Freedom From Fear

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington D.C.

The current president and his advisors want us to be afraid. The president sends out ominous tweets about “bad dudes” and assigning blame if “something happens.”  He has portrayed American cities as “crime-infested,” filled with “carnage,” and “falling apart.” The president went on to claim – falsely –  that the murder rate has reached a 47 year high. Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway recently even invented a nonexistent terrorist attack in Kentucky. And Press Secretary Sean Spicer has claimed that the media are engaged in a cover-up of terrorist attacks.  Murders! Made-up terrorist attacks! Media cover-up! They want us to be afraid.

Together, all these things raise the question of why the president and his allies would want us to be full of fear. I don’t have the ability to look at what’s in the president’s heart. But, I can look at history: People who are afraid have been all too eager to increase government power and to restrict the civil liberties of others. In the 18th century, the British Parliament used a fear of protest and of economic losses to seize rights from American colonists. They granted direct control of the colony of Massachusetts to the crown and closed the port of Boston.  Sixty years later, the state of Virginia exploited the fear of slave rebellion to apply even greater restrictions upon a people already enslaved.  Virginia forbade African Americans, even those who were free, from freely practicing religion, or learning to read or write. And all of us are aware of how German nationalists exploited fear and hatred to commit the greatest atrocity of the 20th century.  Nazi leader Hermann Göring explained this strategy explicitly during the Nuremberg Trials:

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. … Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But … the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. – Hermann Göring, 1945

Fear is a powerful motivator, but a poor guide. When we allow fear to rule, we make poor decisions. We lash out at innocent people. We make mistakes. We even compromise our core values.

Throughout history and literature are warnings against being manipulated by fear and propaganda. The totalitarian government in George Orwell’s 1984 controls the population by manipulating their fear and hatred of arbitrary enemies. The central conflict in Dune, Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic, is a young man manipulating fears and prejudices to take leadership and to bring down an empire. Herbert calls fear “the mindkiller,” and that’s not wrong. When overcome by fear for our safety and our families, we’re all too eager to ignore evidence and reason. Letting fear choose our course can have tragic consequences not only where states and empires are concerned, but at the personal level as when Iago uses fear to manipulate Othello in Shakespeare’s play of the same name.

In 1941, before the entry of the United States into the Second World War, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt included this statement in his Four Freedoms speech before a join session of Congress:

Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world—assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941

To me, that seems as relevant here in the 21st century as on the eve of World War II. This administration is exploiting fear in order to divide us from each other and to give even more power to those who seek to curtail the liberties of the vulnerable and in doing so to render hollow the liberties enjoyed by the rest. There is nothing to fear. Don’t believe me? Look to your own life. How many people do you actually know who are victims of Muslim terrorists? Has there been any such attack in your town? Your state? Compare that to the number of car accidents you know of, or cases of domestic violence. No one is being killed by refugees. Our Muslim neighbors are not a danger to us. The murder rate is going down. You are not going to be killed by a terrorist and neither am I.

Don’t be manipulated by lies, propaganda, and fear.  If you won’t listen to me, listen to God:

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. – Isaiah 41:10

Or if you’re not interested in God, listen to Paul Atreides:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. – Litany Against Fear