Culture of fear

Homeland Security Advisory System chart in the United States, 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.

Theoretical variations

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

Constructed fear

The manufacturing of a Culture of Fear is presented in the ideas of linguist Noam Chomsky, sociologist Barry Glassner, politicians, such as Tony Benn, and political filmmakers, such as Adam Curtis and Michael Moore. Reporters such as Judith Miller are sometimes accused of being involved in the manufacture of a culture of fear. The motives offered for such a deliberate program 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 those who wish 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 issues like foreign policy, poverty, social security, unemployment, crime, pollution, or individual rights. 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, Hispanophobia, Islamophobia, Blood Libel and AIDS, which was originally called "GRIDS" for "Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome");
• Oversimplification of complex and multifaceted situations;
• Causal inversion (turning a cause into an effect or vice-versa);
• Outright fabrication of events or claims.

The writer Jennie Bristow believes that the culture of fear that emerged following the September 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks were not so much emergent fears but rather top-down manufactured ones by politicians and reflected by an uncritical media. She also believes that the fears engendered, although irrational, allowed patriotism to emerge which eventually led to military adventurism in places not even connected to either 9/11 or the anthrax attacks.

The culture of fear is not a spontaneous reaction by the public to a truly dangerous world. The worldwide anthrax panic sparked by a handful of anthrax-related deaths in America shortly after 9/11 was not caused by a genuine and widespread mortal danger facing US and European citizens. Our propensity to panic about everything from child abductions to mobile phones does not come from the fact that modern life contains more risks than ever before - on the level of everyday reality, the opposite is the case. . . . The culture of fear comes from the top down. It comes from society's leaders, and their inability to lead. . . . The USA was propelled outwards and backwards, to attacking its safe-bet rogue state. In doing so, it revealed its weakness, prompting other nations to pick, parasitically, at America's weakness for their own short-term gains. These antics have been played out to the public, whose disenchantment with politics and immersion in the culture of fear makes them cynical and scared about any attempt by political leaders to exercise anything that looks like power. And the media, rumour-heavy and analysis-lite, has faithfully reflected the depth of confusion that characterises the current times .

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' 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.

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".

The writer Victor Klemperer described the Nazis' use of language to create fear in his 1947 book LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: The language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's notebook.. George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes a government that uses language to control its citizenry, using an invented language known as Newspeak.

The phrase "moral panic" has been used to describe a widespread, irrational scare brought about by 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.

Language as a conditioner for fears

Language is a powerful and often subliminal tool to condition the development, internalization and habituation of fear. 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, as described in Klemperer's 1947 book.

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.

Michael Foucault the French philosopher has written extensively about the power of language on thought, in his book The Order of Things, the French title being Les Mots et les choses, French for Words and Things. and the book that was a result of critique on that book, "The Archaeology of Knowledge". According to Foucault knowledge isn't primarily the result of rational thinking, but arises from the structure of Discourse

In more recent times in the U.S., publicly-funded health care is often labelled as socialized medicine by its opponents to give the concept an air of socialism.

Similarly, the adjective liberal, which began use, politically, as a word with positive associations related to the philosophy of maintaining freedoms and liberties, has over the last half-century, been increasingly associated with negative political connotations, particularly in the parlance of conservative politicians seeking to portray their opponents in a negative light.

More recently, participants in the debate over man-made climate change have used terms such as "catastrophic", "chaotic", "irreversable", or "rapid" alongside the term "climate change". The use of such generalized terms to describe climate data can stir emotions and create fear. Using such terms can, paradoxically, make the implementation of political solutions more challenging, as members of the public feel helplessness and disempowerment.

See also

• Bowling for Columbine The culture of fear was a major theme of Moore's 2002 film.
• Conspiracy of silence (expression)
• Conspiracy theory
• Criticism of the War on Terrorism
• Crowd psychology
• Fear mongering
• Fnord
• Information Operations Roadmap - A declassified Pentagon document describing policy and techniques consistent with a culture of fear
• Information Warfare
• Junk food news
• Mass hysteria
• Mean world syndrome
• Media hype
• Moral panic
• Propaganda
• Risk Society
• Security mom
• Sensationalism
• Social control
• Strategy of tension
• The Power of Nightmares
• Yellow journalism

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., Hunter S. Thompson, (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
• Creating Fear: News and the Construction of a Crisis, David L. Altheide, (Aldine de Gruyter, 2002, 223pp. ISBN 978-0-202-30660-3)

Documentaries

• Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore. Investigation the events that lead to the Columbine Shootings, and the influence of the Gun Lobby. The film explores what Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns.

• Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), directed by Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terrorism, and its coverage in the American news media.In the film, Moore contends that American corporate media were "cheerleaders" for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and did not provide an accurate and objective analysis of the rationale for the war or the resulting casualties there.

• Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism (2004), directed by Robert Greenwald. This documentary film criticises the Fox News Channel, and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, claiming that the channel is used to promote and advocate right-wing views

• The Power of Nightmares - a BBC series of documentary films, written and produced by Adam Curtis. The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement. As of 1 January 2008, the film has yet to be aired in the United States.

External links

• The culture of fear, by Barry Glassner - Introduction - "Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things"
• The Culture of Fear by Frank Furedi - "Culture Of Fear: Risk-Taking And The Morality Of Low Expectation"
• The Culture of Fear by Noam Chomsky
• Beyond a Culture of Fear, by K. Lauren de Boer - article published in the EarthLight magazine, #47, fall/winter 2002/2003
• A Legal Culture of Fear - Common Good : safeguarding Americans from a legal culture of fear. Philip K. Howard's testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, June 22, 2004
• You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear by Frances Moore Lappé and Jeffrey Perkins
• Fearless News - An online community collecting statistics on fear in mass media
• Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis by David Altheide
• The Political Implications of a Discourse of Fear: The Mass Mediated Discourse of Fear in the Aftermath of 9/11 by Stefanie Grupp Clasby