The Fear War

From Random Hipatia

Every major era is given a defining name. We had periods like the “roaring twenties”, for example. More recently, we had a long conflict between two imperial powers based on national competition, ideology, resources, and control. This was called the “cold war” and was used to justify and maintain extensive mobilization, a “military industrial complex” of enormous size, and expansive government control for over 40 years. Sometimes witchhunts (such as the ideological purges known as Mcarthyism) were run its name. Sometimes it would break out into proxy wars. But the name and the period were defined by this one bipolar conflict.

For our current era, made of a largely self created assymetric threat of middle eastern bombers used to justify even further consolidate executive rule, witch hunts for sleeper cells, ever decreasing civil liberties, for justifying new and old forms of racism, and the use of fear to create popular demand for an entirely new security state modeled on totalitarianism of the past, I propose the name “the fear war” to define this particular era.

This “war” is about imperial expansion abroad and conslidation at home, using fear as the primary motivator for popular mobolization. As it is conducted under the guise of war against a stateless enemy that can be infinitely redefined as needed to justify one imperial invasion after another, under the banner of “increasing security”, I think the era, like the cold war, should have a clear reference to conflict, both real and potential. This war however, is not just fought abroad, but also at home, against those very institutions and aspects of our society that represent social progress.

Fear is a poweful tool. In that it is now our primary tool of statecraft, I suspect this era, that I dub the fear war, will be with us for awhile. FDR once said there is nothing to fear, but fear itself. He was wrong, there is something to fear far more; those who are able to use fear.