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Culture of fear

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Homeland Security Advisory System in the U.S., which has been criticized as encouraging the public to fear terrorism.

Culture of fear is a term that refers to a perceived prevalence of fear and anxiety in public discourse and relationships, and how this may affect the way people interact with one another as individuals and as democratic agents. Among those who share this perception there are a variety of different claims as to the sources and consequences of the trend they seek to describe.

Variations on the thesis

Several different social commentators have offered different Culture of Fear theses, each with a distinctive emphasis. They may be categorised along a spectrum, from those which consider the phenomenon to be consciously directed - a deliberate policy of scaremongering - to those which treat it as arising spontaneously out of historical developments, as a reflexive response to other changes in human society. Fear leads to violence, violence leads to fear.

Constructed fear

Among those tending to argue that a Culture of Fear is being deliberately manufactured might be counted linguist Noam Chomsky, sociologist Barry Glassner, politicians such as Tony Benn[1][2], political filmmakers such as Adam Curtis and Michael Moore or reporters such as Judith Miller. The motives offered for such a deliberate programme of scaremongering vary, but hinge on the potential for increased social control that a mistrustful and mutually fearing population might offer to those in power. In these accounts, fears are carefully and repeatedly created and fed by anyone who wishes to create fear, often through the manipulation of words, facts, news, sources or data, in order to induce certain personal behaviors, justify governmental actions or policies (at home or abroad), keep people consuming, elect demagogic politicians, or distract the public's attention from allegedly more urgent social issues like poverty, social security, unemployment, crime or pollution. Such commentators suggest that we consider a range of cultural processes as deliberate techniques for scaremongering. For example:

  • Careful selection and omission of news (some relevant facts are shown and some are not);
  • Distortion of statistics or numbers;
  • Transformation of single events into social epidemics (Salem witch trials);
  • Corruption and distortion of words or terminology according to specific goals;
  • Stigmatization of minorities, especially when associated with criminal acts, degrading behaviour or immigration policies (Yellow Peril);
  • Oversimplification of complex and multifaceted situations;
  • Causal inversion (turning a cause into an effect or vice-versa);
  • Outright fabrication of events or claims.

Emergent fear

At the other end of the spectrum, a Culture of Fear is presented as a sensibility that emerges from every corner of contemporary society, spontaneously. Frank Furedi, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent (UK), who also founded the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain, exemplifies this end of the spectrum with his books, Culture of Fear: Risk-taking and the Morality of Low Expectations (1997) and Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right (2005). Furedi's account locates the source of the phenomenon in what he characterises a 'failure of historical imagination', a symptom of what he identifies as the exhaustion of 20th century systems of political meaning.

It was my experience of the 1995 contraceptive Pill panic that motivated me to write Culture of Fear. I carried out a global study of national reactions to the panic, and it quickly became clear that the differential responses were culturally informed. Some societies, like Britain and Germany, responded in a confused, panic-like fashion - while countries like France, Belgium and Hong Kong adopted a more calm and measured approach. [1]

By Furedi's account, a universal sense of fearfulness pre-exists and underpins the expression of fears by media and politicians. While media and politicians might amplify and exploit this sensibility, their activities are not decisive in its cultural production. Furedi levels the charge at various 'anti-establishment' or 'liberal' voices that they are at least as complicit in the exploitation of fears (ecological catastrophe, for example) as the 'establishment' that is more commonly held to benefit from the culture of fear.

Examples

These are examples from recent public discourse to illustrate their case. In each case, the general argument is that the nature of the threat described in public discourse is out of all proportion to the real risks and harms entailed. Different commentators may focus on different aspects of such cases - for example, one may focus on how stories might be distorted as they filter through the national media, while another may concentrate on the receptivity of the audience, or its willingness to alter its behaviour or voting preferences. For each case, there may be several experts and organizations who dispute the implication that the issue is unduly exaggerated.

Political context and criticism

Former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that the use of the term War on Terror was intended to generate a culture of fear deliberately because it "obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue". [3] In a broader domestic political context, many believe that conservative politicians and moral leaders make people afraid about things such as terrorism, crime or illegal drugs both to influence public opinion and personal behavior.

Language is a powerful and often subliminal tool in the development of fears. For example that which is simply known as "public health care" in most countries is often labelled as socialized medicine in the US to give the concept a whiff of socialism. Similarly, the adjective liberal, which was a word with positive associations to the political philosophy of maintaining freedoms and liberties has, in recent years, been turned into a word of abuse in the US, especially by the conservative media. The association or words and ideas with negative sentiments is an effective means of promoting a culture of fear. It echoes the Nazi use of language to infiltrate the minds of a population, which the writer Victor Klemperer described in his 1947 book LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: The language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's notebook.. This upturning of language as a means of mind control seeped further into public consciousness when George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, with its version known as Newspeak. - - Conservative talk show hosts have accused many liberal groups of creating irrational fears to manipulate people for their purpose or being solely motivated by fears.Rush Limbaugh often spoke of this on his radio show. While certain liberal points may be valid, conservatives accuse liberals of demonizing certain people and entities. To these conservative speakers, liberal speakers talk of "Big Oil" or "Big Tobacco", giving large complex entities such human, selfish, and amoral qualities that something, "anything", must be done. [citation needed] Right-leaning politicians in power have often been vilified by the left, say conservatives, and the resulting fears and doubts are not generated by the politicians themselves, but of the naysayers speaking dishonestly and frightfully about their opponents. Some have claimed that this led to the ousting of Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House.[citation needed] But conservatives have conducted tactics similar to that which they have accused the left. Bill Clinton received quite a bit of vilification from the right. [citation needed] The term "Big Government" was often used pejoratively in discussions relating to nationalizing health care [citation needed], though not to an increased military. Before the 90s, Ronald Reagan was often vilified. The history of vilification of presidents in the United States goes back towards the beginning of the 19th century. [citation needed] - - The idea of a society-wide "culture of fear" might be perceived by liberals and other opponents of conservatives as a shorthand for cultural manipulation for conservative political purposes. - - Conversely, liberals have also been accused of their fair share of scaremongering to suit their own political agendas, especially on issues of environmental protection, global warming, biotechnology and gun safety.


There are several alternative views:

  • Politicians and orators speak to create an environment more amicable to their intended policies and philosophy.
  • Promoters of a particular cause may want many people to join them in the cause. However, because people generally don't become emotional about something complex and hard to understand, promoters may tend to oversimplify matters to emphasize their main points and deemphasize points of contention.
  • Commercial media outlets are simply maximizing their audience, and scary information happens to be one thing that grabs people's attention. (It is sometimes argued that this serves the public interest, though more often that it distorts public understanding of issues.)

An explosion of overblown fears in the public discourse might be labeled by other commentators as "scares" or moral panic. Typical symptoms of a scare include a lack of scientific or general education among the public, intrinsic human biases in the assessment of risk, a lack of rational thinking, misinformation, and giving too much weight to rumor.

See also

References

  1. ^ YouTube - Tony Benn from Sicko
  2. ^ Brief encounter: Tony Benn | Podcasts | Guardian Unlimited
  3. ^ Terrorized by 'War on Terror' by Brzezinski

Books

  • Culture of Fear: Risk taking and the morality of low expectation, Frank Furedi, ISBN 0-8264-7616-3
  • The Culture of fear: The assault on optimism in America, Barry Glassner ISBN 0-465-01490-9
  • Manufacturing Consent: The political economy of the mass media, Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky ISBN 0-09-953311-1
  • Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, Frank Furedi, ISBN 0-8264-8728-9
  • State of Fear, Michael Crichton, ISBN 0-06-621413-0
  • Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right and the Moral Panic over the City, Steve Macek,ISBN 0-8166-4361-X
  • Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century. (Simon & Schuster; 1st Simon edition, November 1, 2003, ISBN 0-684-87324-9)
  • You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear Frances Moore Lappe and Jeffrey Perkins, ISBN 978-1585424245

DVDs

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