A Climate of Fear

A protester holds a sign during an anti-lockdown protest in New York on Nov. 22, 2020. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

Commentary

The medical, media, and political elites’ focus has shifted from facts to fomenting and magnifying fear.

In Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address in 1933, the new president told a nation in the depths of the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Those words were true and rightfully spoken at that time. President Roosevelt knew that fear is a powerful emotion that limits our ability to reason, act wisely, and work together. It’s also an emotion that’s contagious and not easily diminished or dissipated.

The Power of Fear to Fragment Society

Unfortunately, President Roosevelt’s words are even more applicable today.

On a personal level, decisions made under the emotional duress of fear are rarely the best ones and often the worst. Fear can bring out the best in us but can often bring out the worst. That’s more likely to occur the more fragmented a society becomes. Fear among different groups of people creates an us-versus-them context in the minds of individuals or even an “every-man-for-himself” attitude, which pits one group against another or even each of us against each other.

Now elevate that sense of fear to the level of the national electorate. A people or a nation that's paralyzed with fear makes rash decisions based on their fears of what could happen, not necessarily what the current situation truly is. When that happens, a society can quickly degenerate to a point at which our base instincts determine our behavior in a law-of-the-jungle social environment.

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President Roosevelt knew this, as do our leaders today. The difference is that today, rather than seeking to dispel fear, our political and media elites create it, expand it, and revel in it. Rather than promote hope and strength of character in us, in a Roosevelt- or even a Reagan-like fashion, they traffic in fear and its fellow traveler, social division, in order to fragment our society.

It’s the old but effective divide-and-conquer strategy, and sadly, it works very well. The mechanism for divide-and-conquer is the constant drumbeat of the Big Lie, which is also a tried and true method for controlling society. It was first practiced and perfected by Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany using the mass media, but it has been successfully used by the USSR and every other communist and dictatorial regime in the world since the 1930s.

Social Media Is Magnitudes More Powerful Than Legacy Media

The difference today is the massive and pervasive presence of social media. Its reach and social saturation throughout society are magnitudes greater than have ever been possible before. What’s more, our political and media elites create and exaggerate fear without even mentioning the word. “Fear” is driven into our collective psyches under the guise of our government keeping us “safe,” and anyone who challenges that narrative is demonized.

The repetition by the media and the pharmaceutical industry of how to stay safe from COVID-19 always involves more drugs and less freedom. That’s by design. The elites who run society know that once enough of our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and others with whom we interact become more fearful than rational, they’re easily manipulated and divided into confrontational groups.

Does that sound like a conspiracy theory?

Yes, it probably does, but it’s also how the Stasi, the East German security agency, turned virtually every neighbor into an informant. The result was that people were fearful of doing anything that could be construed as being against the communist East German government. In light of what we’ve been through the past three years—and what looks to be on the horizon—the conspiracy theory accusation has lost its sting.

From Conspiracy Theory to Fact

Recall, for example, how those who received the COVID-19 vaccine turned against those who remained unvaccinated. The contrast and social division couldn’t have been clearer or more deliberate. Vaccinated people were characterized by the media and government agency spokespeople as selfless, smarter, and better human beings than those who refused the vaccine.

On the flip side, the “anti-vaxxers,” as they came to be called, were publicly derided by the medical, pharmaceutical, media, and government elites. They were accused of being low-intelligence conspiracy theory nuts who wouldn’t or couldn’t “follow the science,” even when they followed the science from experts such as Dr. Robert Malone, one of the inventors of the mRNA technology, and other medical doctors in Europe and Asia, including former Pfizer Vice President Dr. Michael Yeadon, all of whom were de-platformed from mainstream media and social media.

In fact, any “alternative” remedy to the experimental and highly dangerous mRNA vaccines, such as ivermectin, was summarily dismissed, even though nations that used ivermectin had the lowest mortality rates. As noted above, many media personalities and even medical experts with contrary opinions were silenced, shamed, and shunted into professional oblivion, being substituted by compliant replacements. That practice continues to this day, with Russell Brand serving as the latest example of being de-monetized by YouTube.

In light of vaccine injuries and deaths, as well as the staggering profits that vaccines have delivered to the pharmaceutical industry, the number of people who believe the mainstream media, the government, and in the vaccines is much smaller today than three years ago.

Conspiracy theory narratives have become conspiracy facts.

The Endgame of Fear

So what’s the endgame of promoting and enforcing a climate of fear throughout society?

It’s simple. Fearful people are far more compliant and, therefore, are easily controlled, pacified, monitored, and dehumanized. Next thing you know, we’ll all be eating bugs and liking it.

The antidote to fear, of course, is freedom and access to real and contrary information so that each person can make up his or her own mind. The encouragement, enablement, and empowerment of private individuals to exercise informed judgment about their health and their livelihoods are also part of the solution. A vibrant, thinking, and active society of informed individuals isn't nearly as vulnerable to the polarizing climate of fear that our elites are foisting upon us.

In short, to live in fear is to live in bondage.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.