pp. 152-156.
[xxv] Habermas, Jürgen, and Jü rgen Habermas. Legitimation Crisis Pa Txt. Vol. 519. Beacon Press, 1975.pp,73 & 75.
[xxvi] Furedi, Frank. Authority: a sociological history. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
p.407.
[xxvii] See ‘A third of US public believe 9/11 conspiracy theory’, Scripps Howard News Service, 2 August 2006.
[i] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/03/national-risk-register-danger-of-pandemic-in-five-years/#:~:text=Analysis%20in%20the%20document%20said,in%20single%20or%20multiple%20waves.
[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/27/scientists-july-world-hottest-month-record-climate-temperatures
Oh, boy, so completely on point. Very valuable. Thanks.