The ability to create fear is the most basic, primal and exploitive of the tools for manipulation. From the Garden of Eden, to would be Presidents amplifying the drumbeat that those that are different are rapists and killers, fear is the essential tool of demagogues.To try and tamp down would be tyrants and exploiters, Roosevelt told us that the only thing we had to fear, was fear itself. Ed Murrow, in talking about Joe McCarthy, reminded us that McCarthy didn't create the situation of fear, “he merely exploited it...and rather successfully.” Today in our siloed, self referential, anti-factual culture, that fear is stronger than ever. Fear of change, fear of the new, fear of the other, fear of the future, are dominant.
Sasha Abramsky, in Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream
, looks at where this fear might be taking us. My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Sasha Abramsky:
