CONSTRUCTING THE ROOTS OF FEAR IN UNITED STATES (original) (raw)
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Constructing an American fear culture from red scares to terrorism
Building on the work of social analysts who have identified the emerging culture of fear in the USA, this article argues that the current fears about terrorism derive from deliberate campaigns by the world capitalism's elites. It traces the history of political scares since the late 19th century to show an evolution from red scares to terrorism. While acknowledging the complexities of cultural constructions, the obsession with terrorism is shown as an outgrowth and offspring of earlier, anti-communist hysterias in the USA. Tourism/Hospitality. His research area is risk perception and disaster-management. With more than 300 published papers and 15 books, he works as editorial board member on more than 20 tourism and disaster-related journals and international councils dedicated to the studies of risk.
This chapter argues that by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century mass, public fear came from social control efforts on behalf of global capital. Beginning about 1970 the system of capital became globalized and faced a long term crisis of over accumulation and concentration with a parallel falling rate of profit. The need to control increasingly impoverished working classes throughout the world required concerted campaigns using forceful repression by intelligence-military-police apparatuses and ideological manipulations using propaganda and public relations. Technological developments made possible increasingly tighter control over public narratives, especially in the form of so-called social media. Fears were manufactured and public attention and consciousness were diverted so that the liberation and de-colonial movements of the post Second World War period were blunted to assure continued hegemony of a global ruling class. In short, this chapter argues for constructed public fears as part of the increasingly critical class war during a long term crisis of world capitalism.
Fear and Terror in a Post-Political Age
Government and Opposition, 2007
Terror Management Theory (TMT) conceptualizes political ideology as a particularly important component of the cultural worldviews upon which people rely for protection from deeply rooted existential fears. This article summarizes the central ideas of this theory and basic supporting evidence and then reviews research on the implications of TMT for understanding ideological conflict, support for leaders, policies, and political violence. It considers the various sources of security upon which people can rely and suggests that chronic and situational activation of specific worldview values is one important determinant of the specific aspects of the worldview that people rely on for security. It also considers research on factors that encourage and discourage violent solutions to political conflicts, the determinants of ideological consistency across diverse issues, and possible explanations for the current political divisiveness that is found in many nations.
Enemies Everywhere: Terrorism, Moral Panic, and US Civil Society
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Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, terrorism has experienced a prominence in discourse across the U.S. The representations of terrorists and terrorism by the news media and politi have contributed to the edifice of terrorism as a ''moral panic''. This treatise examines the social effects that have or may occur due to the social construction of a moral panic of terrorism. The thematic frame is situated within Cohen's stages of a moral panic. We offer an analysis of the media's depiction and coverage of acts of terrorism, and legislative, political and legal responses in the form of social and cultural changes occurring from the creation of a moral panic. In addition, we offer an analysis of the state's vested interest in the social construction of this panic, leading to increased levels of fear, targeted at the general public's consciousness. This article concludes that the presentation of terrorism and terrorists by the media and politi have contributed to unnecessary levels of panic and fear, misguided public consciousness, and the development of legislation creating negative social ramifications yet be seen.
PSC 422.006 - The Politics of Fear (Spring, 2015)
Fear has always been a part of human life. One hope, widely expressed among the philosophers and social theorists of the 18th and 19th centuries, was that progress in science and philosophy would eventually banish it from our lives: diseases would be vanquished with improvements in medical science; hunger through improvements to agriculture; superstition and prejudice through reason and education; want and oppression through mass production and enlightened administration. Yet our lives -and our politics -remain persistently saturated with it. How has fear evolved over the past century and a half? Do contemporary fears differ from those of earlier eras, and if so, how? How do those new (or not-so-new) fears structure both our selfunderstandings, and our political engagements? Note: this is an advanced research seminar based on the instructor's ongoing research. While there are no prerequisites, students will be expected to read carefully, and to prepare for and participate in class consistently. Readings will be extensive, and students should expect to write -and to revise -a great deal.
The Terror Scare: War on Terror Mythology and Moral Panic
Moral judgment about the historical events with which War on Terror narratives have become associated has become implicit in the mere act of referring to them. As a result of the currency it has gained through widespread usage in the mass media, irrespective of its patent lack of objectivity, usage of the proper noun ‘War on Terror’ has become obligatory, making moral judgment impossible to avoid. Because its characteristic bias favours the neoconservative policies of the Bush administration, the necessity of using the proper noun ‘War on Terror’ has forced any reference to the events with which it has become associated to implicitly conform to the process of framing narratives in terms legitimizing military aggression and state terrorism carried out in violation of international law. While numerous attempts have been made in the decade and a half since to make sense of the 9/11 atrocities using the framework established by ‘War on Terror’ narratives, their implicit moral judgment frustrates impartiality, much less to say understanding. The ideological narratives associated with the Western response to the 9-11 attacks have displayed characteristics that are far more accurately cast as moral panic. A number of key characteristics points inexorably towards this conclusion: 1) the conflation in War on Terror narratives of object and relation; 2) the function of War on Terror narratives as a propaganda trope; 3) the processes known to sociology as the ‘production of deviance’ and social psychology as ‘moral disengagement’; 4) the way those responsible for creating WoT narratives reconstruct themselves as cures to problems for which they are the primary cause; 5) the systemic and deep-seated cognitive dissonance characteristic of WoT narratives between rhetoric and actions. On the basis of the above, this article argues that the entire period is more accurately described as a Terror Scare, a moral panic over terrorism and the first truly global moral panic.