Nazi leader Hermann Göring explains how people can be made fearful and to support a war they otherwise would oppose:
"The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
This is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in every country." -- Gustave Gilbert (1947) Nuremberg Diary.
"One day, the war on terrorism will come to an end. All wars do. And when it does, we will find ourselves still living in fear: not of terrorism or radical Islam, but of the domestic rulers that fear has left behind.”
--from the book "Fear: The History of a Political Idea" by Corey Robin.
Terrorized by 'War on Terror'
by Zbigniew Brzezinski Sunday, March 25, 2007 WASHINGTON POST
"The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America.
The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world.
Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare
Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue."
THAT FROM A MAN WHO AIDED REAGAN IN CONVINCING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT WE SHOULD ARM AND ASSIST THE TALIBAN AGAINST RUSSIA.
HE IS AN EXPERT AT INSTILLING FEAR, SO WE SHOULD TAKE HEED TO WHAT HE SAID.
Former Vice President Al Gore charged President George W. Bush's administration with a determination to "use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use".
FOR ONCE, GORE WAS RIGHT.
FEAR...
Fear is a primal human state, an instinct, something that can save us or destroy us.
From childhood on, we fear the monsters of our imaginations, lurking in dark closets, under beds, in deserted alleyways, but we also now fear monsters in the deserts of the Middle East and the mountains of Pakistan... and the neighbors next door.
But perhaps it is possible to pause and subdue our fears by carefully observing reality — just as we might advise for trying to calm and comfort a fear-stricken child.
We might find that, in reality, the more immediate danger to our democratic society comes from those who lurk in the halls of power in Washington and other national capitols and manipulate our fears to their own ends.
What are these ends?
They are typically the protection of moneyed interests."
WORDS OF WARNING THAT WE MUST GAUGE OUR FEARS AND NOT ALLOW FEAR TO RENDER US VICTIMS OF IT.
WHO IS LISTENING TO THE WARNINGS, AND WHO SEES THE SIGNS THAT FEAR IS BEING USED TO SUBJUGATE AN ENTIRE NATION?
IT'S ALREADY BEGUN.... THE NEW ROUND OF FEAR FOR 2017, THE OMINOUS WARNINGS, THE DARK, SCARY POSSIBLE SCENARIOS OF HOW MANY AMERICANS COULD BE KILLED DURING NEW YEAR'S FESTIVITIES IN TIMES SQUARE, DURING SUPER BOWL, AND EVEN IN THEIR BEDS.
FEAR.
FEAR IS THE MOST MARKETED PRODUCT IN AMERICA.
THE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYS AD-MEN AND PSYCHOLOGISTS TO BOTH "READ" AMERICA'S MOODS, SELL FEAR AND TO FIND NEW AND BETTER WAYS TO MAINTAIN THE CONTROL THAT INSTILLING FEAR GIVES THEM.
The New York Times:
Fifty States of Fear
"Bertrand Russell, writing as World War II was drawing to a close in Europe, observed that “neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”
Even democracies founded in the principles of liberty and the common good often take the path of more authoritarian states.
They don’t work to minimize fear, but use it to exert control over the populace and serve the government’s principal aim: consolidating power.
Philosophers have long noted the utility of fear to the state.
Machiavelli notoriously argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble.
Hobbes in “The Leviathan” argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign.
"...let there be no mistake about the consolidation of power in the form of the new surveillance state.
Last year President Obama brought the enemy closer to home, arguing in a speech at the National Defense University that “we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States” — radicalized individuals who were “deranged or alienated individuals — often U.S. citizens or legal residents.”
Recent revelations by Edward Snowden have shown an unprecedented program of surveillance both worldwide and on the American population.
Even Erik Prince, the founder of the private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide thinks the security state has gone too far:
"America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Whether it’s allowing the N.S.A. to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should.
I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than America," Prince said.
The widespread outrage over the new surveillance state has been great enough that President Obama announced that he would scale back some of its programs, but he remained strident in his overall support for aggressive surveillance.
During the George W. Bush administration we were treated to the color-coded terror threat meter. It was presented as a way to keep us secure, but constantly wavering between orange and red, it was arguably a device to remind us to be fearful.
Similarly for the elaborate Transportation Security Administration screenings at airports. Security experts are clear that these procedures are not making us safe, and that they are simply theater. The only question is whether the theater is supposed to make us feel safer or whether it is actually intended to remind us that we are somehow in danger.
The security expert Bruce Schneier suggests it is the latter:
"By sowing mistrust, by stripping us of our privacy—and in many cases our dignity—by taking away our rights, by subjecting us to arbitrary and irrational rules, and by constantly reminding us that this is the only thing between us and death by the hands of terrorists, the T.S.A. and its ilk are sowing fear.
And by doing so, they are playing directly into the terrorists’ hands.
The goal of terrorism is not to crash planes, or even to kill people; the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. … But terrorists can only do so much.
They cannot take away our freedoms. They cannot reduce our liberties. They cannot, by themselves, cause that much terror.
It’s our reaction to terrorism that determines whether or not their actions are ultimately successful. That we allow governments to do these things to us—to effectively do the terrorists’ job for them—is the greatest harm of all."
As the Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen notes in his book “A Philosophy of Fear,” Hobbes already anticipated the need for the sovereign to manipulate our fears.
The state, Svendsen writes, “has to convince the people that certain things should be feared rather than others, since the people will not, just like that, fear what is appropriate from the point of view of the state. Hobbes points out that this can necessitate a certain amount of staging by the state, which magnifies certain phenomena and diminishes others.
Another such example of this misdirection of fear took place in the case of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, in which the Boston Police Department effectively imposed martial law and seized control of people’s homes and used them as command posts in their effort to apprehend the perpetrators.
The bombings were terrible (three people died and more than 260 were injured), but just two days later another terrible thing happened: a giant explosion in a fertilizer plant in Texas killed at least 14 people and injured more than 160. For a moment we held our collective breath.
Could it have been terrorists?
NO, IT WASN'T TERRORISTS, BUT MANY DIED.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
IT'S ALL IN HOW FEAR IS MARKETED.
AMERICANS ARE CONDITIONED TO FEAR WHAT WE'RE TOLD TO FEAR.
EXAMPLES:
(1) 300,000 residents of West Virginia were without safe drinking water (in 2014) after 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol leaked into the Elk River from an industrial storage tank at a plant owned by a company called Freedom Industries.
Few, if any, of the Sunday TV talk shows discussed the matter, but imagine the fear that would have been pedaled on those shows if "terrorists" had poisoned the water of those 300,000 Americans.
Of course the danger is the same whether the cause is terrorism or corporate indifference and malfeasance.
(2) In 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,383 workers were killed on the job, and it has been at this level or higher since 9/11.
In other words, we suffer a 9/11 every year in terms of workplace fatalities.
But the problem is not limited to workplace deaths.
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. estimates another 50,000 die every year from occupational diseases. And none of this accounts for the thousands of workers who are permanently disabled each year.
In total, 54,000 Americans die every year due to work-related illnesses and accidents. This is the equivalent of 148 deaths each day; in terms of fatalities it is roughly a Boston Marathon bombing every half hour of every day.
But while we spend more than $7 BILLION a year on the T.S.A.’s national security theater in which over 58,000 T.S.A. employees make sure we are not carrying too much toothpaste or shampoo onto airplanes, the budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is under $600 million per year.
It seems that our threat assessments are flawed.
We are CONDITIONED to fear persons in caves in Pakistan but not the destruction of our water supply by frackers, massive industrial accidents, or the work-related deaths of 54,000 American workers every year. Fear of outside threats has led us to ignore the more real dangers from within."
"STAY HOME! DON'T TAKE CHANCES! IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS, CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT! WATCH YOUR NEIGHBORS, THEY COULD BE "HOME-GROWN TERRORISTS"! BE AFRAID, BUT BELIEVE US THAT WE WILL PROTECT YOU."
"BE AFRAID OF THE REPUBLICANS!" SAY DEMOCRATS.
"BE AFRAID OF DEMOCRATS!" SAY REPUBLICANS.
"BE AFRAID OF GAY PEOPLE, STRAIGHT PEOPLE, BLACK PEOPLE, WHITE PEOPLE, THE YOUNG, THE OLD, THE RICH, THE POOR, THE MEAT EATERS, THE VEGETARIANS, THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS, THE CORPORATIONS THAT DON'T CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT.
BE AFRAID OF CHRISTIANS, JEWS, MUSLIMS, ATHEISTS AND PAGANS.
BE AFRAID OF METEORS, FLYING SAUCERS, ALIENS LIKE E.T. AND ALIENS FROM ANYWHERE ELSE.
BE AFRAID OF CREATIONISTS, DARWINISTS, CLOWNS, ANIMALS, THE DARK, MOSQUITOES, THE SUN AND THE MOON.
JUST BE AFRAID.
YOU MUST BE AFRAID!"
AND MOST AMERICANS ARE AFRAID, SCARED OF THEIR OWN SHADOWS.
IT'S TAUGHT FROM BIRTH, ACCEPTED, EXPECTED, AND ENCOURAGED.
BE AFRAID TO FAIL, OR TO TRY, BECAUSE YOU MIGHT FAIL.
BE AFRAID TO BE UNIQUE, UNLIKE THE MASSES, TO BE AN INDIVIDUALIST.
BE AFRAID TO VOICE YOUR OWN OPINION...IT MIGHT "OFFEND" SOMEONE.
BE AFRAID TO NOT BE AFRAID.
SAYING ONE IS NOT AFRAID IS "UN-AMERICAN".
BLASPHEMY!
"Fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety. The foundation of this approach in our government can be traced back to burning rubble of the World Trade Center, exemplified by this statement by John Ashcroft, then the attorney general of the United States, in December 2001:
“To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this. Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends.”
TRANSLATION?
BE AFRAID ENOUGH TO GIVE UP YOUR LIBERTY, YOUR RIGHTS, YOUR FREEDOM, OR BE LABELED "UN-AMERICAN."
"Jeremy Scahill has shown in his book “Dirty Wars” that the “war on terror”creates still more enemies.
As Scahill describes the results, the United States Special Forces kill lists of seven targets gave rise to kill lists of hundreds, which in turn gave rise to kill lists of thousands today.
"Does it not occur to the United States that the drone strikes and assassinations are creating more terrorists than they are neutralizing?
Perhaps it has, but the calculation has been made that it does not matter. The newly minted enemies can be used to gin up more fear, more restrictions on our freedoms, and so the cycle goes.
One might argue that the United States has become a government of fear, by fear, and ultimately, for fear."
But the fear must be embedded in the PEOPLE.
"Whatever their motivation, by using fear to induce the rollback of individual rights, politicians, judges and lawmakers are working against the hard-won democratic principles and ideals that we and other democracies have defended for almost 250 years.
They are manipulating our fears to undo centuries of democratic reform. And it doesn’t matter if the empowered leader is called a king or a prime minister or a president; the end result is that fear has been used to place us back under the yoke of Hobbes’s sovereign and Machiavelli’s prince.
Yet ultimately we are not powerless. We can resist the impulse to be afraid. We may not at the moment have answers to the very real dangers that we face in this world, but we can begin to identify those dangers and seek solutions once we overcome our fear. "
Or as Bertrand Russell rather more elegantly put it, as World War II was drawing to a close, “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
BERTRAND RUSSELL WAS A HUMANIST.
LOOK THAT UP SOMETIMES.
FEAR IS AN ONGOING POLITICAL PROJECT.
"A unity of fear, then, is not an artifact of mass psychology; it is a political project, crafted through leadership, ideology, and collective action. Like many political projects, it often fails, or at least does not fully succeed. And when it fails—dissenters question whether we need be afraid, citizens cease to pay attention to “orange” and “red” alerts, parties focus on other items of public concern—governments either try to enlarge the infrastructure by insulating it against the vagaries of public opinion, or dampen the dissent. Again, old-fashioned politics."
SAUL ALINSKY
Saul Alinsky died in 1972, but his writings influenced those in political control of our nation today.
Recall that Hillary Clinton did her college thesis on his writings and Obama wrote about him in his books.
Alinsky's books: Rules for Radicals, Reveille for Radicals.
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY, SO YOU CAN RECOGNIZE THE "STEPS" TO OBTAINING POWER BY THE ELITISTS WHO SO CRAVE IT.
RULES FOR RADICALS, by Saul Alinsky:
1- “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
2- “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.
3- “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
4- “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
5- “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
6- “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.
7- “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.
8- “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
9-“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
10- "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition." It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.
11- “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.
12- “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.
13- “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy.
Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
Does any of this sound like what's happening in the United States, what has been happening for a long, long time?
FEAR, IF UNCHECKED, ERASES LOGIC, REASON, THE ABILITY TO ACT.
FEAR PARALYZES.
THE GREAT STRATEGISTS KNEW THIS.
IN MODERN TIMES, USING FEAR AS A TOOL OF WAR BECAME KNOWN AS "PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE"...THE WEARING DOWN OF HUMAN MINDS.
WHAT DOES ISIS USE MOST?
FEAR.
WHAT DO OUR OWN POLITICIANS USE TO GET ELECTED AGAIN AND AGAIN?
FEAR.
WHAT DOES OUR GOVERNMENT USE TO ROB US OF OUR RIGHTS, OUR LIBERTY?
FEAR.
IT'S A CONSTANT WAR AGAINST OUR MINDS AND FEAR IS THE WEAPON OF CHOICE."In the course of war, fear and terror are often used as weapons to distort the opponent's decision-making or break the opponent's will." -- Journal of Military Ethics
Volume 5, 2006 - Issue 4.
LET US REMEMBER:
“The art of war is the art of deception.” ― Sun Tzu
NOTHING DECEIVES QUITE LIKE FEAR.
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