Fear as a Political, Social, and Cultural Tool: Using External Enemies to Crush Domestic Dissent

[Ian David]

Sunday, February 11, 2007

I hope no one was too disappointed at my absence last week. I started to suspect that people might be getting too close to discovering where I was so I had to take some time off to move to a new Undisclosed Location. It'll be a lot harder for you to find me where I am now, I'm sure.


This week I'd like to write about the same topic I was going to address last week — it was more timely last week, perhaps, but it never goes out of style: the conservative, Republican use of fear as a political weapon against internal enemies, dissenters, and political opponents. On January 31st, Amanda Marcotte wrote about how conservative pundit Mike Gallagher actually admitted that terrorism would be a good thing for Republican political ambitions:

Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — but I think he might have been wrong. I think that we should also perhaps fear, or at least be very wary of, those in our society who would use our fears for their own political agendas. Mike Gallagher's comments are not an isolated instance of political insanity — similar thoughts have been expressed to varying degrees by a number of conservatives and Republicans over the past few years. There are many who look fondly on the 9/11 attacks because they provided an excuse to push through domestic and international policies they had long advocated, but could not successfully impose on others because there wasn't enough fear in American society to help.



The use of political fear to enact new policies against foreign enemies and to silence domestic political opponents, is easy to see and imagine. What I'd like to focus on here, though, is to the use of political fear as an excuse to move against the less powerful in society in order to ensure that they don't get any more power. Economic and political elites work hard to fuse foreign enemies with "internal" enemies who seek domestic reform. This isn't easy, but it's common and often successful — Dinesh D'Souza and Newt Gingrich are two obvious examples of this operating currently.

More:
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2007_02_11_archive.html#1578021876431842165

[charlyvi]

1. Here's the Goering quote:

...it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.



Scary, huh? :scared: