Branding Fear

Branding Fear

(Tariku Abas Etenesh)

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Months ago, I paid for a ticket at the box office of Ambassador Theater to watch an old, 1998 released movie, Soldier. I was commencing a planned lazy Sunday morning with one of my pastime activities. However, when I left the movie theater, I was replaying a scene from the film, in my mind, again and again.

The film with the lead role of a soldier, Todd, acted by Curt Russell, depicts a world order where soldiers are selected from birth to be trained in an institution where they would be subjected to trainings aimed at turning them into remorseless killing machines capable of no emotion but a few.

Almost half way in to the movie, Todd, declared dead after a fight with a better trained soldier of another military school, gets discarded. En route to the dumping site, he regains consciousness to only realize he was in a waste ship. He finally finds himself dumped on another planet. The planet is fortunately life supporting but ceaselessly stormed by a cycle of heavy gusts of sand storms.

A small community of survivors from a shuttle crash of long ago lived on that planet. It is this community that Todd joined as ill prepared as he was to survive in a non military setting of that kind.

The part that triggered me to write came in one of the scenes when Todd was being trained on cutlery and handling, gets distracted by the beauty of his host and cuts his finger. Despite the cut and bleeding, however, he shows no emotion. Astounded by his failure to exhibit pain, his host Sandra, sincerely wanted to know why that was so and asked:

Sandra: Sgt. Todd... what's it like? What's it like being a soldier? What do you think about? 
[silence] 
Sandra: You must think about something? 
[silence] 
Sandra: What about feelings then? 
[silence] 
Sandra: You must *feel* something? 
[pause] 
Todd: Fear. 
Sandra: Fear? 
Todd: Fear and discipline. 
Sandra: Now? 
Todd: Always. 

The terms Fear and Discipline were used in the scene to effectively represent the weight of deprivation the character had undergone throughout his life that left him inept in a non military setting. The mercilessness he gained from his training was met by the naked realities of his natural tendencies towards living beyond the limits of artificially dictated experiences.

Age of the ‘unprecedented’ everything?

After the movie, I asked myself, if contemporary society both developing and developed, were a band of pop singers in a studio with the aim of recording an album whose lyric represents what filled the hearts and minds of millions, what more would have been an appropriate title for the album than Fear and Discipline?

You might feel otherwise but as for me, especially during this age of the “unprecedented everything”, very less seems to be on the horizon to claim otherwise. Have you noticed how heads of states and the media these days seem to have fallen in love with the word “unprecedented”, usually in a negative tone? I would say the media is the Gold medalist for using it in pessimistic tone. Unprecedented economic downturn, unprecedented flood, unprecedented nuclear fallout, unprecedented earthquake, unprecedented revolution; the list seems to be endless. Thanks to the doomsday enthusiasts, we even had an ‘unprecedented end of the world’ just last year on May 21 2011.

Darkly tinted ‘Unprecedented’ is tuning itself into a household symphony too often filling the air. If decades have defining spells represented in single words, unprecedented seems to be the drum-major for the current age. If we curiously look around, it won’t take us long to realize how crowded we are with the many ‘unprecedented’.

What is striking is not the often fear rousing manner the word is used by leaders and the media, but the manner it has turned itself into a mantra of everyday life. Don’t take me wrong here, most people might not say it out loud literally but live it nevertheless and vise-versa. It doesn't take one to be a social theorist to learn how societies are made to tick in some manners due to words styled as policies and opinions usually coming down from leaders with weight of their nations’ responsibilities coupled with the media agitation.  

Lines emphasizing uneasiness, uncertainties, and dread have polluted the air so much so that millions are forced to take things as all unprecedented and thus uncertain and live in fear.  

Fear on sell? 

Like every major age in recorded history has seen, the information age has already defined a social chemistry fitting the age that imposes not only the guiding rhetoric of the age for people but also their everyday “to think list.” And as far as I am concerned, one item in the current menu of this to think list which is ushered by its cousin “unprecedented” and served with the illusive partner discipline is fear.

The usual excuse tainted ‘hey that is just the reality and the media is reflecting it pragmatically’; would only be simplifying the matter too much. I have no problem with the words; it is with the brand name advertised with it called ‘fear mongering’ that I have problem with.

Fear mongering seems to have assumed an airborne virus status infecting millions who are in frequent contact of the point of contagion that are intended to sell it like hot cakes. These points of contagion among other are also information sources of the nature that our everyday lives are intertwined with.

Edward Bernays, the publicity guru who is credited for staring the profession of Public Relation (PR) and on how to use the media for the manipulation of the mass, wrote in his often quoted 1925 text Propaganda, that “it is possible to regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies.” And he is credited to have laid the basis for the subsequent use of the media by political as well as commercial interests for the manipulation of the mass. Governments in every part of the world known after various credentials of governance, when they lack the will to uphold the unalienable rights of man, for various reasons, fear mongering becomes their best partner to rule.

The success of such manipulations is largely seen as a factor of fear due to felt or anticipated danger which instead instills a dictated discipline favorable for the political as well as commercial interests.

Such factors, i.e. disciplining the mass through fear are rare to be spelled out by politicians to be their overt goals. Yet whenever needed, they tune the media in their control to brand a marketable fear that could be justified as a factor of threat threatening the public from corners visible for the eyes of the government but not to the public. This in turn subtly demands a controlled behavior or discipline of a kind that yields subjugation to the whims of the special interests. Such seems to be the case both in developed and developing countries.

History is witness to the fact that during great economic upheavals, as the world is currently facing, irrational forces with narrow political, religious, or economic interests who sell fear under the cover of national interests, find it easy to regiment the mass behind their goals of subjugation. During the Second World War the Nazi party in Germany had to cling to this technique of selling fear by attaching fear to every positive edifice the mass holds dearly to. Hermann Wilhelm Göring one of the trusted men to Hitler is famous to have said, “Naturally, the common people don't want war…. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to 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.”   

For a careful observer of current situations in the world, Hermann Wilhelm’s lines seem to be the ‘holy lines’ from which religious extremists, hardliner politicians, authoritarian governments, even some democratic nations get their dictates from and sell fear like hot cakes to the mass. Such is a favorable environment for parasite elements, organized or otherwise, both among the mass and in governments, who seek nothing but to thrive at the exploitation of others including the best interest of their nation’s wealth and sovereign interests. The first target during such times of uncertainty is man’s inalienable rights of men for life and liberty and free production without the bondage of parasites dictating the terms.    

No matter how the dye of this decade and its accompanying chorus of dread could claim to confess otherwise, it is unavoidable reality that humanity as a whole has always come out stronger and triumphant out of the dark epochs to usher better days.

When the forces of fear declare as they are doing now around the world through the various media under their control, the multiple prohibitive policies they print everyday, they are trying to sell branded terror as the expense of the rational person’s insistence to live free and defend his inalienable rights.

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TAE

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