Social Engineering: The Government as a Purveyor of Fear

The primary duty of a government is to protect its citizenry.  This protection can take many forms.  It may wage war against foreign aggressors.  It may protect them from poverty in old age by creating programs like Social Security.  Police forces are a community’s line of defense against criminal elements, and the Security and Exchange Commission is a watchdog against unfair market practices.  Yes, many threats exist; therefore, the government stands as the protector of the electorate.  As new threats develop, this power continues to grow.

            Unfortunately, however, fostering fear is often the government’s primary tool in controlling society.  For example, in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar Brutus defended his part in the assassination of Caesar by telling the public that he feared what Caesar might have become.  Antony countered by inciting anxiety over what the conspirators might do to the citizens of Rome.

            In general terms, if the public is satisfied that life is good and that their future is secure, they will not change their standing government.  A political candidate will not get elected by saying the state of the community is good.  Instead, he or she will create pervading uncertainty about the public’s present or future.  They will create fear of higher taxes, loss of valued services, or other threats to individual security or stability.  Conversely, the sitting representative will often cite the danger of electing a new, untried entity.  Change is seldom an easy choice, because it is fraught with fear of the unknown.

            More specifically, in the past decade the government has been masterful in its program of social engineering.  All governments use this technique to gain public backing for their goals.  This is how they get approval for larger police forces (“Crime is on the rise.”), increased funding for schools (“Our students are falling behind the rest of the world.”), or health care reform (“The system will be broke in x years, and no one will have adequate health care.”).

            The Bush administration was masterful in its fear-mongering following the attack on America in 2001.  Rightly so, the public wanted justice against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.  Simultaneously, President George W. Bush had a dual agenda of bringing down Saddam Hussein and changing Iraq’s form of government.  To attain this end, he created the illusion of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and misdirected the public into associating Hussein with the attack on the World Trade Center.  Not surprisingly, the public fell for this ploy and supported the war with Iraq.  At the same time, the Bush administration used the specter of national security threats to coerce Congress into enacting the Patriot Act–a cleverly named instrument that induced Americans to surrender many Constitutional rights in the name of greater security. [Of course, the Taliban uses these same tactics to engender Muslim support, framing the war with the West as a holy war against those who want to destroy Islam.]

            During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt reassured the public by stating, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  He was fighting those irrational insecurities that make a country weak.  In a way, he was engineering a stronger society–one that overcame both the Depression and the threat of fascism.  Sadly, the American psyche does not seem so strong today.  Or perhaps the government is better at engineering a public that is psychologically weaker.  If an increasingly stronger government can keep its citizens in a state of uncertainty–of fear–then it will succeed in anything it may want to do.