Culture of fear

Popularized by the American sociologist Barry Glassner, culture of fear (or climate of fear) is the concept that people may incite fear in the general public to achieve political or workplace goals through emotional bias. Nazi leader Hermann Göring explains how people can be made fearful and to support a war they otherwise would oppose: In her book 'State and Opposition in Military Brazil,' Maria Helena Moreira Alves found a 'culture of fear' was implemented as part of political repression since 1964. She used the term to describe methods implemented by the national security apparatus of Brazil in its effort to equate political participation with risk of arrest and torture. Cassação (English: cassation) is one such mechanism used to punish members of the military by legally declaring them dead. This enhanced the potential for political control through intensifying the culture of fear as a deterrent to opposition. Alves found the changes of the National Security Law of 1969, as beginning the use of 'economic exploitation, physical repression, political control, and strict censorship' to establish a 'culture of fear' in Brazil. The three psychological components of the culture of fear included silence through censorship, sense of isolation, and a 'generalized belief that all channels of opposition were closed.' A 'feeling of complete hopelessness,' prevailed, in addition to 'withdrawal from opposition activity.' Former US 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'. Frank Furedi, a former professor of Sociology and writer for Spiked magazine, says that today's culture of fear did not begin with the collapse of the World Trade Center. Long before September 11, he argues, public panics were widespread – on everything from GM crops to mobile phones, from global warming to foot-and-mouth disease. Like Durodié, Furedi argues that perceptions of risk, ideas about safety and controversies over health, the environment and technology have little to do with science or empirical evidence. Rather, they are shaped by cultural assumptions about human vulnerability. Furedi say that 'we need a grown-up discussion about our post-September 11 world, based on a reasoned evaluation of all the available evidence rather than on irrational fears for the future. British academics Gabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate argue that following terrorist attacks in New York, the Pentagon, Madrid, and London, government agencies developed a discourse of 'new terrorism' in a cultural climate of fear and uncertainty. UK researchers argued that these processes reduced notions of public safety and created the simplistic image of a non-white 'terroristic other' that has negative consequences for ethnic minority groups in the UK.