Fear as a Weapon
Technology harnessed to spread hate and violence
If you strip all of history and culture away, and look at the human animal, there are just a limited number of core emotions that our behavior is based on. Fear is a primary emotion. As individuals our fears may stem from many different sources, but fear of the unknown and fear of the other, of those people and things outside our realm of knowledge and experience, is a constant of human existence through all times. As individuals we have many ways of responding to this existential fear, some are productive and some are destructive. In some cases it is an unnoticed motivation for action in our lives and in other instances these fears overwhelm and consume our lives. But we are not just individuals, humans are a social animal and there is no evidence that we have ever been anything else. So every emotion and impulse we have is also operational in a social context. One of the ways that this works is that we respond to the fears of others. We communicate our fears and gauge how others responses resonate with our own thoughts, and this tends to spread through a community and build a consensus. If we look at how this plays out historically it will help to shed some light on why we find ourselves in such dire straits today.
Most of us were taught a history that includes a lineage back through Europe and originating with Greeks and Romans, and whether or not these were really our people, this is the American version of history. In my case that history includes being Jewish, and this colors a bit of that narrative. For example, in the case of the Crusades I’m pretty sure that none of my people were marching to Jerusalem. In fact, they were probably cowering in a cellar or hiding in the woods outside of town.
The Crusades were started by the Church. The Catholic Church was “The church” and when the Muslims successfully took over the holy land and began incursions into western Europe the Pope called for a holy crusade to retake Jerusalem. Islam was a threat and the church was the primary source of information for the western world, so when the Pope spoke the word went out and spread. In this case what spread was a religious zeal for the destruction of the other. As James Carrol amply documented in his book, “Constantines Sword” most crusades began with the terrorizing of the local Jewish population. The close by and convenient “other” to use as a warm up on the way to the holy land. This ability to spread a message that shaped the reality of a large group of people and coalesced into action was the power of the church.
The next step of the evolution of this kind of power to mobilize large groups was the invention of the printing press. The early examples of the effect of this invention include the Reformation, the spread of ancient and scientific ideas in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the birth of democracy in the revolutionary period of the 18th and 19th centuries. But none of these momentous movements of society changed human nature. In Steven Zipperstein’s book, “Kishinev and the Tilt of History” he shows how the local daily newspaper played a major role in spreading antisemitism and focused the inchoate fears of the local christian population on the Jewish community. A local publisher printed and distributed a flyer calling for action on the day after Easter and for a day and a half jews in the city were attacked and killed. This event is important to me personally because my paternal grandfather was from Kishinev, but it was important to the world for several other reasons, including that the story of the pogrom made the New York Times and spread an awareness throughout the world, and the reporters who investigated the event came back to the USA and recognized that the same kinds of things were happening to blacks in this country and acted by helping to found the NAACP.
By the 1920’s the press had grown to include radio, but newspapers were still the primary source of the news for most of the worlds population. It was not an accident that Mussolini was a newspaper editor and in the ‘30s and ‘40s fascists movements made controlling the press a fundamental strategy for consolidating power. The use of the fear of the other as a key factor of the holocaust is not a story that I need recount. It is familiar to everyone.
Similarly, there are many accounts of how the rise of cable and the introduction of far right broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh led to the resurgence of right wing politics in America. The introduction of the internet has exponentially expanded the opportunities to spread an unfiltered message to the masses. And what is that message? Fear the other. Whether you are Trump, or Orban, or Le Pen, or Meloni, the message is that immigrants are to be feared and we must act. Whether you fear immigrants or transgender, or minorities, or liberals, communists, you name it, your fear has a home. The message resonates and it is endlessly repeated and reinforced. It is immune from reason or logic.
You combat this is by creating a society that does not leave a majority of people lonely and afraid. Yes I know, not that easily done, but surely we can do better. And yes it seems to be too late for that, but our own fear of what Trump and the Republican Party mean to do to our country is greatly motivating people to act. Many are angry and confused and looking for that call to action that resonates with them. They are waiting for that strongman on the left to step forward and tell them what they need to do. But we don’t need to be afraid. There is another human emotion that also motivates us and that is love. If we truly want to see others cared for, as we would care for a member of our own family, then the action needed is an expression of love, and not of fear. This essential sociality of our species should remind us that we are all brothers and sisters and the earth is our one home. We need to love all of it and protect it. There is only one family and one home, and we are all in it together.
Go forth with love and do what is needed.